Mumbai: Prominent Muslims and others have slammed the All India Muslim Personal Law Board’s ‘Save India, Save Sharia’ nationwide campaign, alleging that it could deepen polarization while willy-nilly supporting the very forces the AIMPLB claims to oppose. Launched on Sep. 17 – coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 76th birthday – the AIMPLB’s 3-month-long campaign is aimed at mobilizing public opinion around protecting the Constitutional rights, preserving the Muslim Personal Law within the framework of safeguarding India’s pluralistic and democratic character. The AIMPLB leaders said they are soliciting support of people, intellectuals, activists, social and religious organisations who value justice, democracy, peace and the Constitution, to strengthen constitutional supremacy, the rule of law, justice and equality, religious freedom, social harmony and national unity. Around 100 progressive Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, activists, organisations and supporters have warned that what the AIMPLB presents as a defence of constitutional rights, religious freedom and Muslim identity "could deepen divisions, and may provide political ammunition to right-wing forces". The progressive have accused AIMPLB of selectively invoking Art. 25-30 of the Constitution related to Religious Freedom, while ignoring that these rights are explicitly subject to public order, morality, and health. Moreover, they conveniently bypass Articles 14 and 15, which guarantee equality before the law and prohibit sex or religion-based discrimination. “Following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where civil society and opposition parties rallied under 'Save the Constitution', the AIMPLB's campaign inadvertently gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sangh Parivar a platform to posture as defenders of constitutional norms. Ahead of crucial state assembly elections, this campaign reinforces false narratives and fuels propaganda that Indian Muslims reject the law of the land,” said the intellectuals. They pointed out how the so-called ‘God-given Shariat Law’ in India is nothing but man-made personal laws and ‘male interpreted patriarchal interpretations’, defended by the AIMPLB. In its September 2016 Supreme Court affidavit in the Triple Talaq case (Sayara Bano v/s. Union of India), the AIMPLB’s affidavit claimed divorce rights belong primarily to husbands because men allegedly possess ‘greater power of decision-making’ and ‘control emotions’. It even argued that without a quick separation option, a husband ‘may resort to illegal, criminal ways of murdering or burning her alive’ - a disturbing rationalization of domestic violence. Claiming these laws are divine, the AIMPLB admitted that “India is a patriarchal society, and therefore personal laws of all communities are aligned with the patriarchal notion...” The progressives countered that Muslim-majority nations globally including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Morocco have codified and reformed personal laws to protect women's rights. “Millions of Muslims live in secular democratic nations with uniform family codes without putting ‘Islam in danger’. The Muslim community’s current legal predicament in India is the direct result of the AIMPLB and conservative leaders failing to proactively reform and codify Muslim Personal Law,” said the progressives sharply. They said that genuine family law reform must guarantee Muslim women equal rights regarding minimum marriage age, abolition of polygamy, mutual divorce, equal inheritance, child custody, adoption, and a ban on female genital mutilation and halala. While secular political parties rarely support the rights of Muslim women, the BJP and the Hindu Right wing do so with an obvious motive: ‘communal polarization’, said the progressives. “The sangh parivar sheds crocodile tears for Muslim women while ignoring relentless hate speech (Love Jihad, Land Jihad…) and hate crimes like mob lynching, bulldozing homes, demolishing mosques or economic boycotts, with chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ to intimidate and strike fear. This accompanies state actions targeting Muslims: Waqf Amendment Act, draconian anti-conversion laws, and a weaponised SIR (Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls) to disenfranchise vast sections of the electorate,” they averred. The progressives have sought the active involvement of all enlightened forces, civil society organisations and secular political parties to ensure that the demand for a gender-just, religion-neutral Uniform Civil Code is rooted in equality and human rights, rather than weaponized for communal division. Among the signatories to the appeal are: Naseeruddin Shah, Amol Palekar, Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Anand Patwardhan, Sultan Shaheen, Teesta Setalvad, Ram Puniyani, Tushar Gandhi, Mallika Sarabhai, Ratna Pathak, Feroze Mithiborwala, Anita Cheria, Zakia Soman, Jyothi Yedulla, Noorjehan S. Niaz, Madhu Bhaduri, et al.
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