 Hello everyone I'm Shivangi Mishra and today we have senior advocate Ms Indra Jaisingh with us discussing the issues at stake at the Triple Talak case and the recent judgement. Ms Jaisingh has fought for over 40 years for the rights of women in India and she continues to do so and she represented the centre for secular studies in the recent Triple Talak case. Thank you Ms Jaisingh for taking out time for this interview. Could you begin with telling us about the history of the Muslim women movement against the practice of Triple Talak? It's very very interesting of course because way back in 1984 it was Shana's shake from Bombay. File the petition very similar to the one that Sai Ramanu has filed today where she challenged every practice in Muslim personal law which is discriminatory which included Triple Talak, which included polygamy, which included Nika Halala, which included everything. Now Shana herself was a woman who was thrown out by her husband so again she was a flesh and blood petitioner. There was a lot of criticism against her I recollect and I was representing her so I recollect that. People said she's been put up by the RSS and others pointed fingers to her lawyer somewhat similar to what happened recently with Sai Ramanu as well but she braved all those criticisms and she continued but as somewhere down the line the judicial system had so many delays to it that she decided she wanted to just get on with her own life and she abandoned that petition she didn't go ahead with it. Well that's where it started and I think I need to benchmark certain very important developments in the history of this movement. We all know about Shamanu and we also know that justice the late justice genetude's decision in the Shamanu case was again a landmark judgment because it attempted a separation between religion and state and it did that by saying that a Muslim divorced wife could also file an application under section 125 of the criminal procedure code which was a secular law and I have to say that if that judgment was allowed to stand the test of time we probably wouldn't have had to wait this long for the present judgment sadly the then congress government attempted to reverse this judgment and pass the Muslim women's protection of rights and divorce act 1986. Now this act said for example that Muslim women will get only a provision and maintenance for the Iddat period but the wording was interesting it said made and paid during the Iddat period. Now the other woman who I represented was also a Muslim woman from Calicut. She was herself the daughter of a judge and they you know upper middle class family she was married she had children who were like you know in medical college and things like that so grown up children and she and her husband were settled in Dubai but they were planning to relocate in Qochin so they were building a house in Qochin and the house was almost complete and one day when she went to that house to kind of examine whether the walls are properly done and the doors and windows are all set and getting ready to move in she received a letter not a letter a note a note written on the notepad of a five-star hotel I think it was a target if I'm not mistaken in which her husband said the luck the luck the luck and she was standing right there in the middle of the house examining the doors and windows when she received this very aware woman very together and she came to me and she decided this was not something she was going to take lying down and so she was the first woman ever to challenge the Muslim women's protection of rights and divorce act in Qochin and it was an ordinary magistrate's court again that gave her a lump sum payment beyond the three month in the period in other words he interpreted this law and he said that reasonable and fair provision made and paid during the period doesn't mean it's confined to three months this judgment was carried an appeal to the Kerala High Court finally to the Supreme Court and ultimately it was Daniel Latifi the late Daniel Latifi a very very prominent left-fing lawyer in the Supreme Court who also challenged the constitutional military of this law sadly of course he died before the judgment was delivered but we were all there we all argued the matter and in a judgment which is reported as Daniel Latifi versus Union of India the Supreme Court decided that the words reasonable and fair provision made and paid during the in that period meant that they would get a provision for life not confined to three years in a sense my friend was vindicated my client was vindicated now people have been arguing that this law is sufficient and it protects Muslim women but we all know this is strictly speaking not true the questions still remained why were they taken out of the framework of a secular law so these have been the milestones the vishanas shake then there was shabanu so do you think this was the rationale behind the triple talak like it was this the argument in the court like the rationale behind abolishing triple the practice of triple talak there has been a judgment of 1952 delivered by very eminent judges the late justice kajindogadkar the late justice jagla which held the personal laws are not law within the meaning of article 13 which means basically that they cannot be challenged on the ground that they violate fundamental right now it's really really ironic that they gave this