{"id":353,"date":"2005-07-01T14:25:26","date_gmt":"2005-07-01T08:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/2005\/07\/01\/what-do-we-do-about-imrana\/"},"modified":"2005-07-01T15:40:49","modified_gmt":"2005-07-01T10:10:49","slug":"what-do-we-do-about-imrana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200507\/what-do-we-do-about-imrana\/","title":{"rendered":"What do we do about Imrana?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imrana’s travails have given yet another opportunity for the pseudo-secularists to display their dishonesty and for the “real” secularists to point it out. Seriously, which word would better describe Mulayam’s and Salman Khurshid’s<\/a> position than “shameful”? Perhaps “disgusting” would do as well.
\n
\nI’ve never understood this. Say that you are one of those whom the BJP calls “pseudo-secularist”. Say that you yourself believe that you support secularism. Let’s also assume that unlike Mulayam and Salman, you are not a politician who has to worry about Muslim votes. Obviously, we are now talking of people like Teesta, Shabana etc. Shouldn’t it follow, both from an ethical and a tactical point of view that you should take up the case of Imrana as strongly as you can? Ethically, because rescuing women like Imrana from her troubles should be more important than ensuring that the BJP doesn’t make political capital out of it? And if the latter imperative is in fact more important for you, what better way to undercut the BJP’s points than to raise the issues yourself so that you can point this out the next time someone accuses you of pseudo-secularism? So where are Teesta<\/a> and Shabana<\/a>? Only Brinda<\/a> is there, and she has been behaving creditably. <\/p>\n

The more important question is, what should a secular government do about the Imrana case? In the comments<\/a> to an earlier post, RR makes the strange assertion that if secularism is really practised according to its original sense, the government would respect the ruling of the Mullahs. Why? Because that is what “not interfering in religious matters” should mean.<\/p>\n

Excuse me, but secularism means that the government does not interfere in an individual’s<\/i> religious beliefs and practices, not that it leaves entire groups of people at the mercy of their religious leaders. In a secular country, a Maulana’s pronouncement on the status of a marriage between two people would have no more significance than an individual ranting on his blog. It would certainly not have the force of law – and I don’t think that even in “secular” India, the government is going to send the police to enforce the dictat. If the two people want to continue the marriage, then government should, if necessary, provide police protection against those from their “community” who would try to prevent them from doing so. <\/p>\n

The problem here seems to be that the couple itself has accepted the verdict. If both of them really have, what can you do legally, whether your country is secular or not? It should be upto voluntary organizations to see if they can persuade them to change their mind. If, on the other hand, one of them (say, the husband) had decided to “honour” the verdict and another did not, then there would have been a problem. A secular country would have forced him to pay maintenance and child support (but in “secular” India, he can get away with saying “Talaq” three times and returning her Mehr, unless of course she has renounced her right to Mehr, as is the custom) <\/p>\n

So, as I was saying the real problem is that both Imrana and her husband are willing to “voluntarily” abide by the verdict given by their religious leader. What can the government do about it?<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong>
\nCheater!<\/em>
\nGaurav plagiarises<\/a> my post and backdates it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imrana’s travails have given yet another opportunity for the pseudo-secularists to display their dishonesty and for the “real” secularists to point it out. Seriously, which word would better describe Mulayam’s and Salman Khurshid’s position than “shameful”? Perhaps “disgusting” would do as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}