HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT ALLAHABAD Court No. – 36 Case :- CRIMINAL MISC. WRIT PETITION No. – 21733 of 2008 Petitioner :- Parvez Parwaz & Another Respondent :- State Of U.P. & Others Counsel for Petitioner :- S.F.A. Naqvi Counsel for Respondent :- Govt. Advocate
An amendment application as well as supplementary affidavit have been filed today by learned counsel for the petitioners which are taken on record.
Heard Sri S.F.A. Naqvi, learned counsel for the petitioners and Sri Ashish Pandey, learned A.G.A. assisted by Sri Imran Saiyed, learned Brief Holder for the State. Learned counsel for the petitioners submits that on 24.3.2017, the matter was heard by this Court on the recall/restoration application as well as on merit but due to some defect in the prayer of recall/restoration application, amendment was required in the prayer of recall/restoration application, hence he has filed the amendment application today. He prays that the same may be allowed. Considering the submissions advanced by learned counsel for the petitioners and the averments made in the amendment application, the amendment application filed in Crl. Misc. Recall/Restoration Application No. 428513 of 2015 is hereby allowed.
Office is directed to allot regular number to it.
Learned counsel for the petitioners is directed to make necessary amendment in the said recall/restoration application during the course of the day. Considered the submissions advanced by learned counsel for the parties and perused the record.
From a perusal of the record, it appears that the matter of sanction regarding prosecution of the accused persons is pending before the State Government and the question of grant of sanction for prosecution is to be decided by the Head of the State Government, who himself is a prime accused in the present F.I.R. lodged by petitioner no. 1.
As the said question which has crop up in the matter before this Court requires proper adjudication, learned counsel for the parties are directed to assist the Court in the matter on the next date fixed by placing legal proposition of law in the matter.
Put up the matter for further argument on 4.5.2017.
(Umesh Chandra Srivastava, J. (Ramesh Sinha, J.) Order Date :- 28.4.2017 Shiraz
Why did this centre-spread in the BILD newspaper instruct Turkish voters that the founder of their new Republic, Mustafa Kemal “Atatürk” (pictured) would have voted NO in the recent referendum? BILD, owned by the media giant Axel Springer, is the largest circulation newspaper anywhere outside East Asia.
In the first place, understanding what Atatürk was up to confuses many. He followed the ideas of August Comte at the Paris École Polytechnique, mentor to many of the French-trained élite officer corps who helped him carry out the coup in 1908, though not Atatürk himself. It was Comte’s ideas about “rational religion” that he sought to apply to Islamic practice to generate a strict moral code he would maintain was a genetic Turkish characteristic. This ideology of state supervision by a Soviet-style “Directorate of Religious Affairs”would later be called Ataturkism by 1980 coup leader General Kenan Evren. It could be argued that the straightjacket of Ataturkism, which would not allow for variations in belief (viz. Alevis) or ethnicity (viz. Kurds), together with its aggressive policing, still lies beneath Turkey's divisions today, prompting the political psychosis of what Kerem Oktem refers to as an “Angry Nation”. Atatürk ruled through a single party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is the current bitter opponent of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) founded by Erdoğan in 2001. From the 1930s onwards, the Ataturkist (or Kemalist) élite sought to emulate the “good” European idea of a multi-party system, which stuttered forward in a continuous stream of opposition parties. But these would invariably be closed down, one after the other, when judged unsuitable by a tutelary military.
In short Atatürk, the iconic figure who wrested the Turkish nation from imperial aggression, was hardly a paragon of tolerance and democracy. Why then did BILD feature him in this way? A clue may be found in an announcement made by Bruno Kahl, head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s spy agency, in the run-up to the referendum.
The BND, BILD and the Gülenists
Kahl announced that Erdoğan’s principal antagonist, the Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen was not behind the July 15, 2016 attempted coup in Turkey. The Gülenist organisation, according to him,‘…is a civil organisation that aims to provide religious and secular education’. This certainly contradicts Stuart Smith at the US Consulate in Istanbul who a decade before had compared this organisation to that of a mafia (as revealed in the Wikileaks cables), an assessment echoed independently in several books by journalists such as Ahmet Şık (in The Imam’s Army), Nedim Şener and Soner Yalçın and former police chief Hanefi Avcı (in The Simons Living on The Golden Horn). These writers would all be arrested on trumped up charges by prosecutors belonging to the Gülenist organisation: now exonerated, they have all recently been released.
