Victimising The Victim

The controversy over the rapeof a woman by her father-in-law has raised many pertinent issues. After thehorrendous incident, the woman, a mother of five children, was told to considerher husband as her son by the local village council of elders. The initialresistance of this edict by the woman and her husband soon gave way to immensepressure put on them by the fatwa of Daral Uloom, Deoband, which gave very nearly the same verdict, as that of thevillage council. It stipulated that the women in question could no longer livewith her husband, since she ‘had sex’ with her own father-in-law.

The learned Mufti of Deoband, despite his scholarship, haspunished a woman for no fault of hers. Doesn’t he know that remarriage ofwomen in India is still not a norm, be it among Hindus or Muslims? One might askhow such a callous fatwa has been issued. After all, it is the same people whotell us that women and men are the same in Islam. Why then, we see that in casessuch as these, it is only women who are at the receiving end?

The case of this woman from Uttar Pradesh is not unique,neither the first. Couple of years ago, a woman in Nigeria complained that shehad been raped. The man denied the charge and under the Islamic requirement thewoman could not produce witnesses. The end was that she was charged withadultery. The case of Amina Lawal which became internationally known wassimilarly the result of a ‘blame the victim’ mentality. The present case inIndia should be seen in this light and not as some isolated incident.

More and more it is becoming clearer that Sharia laws do notgive adequate protection to women. It is not without reason therefore thatMuslim women’s group are demanding changes in some of the Sharia laws. Theirmistrust of Sharia laws only gets strong when we see that while the Dar al Uloomcategorically wants the separation of the women in question from her husband, itsuggests that the rapist father in law should be tried under the Indian penalcode. So while women are to be covered under Personal Law, the men are free toenjoy the reformed secular law. The ‘islamicity’ of Indian Muslim men istherefore based on the degree to which they have control over their women.

The reaction by political parties to this case has shamefullybeen on predictable lines. The only ones who are raising this issue are thewomen’s group like AIDWA and AllIndia Women’s Personal Law Board. The male dominated AIMPLBhas already acquiesced in to the fatwa of Deoband, making it ever clearer thatit is not the sole representative of Muslims in India. The most disgraceful sofar has been Mulayam Singh Yadav who has welcomed the Deoband fatwa and hasrefused to entertain any other opinion than the one from Deoband. The Congresshas similarly distanced itself from the issue. Its leader in Uttar PradeshSalman Khurshid stated that the issue was an ‘individual one’ which shouldbe dealt in accordance with the Shariat. After all what can one expect from aparty, whose President had recently spoken from the platform of Jamiat ul-‘Ulama-I Hind, the apex body of the Deobandi Ulama in India?

Mainstream political parties have so far reinforced theimpression that the Muslims in India are led by the Maulvis and madrasas, animpression which simplifies the complex character of the Muslims in India. However, in considering the Ulama as guardians of Muslim community in India,they have served to take the Muslims backwards and have throttled alternativeprogressive voices from within the community.

Muslims need to realize that it is only they who can changethe way the community is looked upon by others. There is a need to changeoutmoded laws since they were drafted many hundred years ago and do not reflectthe contemporary reality. So far the Muslims have left their religious affairsin the hands of Ulama. Time and again, they have reminded us that they are notwilling to change. After all Personal Laws have been reformed in Pakistan,Malaysia and other Muslim countries and there is no reason why it cannot be donein India. Assigning the task to the Ulama has not brought desired changes. It istime perhaps that ordinary Muslims start taking more interest in the religiousaffairs of the community and not leave everything to the Ulama.

Arshad Alam is International Ford Fellow, Department of Muslim Religious and Cultural History, University of Erfurt, Germany.