LUCKNOW: When Akhtar Sultan Begum heard that the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) had rejected the idea of granting women the right to divorce at the time of marriage, she knew it was time to tell her story.
For, this graceful and dignified 88-year-old had set a precedent by getting a clause, granting her the right to divorce (tafviz-e-talaq), inserted in her nikahnama in 1936. Since then, she has also ensured that every woman who got married into her family got the same benefit.
Begum, however, never had to invoke that clause as she ``lived happily'' with her husband Dr Ajamal Hassan Khan till his death in 1985.
``But with all due respects to these Muslim scholars, I want to say that they (AIMPLB members) seem to have denied this right to women for so many years, either due to lack of knowledge or gender bias,'' Begum, hailing from a royal family in Lucknow, told this website’s newspaper.
Even the lone woman representative in the AIMPLB executive committee, Naseem Iqtidar Ali, had got one of her daughters married to a member of the Begum's family, she adds.
``I want all those who deny this right to Muslim women to listen to my story. We were five sisters. My father got my elder sister married to a man, who tortured her a lot. We tried hard to get my sister back, but the man refused to give her ‘talaq’. It took my father 10 years to get rid of him. Since then, he decided not to get any of his other daughters married without getting them the right divorce in the ‘nikahnama’,'' Begum recalls.
``My father did not get a match for all of us, as he was demanding a huge amount as ‘mehr’ and an unconditional right to divorce... At the time, when the girls used to get married at 12-13 years of age, we faced lots of problems. I got married at 20.''
Begum's carefully-preserved ‘nikahnama’ written in Arabic, reads: ``I saw Akhtar Sultan Begum, daughter of Abdul Majeed Khuraja, and agreed as ‘mehr’ the amount of Rs 75,000, half of which is Rs 37,500 in cash, in the advocacy of Abdul Majeed Khuraja and in presence of witnesses. I declare that I will follow moral decency, fair play and courteous behaviour with my wife and on being asked by my wife, I give to her the right of divorce.''
Says Begum's son Dr Mansoor Hasan, Professor of Cardiology: ``We don't mean to dishonour the Muslim scholars. Nobody, however, has a right to discuss this issue. The right to divorce, for a Muslim woman, already exists. It is only has to be formalised.''
But AIMPLB chairman Rave Hasmi Nadvi insists that the Board will not consider the clause again. ``We had proposed this at our meeting in Bangalore in 2000. Our women members said how could a word like ‘talaq’ be even mentioned at such an auspicious occasion like a wedding and rejected it,'' he told this website’s newspaper (Source : www.newindpress.com on, Monday July 26 2004 00:00 IST).
Editor’s note: Akhtar Sultan Begum’s story may encourage all the modern thinkers to reconsider an age long dogma of discrimination between men and women. According to the Muslim law (which is accepted in the Indian constitution) men in the Muslim society are allowed to have one, two, three or even four wives (if they so wished) and they have all the rights to divorce any time they like. But the same right is not given to the women. In Hindu society also there are so many suppressive reservations towards women but in such case women can go the court to ask for the divorce. Akhtar Khaleda Begum can be the role model in the Muslim society as she was able to establish a rare example which deserves a lot of praises. However, she too failed to combat with another ill practice of Indian society, the dowry system. That is a curse in both in the Hindus and the Muslim communities even though the mode of dowry in Muslim society is slightly different than that of the Hindus. In Case of Hindus the family of bride has to give the dowry and in the Muslim society it is just opposite. However may be, it is an insult towards the dignity of human beings and against cardinal human values.
In this regards, the father of PROUT philosophy, Shrii P. R. Sarkar says, “The dowry system is yet another glaring example of social injustice. In my book ‘Human Society’, I have already mentioned that the dowry system has two major causes: the first is economic, and the second is the numerical disparity between women and men. With the decreasing economic dependence of women on men, the inequity of the dowry system will cease to exist. But to expedite this process, it is essential to propagate high ideals among young men and women. Our sons and daughters are not commodities like rice, pulse, salt, oil or cattle that they can be haggled over in the market-place.”