Kahl at the BND made what amounted to an essentially supportive and conciliatory political statement regarding the Gülen organisation, nine months after the coup, and weeks before the upcoming April referendum, presumably to have some kind of effect on the referendum outcome. Why would Kahl come out of the shadows to say these things? We need to look at the role of the press and the link between BILD, the press in general and the BND in Germany. BILD is the tabloid representative of the German political right, owned by the Axel Springer Group. Udo Ulfkotte has documented how in the 2005 elections which brought the CDU/CSU to power with Merkel at the head, Gerhard Schröder, leader of the left of centre Social Democratic Party (SDP), complained bitterly of a media stitch up at the centre of which stood Axel Springer and BILD. In the late 1960s, Axel Springer had led the charge against the student movement. When student activist and leader Rudi Dutschke was gunned down in 1968, his followers and many in the community at large blamed BILD headlines for inciting the public to violence against him and other individuals in the student movement.
The entire stable of Axel Springer publications instructs its journalists to abide by an extraordinary ideological contractual code, which commits them to taking the fight to “religious extremism” (however defined by editorial edict), to defend America and “transatlanticism”, and to protect the State of Israel. There is no reference to ‘journalistic values’ in the code.
Udo Ulfkotte’s book Gekaufte Journalisten describes the pervasive influence on the German press of the BND, and its subservience to the CIA. As editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ), Ulfkotte’s description of the sheer extent of BND interference in what was, unlike the Alex Springer newspapers, an independently owned and edited newspaper is astonishing. The BND would rent rooms near the paper’s offices where their own staff would write the stories Ulfkotte admits he had to accept and publish wholesale. He goes into detail about the BND’s ‘… pervasive influence on literati, musicians, publishers or public broadcasters’, an account corroborated by many, including the retired head of German broadcaster ZDF, Wolfgang Herles.
The German government and the EU were clearly against Erdoğan’s constitutional amendments and had published legal opinions decrying them as a ‘dangerous step backwards for democracy’. But if Ulfkotte’s description of how the BND operates is correct, the overt campaign against the YES camp led by BILD, and which included ARD TV broadcasting in both German and Turkish during the referendum, was accompanied by a more covert one.
The April 16 Turkish referendum
European institutions waited in the wings to weigh into the fray in the aftermath of the referendum result in the event of a victory for Erdoğan and the YES camp. Within an hour of the result, which saw a 51.4% win for YES out of 49.7m votes cast (from a total electorate of 58.3m), the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) declared the campaign unfairly biased towards the YES camp. Various EU institutions made rapid fire announcements demanding transparency.
In Turkey, the CHP, whose leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had so far failed to use his party’s resources in an energetic campaign, sprang into action and now sought the referendum’s annulment. Kılıçdaroğlu based his demand on the Electoral Board (YSK)’s acceptance of “unstamped” ballot papers as valid. No soorner were the CHP’s complaints filed, than a stream of images about contraventions filled social media, chatter mushroomed and the YSK was charged with being in Erdoğan’s pocket. Newspapers globally carried claimsthat the ‘… supreme election board unexpectedly decided to accept ballots without the official seals’. The YSK, on the other hand, said that all ballot papers without exception carried the official watermark and the voter’s own mark. An additional stamp had been missing on a few occasions due to the failure of some officials to do their job. This, said the YSK head, could have been due to ‘… error, neglect or manipulation’. It had occurred in past elections when the CHP itself had advised overlooking the problem, since not accepting the ballots would unfairly penalise the voters in question.
As it was, the audit confirmed the correct total number of ballots counted originally supplied to the polling stations. The NGO ‘Vote and Beyond’, formed to improve transparency in Turkish elections after the Gezi Park protests, detected inconsistencies in a mere 0.22% of the total vote count, or 100,000 ballots (the difference between the YES and NO camps was close on 1.5m).
The indecent haste of EU institutions, whether the OSCE or the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), to discredit these democratic procedures without waiting for the YSK to make their statements, tells its own story. These are institutions who give unqualified support to Israel and the current Egyptian junta, and who according to, for example, Richard Youngs' assessment of the EU’s role in world politics, pursue policies which are ‘…increasingly illiberal… [using] the ostensible principles of multilateralism as a means of shoring up its own relative power in a more multipolar world… [and seeking] containment of, rather than forward-looking engagement with, political Islam’.
