They say we are living in a post-truth world. Wrong. We are living in a post-lie world. It is not just that lies have become the truth, it is that lies have acquired the veneer of ‘modernity,’ they have become acceptable, even coveted. An objective force that fascists wear proudly on their sleeves.
Today, your greatest enemy will be leading you into battle against the ‘enemy.’ Such are the times that we live in. Lie has brothers, friends, Romans and countrymen. One of its cousins is also called double standard.
Take Triple Talaq. It is obvious what a non-issue the issue is. Muslim women face so many genuine problems. They are oppressed twice as Muslims and women. When their brothers, husbands, sons, fathers and lovers are lynched, killed, ‘fake-encountered’ and brutalised. They go through a lot, don’t they?
But no one will talk about this. Even anti-RSS liberals will talk of ‘we know how BJP will ultimately gain from this issue,’ but let’s ‘celebrate this moment of woman emancipation.’
‘Women emancipation’? Triple Talaq (TT) and women emancipation? Are you nuts? Why are you abusing the great legacy of the struggle for women’s rights?
Leave aside the fact that the Supreme Court has put a ban only on ‘instant Talaq’ that anyways does not enjoy Quranic sanction and that too for 6 months. The fact is that TT is banned in most Muslim countries. If India was serious about a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) it would have implemented it long ago. And yes with the full agreement of Maulavis and religious heads.
Keeping a personal law for Muslim is not right or wrong. It was part of the social contract between the Indian State and Muslims who preferred to stay back in India rather than go to Pakistan.
With the consent of all stakeholders, a social contract can be updated or modernised or anulled, but you cannot renege. You cannot put a gun to the head of a stakeholder and force him to sign.
Have you ever wondered why RSS and BJP are anti-TT? Do they really believe in UCC? RSS and BJP are anti-TT not just because it is another stick with which they can browbeat Muslims. They are anti-TT because the position gives them the perfect standpoint to do what they always wanted: attack the Hindu Code Bill (HCB)!
Hindu Code Bill
In the 1950s, RSS and organisations of its ilk opposed the Hindu Code Bill. Hindu women today enjoy some level of freedom due to Nehru’s HCB, but the RSS is initiating a counter revolution in Indian society. It is hell-bent on rolling back whatever reforms and progress Indian society made in terms of advancement in civil rights, upliftment of weaker sections, and women emancipation.
RSS-BJP are known to carry out their agenda undercover, in a clandestine manner. They did not attack HCB directly. By attacking TT, BJP first communalised the personal law issue. They gathered massive support among Hindu secular-progressive women and liberals. Muslim women enjoying a modicum of freedom were swayed too.
With this support, and the environments it created, it was only a matter of time before RSS-BJP embarked on to a legal journey. This is what they always wanted: the power to legislate on personal law.
And fascists will use this power not to reform Muslim personal law or bring in a progressive UCC. They are demons in human form. In the name of UCC, they will whittle down/distort the progressive aspects of Nehru’s HCB.
Forget about the ‘upliftment’ of Muslim women. Hindu women should get ready to return legally to being housewives, widows should get ready to lose their right to remarry, divorcees should get ready for the humiliation of living as second class citizens with men they hate and daughter, sisters, wives and mothers should get ready to give up their rights to property and accept polygamy.
Musalmaan to vaise bhee bhagwaan bharose reh rahen hain (Muslims anyway are living at the mercy of God). By the time fascists will be through, Hindu women will be ‘bombed’ back to middle ages. And they will look at Muslim women and envy the rights enshrined in a religious book compiled in the 7th century.