The Bebaak Collective, a group of 15 organisations working with Muslim women on education, communalism and other issues in several states across India, has put out a statement which counters the polarising opinions on the triple talaq debate. Ever since Shayara Bano’s petition earlier this year asking for triple talaq to be declared unconstitutional, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board began a signature campaign to resist the ban, insisting that alterations of the Sharia should come from within, the BJP government has voiced its condemnation of the triple talaq for ruining Muslim’s women’s lives.

The Bebaak Collective pointed out the hijacking of issues that concern Muslim women by paternalistic debates with secondary motives. It says that there is a need for certain measures to ensure affirmative action within the Muslim community, but the rhetoric around rescuing Muslim women is all too familiar, and the triple talaq issue has been pounced on by the government in power to achieve different ends. The diversity of opinion within the Muslim community itself on the issue is escaping unacknowledged, and this notion of a singular ‘authentic’ voice belonging to the community has to change. Otherwise there will just be a repeat of 1984, when Shehnaaz Sheikh, the first Muslim woman to question the validity of triple talaq in court, was targeted within the community, and the voices of women were quashed, says the Collective.

Read the full statement here:

We are writing this open letter to our fellow women’s groups, human rights groups and concerned individuals to bring into attention three primary concerns that have emerged as a corollary to the ongoing series of events around the issue of triple talaq.

As we all know ‘triple talaq’ has always been a contentious question in the women’s movement since the times of Shehnaaz Sheikh, who in 1983 filed a petition in the apex challenging triple talaq and continues to be so with the petition filed by Shayara Bano in 2016. The issue of Personal Laws has always been a volatile debate considering the ever impending question about whether women should be treated as right bearing individual citizens or members of a particular community. In recent times, right after reopening of the triple talaq debate, the Law Commission of India took out a questionnaire on the Uniform Civil Code to begin ‘a healthy conversation about the viability of uniform civil code’ in the name of women’s rights.

However, it has been more divisive for all the progressive voices within the community. Meanwhile, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has opened a signature campaign all over the states, taking support from women of the community to reiterate that any change in the Sharia should come from within and that members of the community should resist the banning of triple talaq. Signature campaigns which are being conducted in almost every Muslim dominated locality raise questions about the methodology through which one reaches out to the community, and also how, by mobilizing opinion, one kind of voice in the community becomes an authentic representation.

In the midst of these tumultuous times, we want to earmark certain aspects:

The way the Muslim community is diverse within itself, there are equally varied voices within the community on the issue of Personal Laws. Therefore, no singular opinion must be treated as the sole voice of the community. Such presumptions about the ‘authentic’ Muslim voice shall be fatal for the community as it was during 1984.

Law Commission’s questionnaire which has come now is a strategic move which will have far reaching ripples. The Muslim community is socially vulnerable, as attested by multiple reports including the Sachar Committee Report of 2005, and it requires various affirmative actions to better its conditions of living. However, it is also a fact that ‘rescuing’ the ‘vulnerable’ Muslim women seems to form an ideological base for the majoritarian right wing government and its allies. As women’s groups we fight this appropriation of our causes to the State’s ends.

We and our fellow women’s groups have been working in different states while staying within the community. We have been shared with that in the ongoing debates there is also a simmering rise of insecurity among women’s groups who fear to be targeted for being against the community or religion. Recently, a group of women’s activists were targeted in Govandi, in Mumbai while campaigning against triple talaq in the community. They had altercations with the community ‘leaders’. These stray incidents of quashing down of women’s voices in the community will have far reaching affects for the Muslim women’s leadership itself who has emerged after much struggle.

This time, we want to cumulate our strength to imagine gender justice for Muslim women whose contours are not defined by normative religious practices and also, where plurality of everyday will find expression. We do not want our living realities or struggles to be subsumed by any force in the name of rescuing, which works in absolute continuum with the despotic paternalism of majoritarian power. We also want to open the lid of gender justice which will push the conversations beyond the questions of triple talaq. We want to gather support and strength in this time to create a new history and not a rerun of that which is past in 1984.

Hasina Khan

On behalf of the Bebaak Collective (Voices of the Fearless)