judgment because they wanted to uphold the hindu bigamy act which abolished bigamist marriages for Hindus and the argument was why is it that you are abolishing bigamist marriages for Hindus but not for Muslims so they invoked a Hindu husband invoked article 14 the right to equality now in that process and I think unknowingly for wanting to achieve the right result for wanting to say that this law was valid they said that personal law is not law within the meaning of article 13 and therefore cannot be challenged but that judgment became like an albatross around the necks of all women whether they are Hindu Muslim Christian Sikh it doesn't matter because personal laws apply to all of them so it's been a huge challenge how do we overcome this and this was an appropriate occasion and I don't know if you remember but many people remember that I said in court while arguing the triple talak case we need to exercise the ghost of Narsu Appu from arduous prudence and then of course the next question is a lot of people have been asking me miss jessing do you think we've exercised the goats of Narsu Appu so what do you have to say well I think justice nariman's judgment comes closest to exercising the ghost of Narsu Appu because he says that after the 1939 act the sharia law application act muslim personal law is codified and once it's codified law it's law within the meaning of article 372 and it's also capable of challenge by through fundamental rights and indeed he and his brother judge struck it down on the ground that it violated article 14 that is a right to equality on the ground that it's manifestly arbitrary quote unquote he has been criticized for not striking it down under article 15 that is discrimination based on and I join hands with that criticism he could have gone a step further and said that it ought to be struck down so overall were you satisfied with the reasoning of the court or do you think that it well I think the biggest breakthrough is that justice nariman allowed personal laws to be challenged on the ground of violation of fundamental rights and to that extent I'm very very pleased there are arguments and arguments there is an argument that two other judges have said this cannot be done and therefore we really don't know what the law is but the fact of the matter is that triple telak is called so on the subject of reasoning do you think that the judgment has advanced the the cause of gender equality that is undoubted because all five judges have signed on to the statement which says triple telak is abolished so there can be absolutely no doubt about the fact that it does advance the course of gender justice and to that extent very welcome and will this judgment according to you open the doors for future litigators and to challenge the personal the discriminatory personal laws of the country the judgment of justice Roentgen and justice you you Lally definitely opens those doors so whether it's Hindu whether it's Christian whether it is Parsi whether it is Muslim whether it's Buddhist whether it's Sikh it doesn't matter it can be challenged and almost all laws now are codified and with this declaration that Muslim law personal laws also codified I think all laws are capable of challenging in fact Geeta Harir and herself had challenged section six of the Hindu minority and guardian share which is so blatantly discriminatory it says that the father and after him the mother is the natural guardian obviously it's time to challenge that once more because the Supreme Court did not strike it down there were no women on the Supreme Court bench on the case what do you how do you see that it's tragic one word all right also the current government is taking the credit for for this victory for the victory of Muslim women what do you want to say about well let me tell you the decision that we took that is center for secular studies and Biba collective on the one hand and on the other hand to go to court and present our case was not a very easy decision because we obviously didn't want to be identified completely with the stand of the government but we wanted the court to know that secular individuals of all persuasions Hindu and Muslim were there before the court to present their point of view which is why we intervene and I think it's a success story because we didn't want to abandon that judicial space that democratic space to just the government to a contest only between the government and the and the Muslim personal law board which it would have been if secular individuals and secular Muslim organizations had not approached the court so that's the first success story the women's groups have already issued a statement which is available publicly in which they not only point to the very hypocritical hypocritical nature of the commitment to Muslim women by pointing to what's happening with lynching of the minority community by pointing to the fact that there is little or no representation of Muslims in several states ruled by the BJP and ultimately they say that the issue here is beyond religion and that they they recognize that the battle against misogyny and patriarchy has not ended it's a long journey ahead and they also point to the fact that if it's a victory it's not just a victory for Muslim women it's also a victory for Hindu women and women of all persuasions because of the entry of the constitution into the field of personal laws