The Gülenists, ultranationalists, and the attack on the referendum
What role did the messages put out by Kahl and BILD play in all of this? Atatürk is a totemic figure in ultranationalist circles, and Gülenists, to whom they were appealing, are largely ultranationalist. They are, furthermore, deeply ensconced in Turkish coup history. Gülen backed the 1980 military coup by General Kenan Evren, and became a purveyor of Ataturkism at a time when the west was panicking about Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Much later Gülen would back yet another military coup, this time in 1997 against his supposedly close friend and ally, Islamic politician Necmettin Erbakan. With this background in coup-culture, Gülen joined Erdoğan in the AKP project in 2001, until they fell out when Erdoğan launched the “Kurdish Opening” in 2009, which sought to make inroads into Turkey’s Kurdish problem by legalising the use of the Kurdish language, launching Kurdish studies in schools and universities and allowing Kurdish media. The Kurdish Opening involved a reconciliation process with the Kurds which, as an ultranationalist, Gülen couldn’t stomach.
It involved trying to defuse the situation with the militant Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Gülen’s followers in the police wiretapped Hakkan Fidan, Erdogan’s MİT chief, while he met with PKK representatives in an Oslo hotel on five occasions between December 2009 and January 2010. They released the tapes to the press on the basis that the government was negotiating with a proscribed terrorist organisation, causing a furore in nationalist circles. Gülen later tried to have Fidan arrested on that charge while Erdoğan lay in hospital. Ever since, he and Erdoğan have been enemies, while Gülen’s followers in the police and judiciary are accused of laying ambush after ambush for the Turkish leader.
The Kurdish issue has always been at the centre of Turkish politics, exploited by factions in and out of country for different political ends. The April referendum was no different. In order to pass the legislation for the referendum campaign in parliament the AKP had no choice but to partner the Nationalist Party (MHP) with Devlet Bahçeli at its head, given the refusal by Kılıçdaroğlu and the CHP, and by the HDP, to countenance such a move. However, while Bahçeli delivered the necessary votes in parliament to pass the referendum law, his grassroots deserted him.
In fact, the NO campaign was more energised by a dissenting group of MHP members of parliament than a lacklustre CHP. Meral Akşener, Koray Aydın, Ümit Özdağ, Sinan Oğan and Yusuf Halaçoğlu had earlier tried to remove Bahçeli as leader but failed. Erdoğan is used to securing the Anatolian vote in its entirety, but Ankara went against him by 51.15%. Those bureaucratic heartlands, with their concentrations of MHP voters, were won over to the NO campaign partly by these dissident ultranationalists.
What saved the day for Erdoğan was the Kurdish vote. Out of 19 Kurdish-majority provinces 10 voted YES (Adiyaman, Bingöl, Bitlis, Elazig, Erzincan, Erzurum, Kars, Malatya, Muş, and Sanliurfa). Out of 5.5m people in those areas, 3m voted (54.5%) YES; the crucial development being, however, of a shift in votes which occurred in NO-voting areas like Hakkari, Şırnak, and eastern Ağrı (as well as YES areas like Muş) compared with the November 2015 AKP results. This handed over nearly 1m votes to bail out the YES camp. Within hours of the failure of the insurrection the dissident MHP MPs were appealing to Bahçeli to keep them on.
Judging the Venice Commission’s findings
The constitutional amendments passed on April 16 will come into effect in March 2019, when new presidential and parliamentary elections will be held, if and only if a whole raft of new supporting laws can be passed in the meantime. Erdoğan’s ability to effect legislative and constitutional change has been based on an unshakeable core support of about 32% of the Turkish population. The “black Turk” meme used in his speeches exploits the divisions in Turkish society left over from the Atatürk legacy. But if he didn’t ally himself with other sections of what is a “multi-polar” society by using the “big tent” approach for which he is renowned, he could never have achieved the majorities which have propelled him forward so far. It is the perception that PKK violence and Gülenist subversion is supported by foreign powers that gives Erdoğan not only his majority, but the backing of a post-Ataturkist (Kemalist) establishment. Clearly, the concern is: what now? Is the future trajectory different from the past? Close analysis of the constitutional changes point to the fact that although Erdoğan has indeed bought himself some extra time in power, nothing really changes. If an opposition with a credible programme forms the right alliances, there is as much if not more chance for it to replace Erdoğan (for instance in the March 2019 elections) as in the past.
