Regardless of their religious affiliations, large sections of the Indian intelligentsia are agreed that in pushing the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Bill through Parliament, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has delivered a body blow to the cause of secularism, nationalism and modernism in the country. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that on no issue since the imposition of the internal emergency in June 1975 has there been a greater measure of agreement among educated Indians than on this. It is inconceivable that Mr. Gandhi and his advisers have not been aware of this reaction. Why, then, has he acted the way he has?
It is possible that the Prime Minister did not anticipate such a fierce reaction when, on the eve of the elections in Assam last December, he allowed himself to be persuaded that he needed to mollify Muslim opinion which was said to have been deeply disturbed by the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case. But subsequent developments should have cautioned him if only he was willing to heed them. He was not so willing. Why?
Even before Mr. Gandhi took over as Prime Minister, he is known to have made casual remarks which suggested that his Muslim countrymen baffled him. This was not particularly surprising. Upper-crust non-Muslim Indians, especially in north-western India, who have grown up in the post-independence period, have not had Muslims as friends or opponents because upper-class Muslims had migrated to Pakistan. Apparently, this was as true of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi as of most others of his class and generation.
This lack of understanding of what might be called be called the Muslim psyche found expression in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case when Mr Gandhi encouraged Mr. Arif Mohammad Khan to come out openly in support of the judgment and to denounce strongly the mullahs who were trying to whip up an agitation against it. Anyone who had dealt with Muslims intimately could have told him that the agitation should be circumvented and that it would be unwise to confront it. While it was natural and legitimate for the youthful and nationalist Arif Mohammad to wish to confront the obscurantists in his community, it was indiscreet of Mr. Gandhi to have gone along with him. The Prime Minister obviously did not know the risks involved.
Powerful Speech
It would, of course, have been a different matter if Mr. Gandhi had felt passionately on the issue of the rights of Muslim women. But that was not so. That became evident within weeks of Mr. Arif Mohammad’s powerful speech in the Lok Sabha when Mr. Gandhi not only allowed another Muslim minister, Mr. Zia-ur Rahman Ansari, to speak out in defence of the mullahs and their interpretation of the Shariat but also appeared at the Momin conference organised by Mr. Ansari and gave an assurance that Muslim Personal Law would be protected.
Those who urged the Prime Minister to take this slippery path of appeasing the obscurantist mullahs used the language of expediency. But in terms of expediency the argument was weak. Muslims in Assam were furious not because the Supreme Court had allowed a measly maintenance allowance to a poor old widow but because Mr. Gandhi had concluded an agreement with the All-Assam Students Union and the Assam Gana Sangram Parishad which had hurt their interests. New legislation to negate the offending section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code could not have possibly assuaged them. It was irrelevant to the issues which agitated them.
The Prime Minister would have seen through the argument put forward by the likes of Mr Ansari if he was that way inclined, that is, if the argument militated against his own strong conviction on the subject of the need for reform in the Muslim Personal Law. Judging by the course of events, Mr Gandhi did not spot the weakness of the argument and succumbed to it without such resistance.
Mr. Gandhi could easily have retraced his steps, if he so wished, after the Assam poll in which Muslims by and large voted for their own candidates and not for the Congress party’s. He could have made public the advice of the Union law and home ministries to the effect that the private member’s bill introduced by the Muslim League leader, Mr. Banatwala, with a view to nullifying section 125 of the Cr. P.C. was ultra vires of the Constitution; and he could have pleaded that however much he might wish to oblige and mullahs, he was helpless in the matter. He could have delayed the framing of the bill; indeed, he had a legitimate justification for doing so since he had promised the opposition parties a background paper on the subject detailing, among other things, the rights Muslim women enjoy in various Muslim countries many of which, including Pakistan, have introduced far-reaching changes in their personal laws. Instead, he chose to disregard his promise of consultations with the opposition (which would have helped him get out of the trap he had walked into) and finalised the bill. Why?
Definitive Answer
Only those close to Mr Gandhi, with whom he might have engaged in a dialogue can provide a definitive answer to this question. The rest of us can only speculate on the basis of what we know otherwise. Such speculation may not be wholly accurate. But it may not be too wide off the mark.
We know that the year I986 did not begin too well for Mr. Gandhi. It opened on the one hand with criticism of his address at the Congress centenary celebrations in Bombay in December 1985 in which he had accused Congressmen of being power brokers and of the celebrations as a costly extravaganza on the other. This lent evidence to reports that Congressmen were beginning to be disenchanted with the leader.
On January 26, extremists belonging to the All-India Sikh Students’ Federation and the Damdami Taksal (seat of the late Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale) occupied the Golden Temple and began dismantling the Aka1 Takht which, damaged during” Operation Bluestar”, had been repaired at considerable cost under the not so covert auspices of the Union government. Killing Killings by terrorists mounted in Punjab and it looked as if the Rajiv-Longowal accord had come unstuck. By then the Prime Minister’s entire foreign policy platform ranging from a new-found love for the United States to the proposed treaty with Pakistan had also come in for sharp attack. All in all, the intelligentsia was beginning to be critical of the Prime Minister.
On the face of it, this was not a proper time for him to go ahead with so controversial a measure as the Muslim Women bill. But the impression had spread that he could be pushed. So he could well have concluded that he had to dig in his heels on some issue in order to demonstrate that he could be firm and decisive. However surprising it might appear, it does look that he chose the Muslim Women bill to demonstrate his capacity for decisiveness. Witness the manner in which he virtually gagged discussion on the bill in the Congress parliamentary party on February 28. Also witness the fact that he had had to retreat on two crucial foreign policy planks; he had to give up his plans to visit Islamabad to sign a treaty with General Zia and he had had to step up his criticism of President Jayewardene.
Contrary advice
It is evident that Mr. Asoke Sen and Mr HR Bhardwaj, the Union Cabinet minister and minister of state for law, respectively, gave Mr. Gandhi advice which was wholly contrary to the brief of their experts which they had earlier endorsed in writing. But they had nothing to gain by deliberately misleading him. They did not show much respect for the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In private discussions in the presence of the Prime Minister, they are also reported to have misquoted and misinterpreted the Constitution. But all that cannot detract from the inference that they only argued the brief given to them by Mr. Gandhi.
Even after the bill had been sprung as a surprise on the country and introduced in the Lok Sabha, a line of retreat was open to Mr. Gandhi. It would have been perfectly legitimate for him to have agreed to refer the bill to a select committee. But he did not agree to adopt such a course. Why not, uncles he was determined to prove that he could be firm once he had taken a decision, however unwise?
Ever since he signed the accord with Sant Longowal and followed it up with an agreement with the AASU and the AGSP in Assam, it has seemed that Mr. Gandhi takes a sectional view of problems facing the country. Apparently, the Muslim Women bill falls in the same category.
It cannot be for nothing that in their statements Union ministers have spoken of the feelings of the Muslim community as if it is a self-contained, monolithic entity in the affairs of which non-Muslims are not entitled to intervene in any way, of Muslim MPs as if they represent only Muslims, of the “leaders” of the Muslim community as if these communalist bigots constitute a state within a state. And the ministers in question have displayed contempt for nationalist and secularist Muslims perhaps precisely because the latter are not sectional in their approach.
This speaks of a fundamental retreat from the concept of nationalism which has served as the basis of the struggle for freedom and of the Constitution, which is but a framework within which the country’s freedom is sought to be consolidated. This framework has been under attack by both those in power and those out of power for years. The Muslim Women bill is one more powerful blow at this framework.
The Times of India, 14 May 1986