Abstract
ABSTRACTMuslim personal laws in India have never been systematically codified, in marked contrast both to Hindu family laws in India and to Islamic family laws in much of the Muslim-majority world, both of which have been subject to a far greater degree of codification. This article examines the call being made by one prominent contemporary Muslim women's organisation, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), for the wholesale codification of Muslim family laws in India as a pathway to protecting women's rights. Following a discussion of the wider context of India's uncodified Muslim personal law system, this paper offers a commentary on the BMMA's draft Family Law Act, first released in 2014. It demonstrates how this document synthesises discourses of women's rights drawn from a series of Qur’anic, constitutional and transnational reference points. By drawing from such diverse sources, and while legal codification in much of the Islamic world has instituted fundamentally patriarchal legal norms, the BMMA's proposed code articulates a distinctive, more gender-equal reading of Islamic family law.
Highlights
In 2014, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA, or ‘Indian Muslim Women’s Movement’) published the first draft of a document that has come to define its agenda: The Muslim Family Law Act
Following a discussion of the wider context of India’s uncodified Muslim personal law system, this paper offers a commentary on the BMMA’s draft Family Law Act, first released in 2014
In an exhaustive national survey of Muslim women’s perspectives on family law in 2015, the BMMA claimed that 83% of respondents believed that the codification of Muslim personal laws would help to protect women’s rights, with high numbers supporting the reform of unequal personal laws relating to divorce, polygamous marriage, mehr and inheritance (BMMA 2015a, 106–107 and passim)
Summary
In 2014, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA, or ‘Indian Muslim Women’s Movement’) published the first draft of a document that has come to define its agenda: The Muslim Family Law Act. The political polarisation surrounding the issue of a UCC in the aftermath of Shah Bano led Agnes, like many other activists, to oppose the wholesale legislative overhaul of Muslim personal laws advocated by women’s activists in earlier generations, arguing that such initiatives might foster social division and lack support within the community She has consistently argued, instead, that existing Indian laws have the capacity to protect women, if used astutely.. While the draft Act incorporates some women’s rights-oriented legal provisions from other Muslim majority countries, the freedom that the BMMA has enjoyed in compiling this document has allowed it to create a ‘code’ of Islamic family law that is far less patriarchal, both in its tone and possible impacts, than the personal status codes in place in many Muslim-majority nations. Non-party, autonomous women’s groups ... have taken the lead and carried the momentum for change on their shoulders.’ Whether the BMMA’s early success in controlling the narrative can withstand the often acrimonious debate over personal laws in contemporary India, remains to be seen
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