The legal opinions issued by the Venice commission which decry the April 16 constitutional amendments present objections that are typical of formulaic EU institutions working through templates and directives. They focus especially on the ability of the presidency to issue executive orders, the concurrent nature of presidential and parliamentary elections, and the ability of the presidency to dissolve parliament. But as with all formalism, which cannot see the wood for the trees, it is not only myopic but wrong about what Turkey is trying to achieve. For instance, parliament can actually pass a law by a majority vote, which immediately replaces any executive order from the president. Moreover, the presidential impeachment processes put in place by the new constitution do have more teeth than its critics concede.
The Venice Commission fails to recognise that really nothing has changed in a system where the dissolution of parliament is not possible without the simultaneous resignation of the president and where a concurrent cycle elects presidents and MPs at the same time. All that has happened is that the “prime minister” has simply become “president”.
If there is no change there, significant changes however that will take place as laws are passed prior to March 2019 will shape the actual nature of the administrative structure, especially with regard to the intelligence services and the armed forces.
It is these last aspects of the new reforms which Erdoğan has long sought to bring into a centralised and reduced structure, in order to consolidate the “security state”, to use the terminology from Hans J.Morgenthau’s School of Political Realism, on which the country’s sovereignty is deemed to depend. Crucially, on this, likewise, depends the “democratic state” and all its institutions. If the US and Europe struggle in the modern age to keep the correct balance between these two aspects of the modern state, Middle Eastern states suffer not so much from an imbalance between them, as from a spectacularly overbearing “security state”.
However, if we have learned no more from the Arab Spring, we have at least learned that this unfortunate situation has been caused as much by the presence of the western security state in the region as by anything else. Independence from this particular interference is necessary for democracy to succeed in the region. This is essentially what Erdoğan's Turkey is trying to achieve. If Erdoğan and the AKP are seeking structures to minimise the kind of foreign interference in Turkish affairs witnessed in the events being related here, it is inevitable that Kurds will be granted federal status eventually, as Erdoğan undertook way back in 2005 when he said ‘the Kurdish problem is my problem’. Then the PKK will have to face not the Turkish state, but the Kurdish constituency itself, and the lever European powers have over Turkish politics will disappear.
If Erdoğan succeeds in putting the security state fully under civilian control in Turkey in a centralised fashion, the traditional competition between different deep state actors will end, together with their solicitation of different foreign backers to pursue colliding interests. The resulting stability will allow the democratic state inherent in the multi-polarity of Turkish society and culture to flourish.
Omar Kassem studied economics at the University of Cambridge and holds an MSc and a PhD from SOAS in the field of monetary economics. He has pursued a career in the City of London, Wall Street (CEO Moseley Securities) and the Middle East (CEO Egyptian Cotton Co.). He is currently an adviser and consultant to nascent political parties in Egypt and writes for US current affairs journals. He has spent five years researching and writing a book on the origins of modern mainstream economic theory, its impact on the modern world, and the use of instrumental rationality in social theories.
India under the Modi regime, faces a review of its human rights record by the UN Human Rights Council; the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group of the UN will examine India's human rights record for the third time on May 4; as of now, India is the second-most popular country for this UPR session – South Africa just barely beat it out with 113 countries listed to speak for that UPR. Brazil, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Philippines are all tied for third at 109.
Of the 112 countries, the first batch of questions that will be put are officially out and can be read here. India will have to respond to queries on its human rights record on religion-based discrimination, lawlessness when it comes to attacks on religious minorities stigmatisation of Dalits (a burning issue since the first review) and violence against them. The crushing of dissent and attacks on human rights defenders will be also a matter of concern. It will also be questioned on limits on free speech, limits on work of human rights defenders, attacks on religious minorities, reports of excessive use of force, including in Jammu & Kashmir, and use of AFSPA. Other issues on which it faces questions are combating violence against women, human trafficking, tackling harmful practices such as “honour killings“, early and forced marriages, violence against children and child labour.
