The Legacy of Imperialism on Gender Law in India

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II Volume 22 Article 9 2017 The Legacy of Imperialism on Gender Law in India Neil Datar Santa Clara Univeristy, Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/historical-perspectives Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Datar, Neil (2017) "The Legacy of Imperialism on Gender Law in India," Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II: Vol. 22 , Article 9. Available at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/historical-perspectives/vol22/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact . Datar: The Legacy of Imperialism on Gender Law in India The Legacy of Imperialism on Gender Law in India Neil Datar The British Raj by the turn of the twentieth century governed an extensive territory that today forms the states of India, Pakistan, Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), as well as Indian Ocean islands and the Colony of Aden in the Middle East (see Exhibit A). British rule had both positive and negative effects on the people and land they governed. The extent of each of these effects and the harms imposed by colonization continue to be a hotly debated topic in the former Raj and the United Kingdom. 1 While a broader discussion on the ethics of empire can be seen in existing scholarship, this paper focuses on the interplay between religion, gender, and custom that British rule in India caused. The effects of British divide and rule policies can be seen in the immediate aftermath of Partition, as well as in the long run through the prevalence of gendered discussions and outcomes in the legal and political sphere. An analytical look backwards and forwards from the Shah Bano court case of 1985 has important things to say about India’s complex history with colonialism and the way the decisions of the past continue to affect the country today—particularly the destabilizing strength of communal politics and the ensuing subversion of gender equality to religious claims. 2 Exhibit A: British Raj1 1 Bolton Doug, “"Dr Shashi Tharoor Tells the Oxford Union Why Britain Owes Reparations for Colonising India in Viral Speech,” The Independent, July 2015. 2 Siobhan Mullally, “Feminism and Multicultural Dilemmas in India: Revisiting the Shah Bano Case,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 24, no. 4 (Dec. 2004): 671-92. Historical Perspectives, Series II, Volume XXII, 2017 Published by Scholar Commons, 2017 1 Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II, Vol. 22 [2017], Art. 9 Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano: A Case Study of the Post-Independence Gender Dynamic A review of the Shah Bano court case of 1985 allows modern historians to analyze India’s post-independence gender dynamics through the lens of religion and social tension. While criminal and civil law are uniform for all Indians, personal laws are not. India, unlike almost every other democracy in the world, operates under a legal framework where codified personal laws vary between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.3 Personal laws existed before British rule in India—the British codified and strengthened the institution for reasons that will be discussed in this paper. Personal status laws apply to issues of custom within a given religious group of people. In India, these issues typically revolve around marriage, adoption, kinship, succession, and religious law as it applies to families.4 In the 1985 Shah Bano case (Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985 SCR (3) 844)) before the Supreme Court of India, plaintiff Shah Bano sued her former husband, Ahmed Khan, for alimony support under the Indian criminal code. Shah Bano and Khan, both Indian Muslims from the central state of Madhya Pradesh, had five surviving children together over the course of their marriage. Their status as Muslims would normally send the case to the personal status courts, but Shah Bano’s suit fell under the criminal code. The Supreme Court ruled that Section 125 of India’s criminal code, requiring the payment of maintenance money for former spouses, did not conflict with Muslim Personal Law. Thus, Khan would be required to pay alimony to Shah Bano—because the criminal code has a general applicability to all Indians. 5 However, the Supreme Court’s decision divided the government between the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Congress, having won a parliamentary majority in the general election of 1984, believed that the crucial support it received from India’s largest minority—the Muslims—would decrease if it did not take action against the Court decision. For perspective, in 2010 the Muslim population of India reached nearly 180 million, 3 Mullally, “Feminism and Multicultural Dilemmas in India,” 671-92. Elizabeth Kolsky, “The Colonial Rule of Law and the Legal Regime of Exception: Frontier Fanaticism and State Violence in British India,” The American Historical Review 120, no. 4 (Oct. 2015): 1230. 5 Vrinda Narain, “Postcolonial Constitutionalism in India: Complexities and Contradictions,” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, January 2016: 107-35. 4 50 https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/historical-perspectives/vol22/iss1/9 2 Datar: The Legacy of Imperialism on Gender Law in India roughly equal to the entire population of India’s post-independence rival Pakistan. 6 The BJP, as a Hindu nationalist party, neither needed the support of Muslims, nor would they ever be able to win it. They organized and protested against any potential move by the government to nullify or dilute the Court’s decision. Muslim conservatives, led on this issue by the All India Personal Law Board, protested heavily against what they claimed would be a direct attack on the rights of Muslims in a Hindu-majority India. Hindu nationalists and Islamic conservatives filled the streets of major cities as this decision became less about the rights of Muslim women and more about the pride of Hindu and Muslim men. In the imperial period, scholars reason that women’s bodies became the grounds on which the power struggles of colonization played out. The same holds true in the power struggle of post-independence Indian politics. In 1986 the Congresscontrolled Parliament of India passed the Muslim Women Act, which reversed the gender-progressive decision of the Court. Specifically, the Act prevented the Courts from ordering alimony payments after the iddah period of separation. Iddah signifies the length of time a Muslim woman must wait before remarrying— normally a period of three to six months in India.7 Muslim men have no such restriction as iddah law appl (...truncated)