India's second report had come in for heavy criticism by Human Rights Council troika comprising Latvia, the Philippines and South Africa that served as rapporteurs for India's review and stakeholders in the second review in 2012. At this week's session, India will spell out steps to implement the council's recommendations after the previous reviews which it committed to follow up, as well as highlight the many recent human rights developments in the country. While the 112 countries will be given 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes each, in an intense three-and half hour session, the Indian delegation led by attorney general Mukul Rohatgi will introduce the report prepared by the country and will have to answer questions from the member nations, civil society and the troika. India’s official report can be read here.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), created under the Paris Principles of the United Nations is also supposed to submit an independent assessment and report. This report can be read here.
The Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR), Advocates for Human Rights and Indian American Muslim Council among many organisations have submitted extensive reports and fac sheets on different aspects of the human rights situation. The live web cast of the session on May 4 can be viewed here.
The list of questions this time is longer than 2012. India will also be grilled on how it combats extreme poverty, inequalities in access to health services, high levels of neonatal mortality , stunting, malnutrition, underweight children and attendance of girls in schools. The factsheets prepared by the WGHR may be read here.
The Facsheets prepared by the WGHR are on the following subjects:
ADVANCE QUESTIONS TO INDIA (FIRST BATCH) UPR Process 2017
112 Countries will Pose Questions to India, the World's Largest Democracy
ADVANCE QUESTIONS TO INDIA (FIRST BATCH)
SLOVENIA
Please provide information on envisaged or implemented monitoring mechanisms that oversee the implementation of laws dealing with sexual violence against women and children.
We welcome India's efforts to combat human trafficking, especially its commitment to better protect children and the implementation of training programmes for law enforcement officials and judges. Please provide further information on bilateral cooperation for prevention of human trafficking between countries, in particular the results thereof.
SWEDEN
What measures are being taken by the Government of India to ratify the ILO Conventions no. 138 and 182 concerning child labour?
Same-sex sexual relations are prohibited by the Indian Penal Code. Civil society organizations have reported discrimination of LGBT persons. What measures is the Government of India taking to ensure full equality before the law of all individuals regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity?
Safeguarding a woman’s right to exercise informed consent in making reproductive health decisions is fundamental to protecting her sexual and reproductive health and rights. Women have the right to access safe, effective, affordable and acceptable contraceptive methods of their choice. Echoing the requests made by several U.N. special procedures in their 2015 communication to India, what steps is the Government of India taking to prevent coercive, unsafe, and abusive sterilization and create greater accountability for these practices, including to ensure free and full consent prior to conducting the procedure and compliance with international and national standards?
SWITZERLAND
How does the Government of India ensure that anyone who faces the death penalty has access to a legal counsel of the defendant's choice during the entire trial?
While the process to ratify the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is under way, has the Government of India already implemented measures in order to adapt its national legislation accordingly?
The Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. What steps are being taken by the Government of India to hold accountable public and police officials found complicit in shielding criminals involved in intimidating and unleashing violence against minorities and those who advocate religious hatred?
Will the Government of India be willing to repeal its reservations regarding articles 5 (a) and 16 (1) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? If not, how does the Government of India ensure that these reservations do not impede the effective economic empowerment of women?
Indian Courts recognize the right to water and to sanitation as legally enforceable human rights. What steps are being taken by the Government of India to implement them at the national level?
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND
What steps is the government of India taking to improve prison conditions in order to ensure the rights and dignity of all those deprived of their liberty?
What other steps could the government of India take to promote and protect the rights of persons belonging to minority groups, as enshrined in India’s constitution?
What steps is the government of India taking to ensure swift adoption of the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill?
The second round of the French presidential election is not about voting for the lesser of two evils. It’s about bringing progressives together to vote against evil itself.
It is perhaps the single-most important failure of progressives across Europe since the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis and Brussels’ blundering crush of the Athens Spring in 2015 – an utter inability to come together and present a solid front, and a sensible, non-sectarian agenda, against the xenophobic and toxic nationalistic forces tearing apart the European Union.
While the urgency to once and for all overcome such a failure to unite should have become painfully obvious after the Brexit and Trump experiences of 2016, the latest wakeup call to European progressives after the first round of the French presidential election may also go ignored along with another missed opportunity for progressives to come together.
Regardless, we must try.
When Emmanuel Macron made it to the second round of the French presidential election last month, banning Marine Le Pen from occupying the Élysée Palace for the present time, the EU breathed a sigh of relief with our European representatives and various heads of state echoing their euphoria. The threat to the Union had, once more, been averted. But sadly this is as myopic as Brussels can be.
Macron may very well prevent the Front National’s rise to power next Sunday, but by what margin and for how long? The epic demise of Macron’s former Socialist Party has left its electorate fractured among him, Benoît Hamon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, so the young former Minister of Economy and maverick investment banker is doomed to endure an extremely weak presidency after the legislative race in June. This is particularly dangerous if there is no clear alternative in sight.
Despite his fourth-place finish, Mélenchon was the clear winner on the left political spectrum, and yet he lost a golden opportunity to galvanise his supporters, particularly the disenfranchised youth, and help defeat Le Pen’s hopes for victory. It is incomprehensible how the France Insoumise candidate failed to send a strong message to the same demographics he shares with the fascist leader regarding the side of history on which young French voters should position themselves.
Equally incomprehensible is the attitude of Podemos, Mélenchon’s ‘comrades’ south of the Pyrenees, with some of its leadership going so far as to make calls for abstaining from next Sunday’s vote. Petty party-politics, dogmatism and tactical manoeuvring is not something European democrats can afford at this moment in time.
Looking the other way is not an option. Washing our hands, promoting an empty ballot and delivering ambivalent rhetoric against a clear enemy of fundamental human rights is tantamount to becoming an accomplice to the return to the post-modern 1930s DiEM25 has been warning about since its launch a little over a year ago.
There is still time to see off this evil in our midst, and then a second step immediately becomes equally imperative: organising and campaigning in favour of a broad alliance of progressive internationalists in the June legislative elections.
The day after the election is when we must all regroup and, once and for all, come together to combat those policies which are eroding our Union and turning our young over to the likes of Le Pen, Orbán and Wilders. Thus, on May 8, we must assume our responsibility to unite in the broadest possible alliance and form a sensible political opposition to such policies not only at the Assemblée Nationale, but also in parliaments and municipalities across the EU. It is our time to step up, so that a progressive agenda for Europe can be turned into policy and the EU into a true common space for humanism, prosperity and solidarity.
If Europe continues to disintegrate and those who want to destroy it manage to dictate our politics, and even the discourse of the emerging progressive forces, history will judge us all again. Severely. French progressives do not have to choose between the lesser of two evils on May 7. For French democrats and progressives, next Sunday’s rendezvous at the ballot has a clear two-fold purpose: to vote against evil itself and to come together.
Luis Martín is a political scientist and journalist. He writes about International Relations, Economics and the Eurozone. He is currently Communications Coordinator of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025
Can the practice of unilateral divorce among some Muslims be confronted without looking at societal norms that make women stay in abusive marriages?
Photos: Courtesy Scroll.
On May 11, more than a year after Shayara Bano sought a ban on the Muslim practice of triple talaq, drawing national and political attention to the issue, the Supreme Court bench will finally begin hearing petitions arguing for and against this form of instantaneous, unilateral divorce that can be pronounced only by men.
The movement against triple talaq was started by Muslim women’s organisations and women who felt wronged by the practice. But during the course of the year, politicians, clerics and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, an NGO that claims to represent the community, have vociferously taken over the debate, in the name of protecting oppressed Muslim women.
But how are individual Muslim women – those who have received triple talaq – engaging with this high-pitched debate? Opponents of triple talaq tend to club all Muslim women as victims trapped by the patriarchy of Muslim personal laws. Defenders of triple talaq emphasise their Muslim identities while declaring, for instance, that 2.7 crore Muslim women do not want changes to Sharia law.
But is it fair to categorise all Muslim women as a homogenous entity? Scroll.in spoke to three women in Mumbai who had been affected by triple talaq and found that their perspectives on the divorce mechanism are varied, complex and often problematic.
All three women had arranged marriages and subsequently experienced extreme forms of domestic violence, but none of them sought divorce themselves. Their stories, in fact, are no different from those of many other domestic violence survivors in India and raise a crucial question: should one look at triple talaq without simultaneously confronting the deeper-rooted problems of gender-based violence and the societal attitudes that make women stay in abusive marriages?
‘Who made the Personal Law Board anyway?’
On the night of her wedding in September 2014, Gausiya Ahmed’s in-laws snatched away her mehr, the money paid to a Muslim bride by the groom. The dowry harassment began soon after, and on multiple occasions, Gausiya was almost beaten to death. Even though she was a Unani doctor, she was not allowed to work. She got pregnant, but the violence still didn’t stop.
“Throughout the pregnancy, they kept telling me that they would accept only a boy child,” said Gausiya, a petite 28-year-old from Bhiwandi, a town North of Mumbai. In August 2015, when Gausiya’s daughter was born, her husband stormed out of the hospital and never showed up again. Two months later, she received a divorce notice. “A lawyer came with a written notice saying ‘talaq’ three times, but I don’t accept this divorce,” she said. “It wasn’t even oral talaq, and anyway, how can he just wash his hands off his wife and child in one shot?”
Gausiya Ahmed on her wedding day.
Gausiya consulted several priests and mullas, who gave conflicting opinions on whether her divorce was valid. Outraged, Gausiya approached the police. “But when the police tried to tell my husband that triple talaq is invalid, his family brought Sharia books to defend themselves,” she said. It took two weeks of persistence for the police to finally file domestic violence and dowry harassment complaints. Her cases are still pending 18 months later.
Meanwhile, her husband has also filed for a civil divorce at the Family Court. “This is absurd because we never had a civil marriage to begin with, but it shows that even he is not convinced that the triple talaq he gave me is valid,” said Gausiya.
It is this confusion within the Muslim community that has convinced Gausiya about the need to ban triple talaq. “The Sharia is being misused and if mullas themselves disagree about its interpretations, then we women need to be under Indian law, not Sharia law,” she said.
The litigation against triple talaq has brought out the firebrand in Gausiya and she now declares that she does not accept the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. “Half the Muslim population does not accept the Board anymore,” she said. “Who made them the Board anyway? They just incite people and they don’t want women to get religious education, because if women knew all of this, they would never marry.”
All Gausiya wants, she said, are her basic rights as a wife and mother. If her divorce is deemed valid, she wants her husband to pay her a sufficient maintenance. If the Supreme Court strikes down triple talaq, she wants him to give Gausiya and her daughter a roof over their heads. “I know it is risky, but I don’t even mind living with him again,” she said.
For now, Gausiya is financially dependent on her younger sister, an engineer. And none of her three sisters plan to get married till the Supreme Court is out with its final verdict on triple talaq. “After my experience, they don’t trust Muslim men anymore, so they are waiting for some legal safeguards,” said Gausiya, seething with anger once again. “All those Muslim women who support the Personal Law Board’s stand on triple talaq – are they going to step out and give me a roof over my head?”
‘I don’t want a divorce – I still love him’
In the 20 years since her wedding, Zeenat Sheikh has lost count of the number of times she almost committed suicide. Each time, the thought of her two daughters held her back, but Zeenat squarely blames her husband for fragile mental condition.
In 1997, at the age of 19, Zeenat had an arranged marriage with a businessman and moved to Mumbai from her hometown in Kerala. Her husband imposed endless restrictions on her – she was not allowed to step out of the house or keep the windows open and received a beating if she ever argued – but it took years of physical and emotional trauma for Zeenat to realise that things were terribly wrong with her marriage.
Zeenat Sheikh at her home in Mumbai. Photo: Aarefa Johari
“In the last six years, his violence grew particularly bad,” said Zeenat, now 40. “Then in 2014, he suddenly said, main tujhe talaq doonga – talaq, talaq, talaq.” I will divorce you, he had said. A distraught Zeenat rushed to a maulvi and was relieved to know she had been saved by grammar: the priest assured her that the talaq was invalid, since her husband had used the future tense.
After this episode, however, Zeenat’s condition worsened. “He now began to beat me like I wasn’t even human,” she said. In November 2016, after a particularly violent episode, Zeenat wrote a suicide note for her family and left the house. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill myself, and instead spent three days on the streets or inside dargahs,” she said. “When they found me, the police tried to explain to me that this was my fault, that I should bear what happens at home. They told me to call the 103 helpline only if it happens again.”
Zeenat now found herself back home at the mercy of her husband. In December 2016, as he threw her to the ground and rained kicks on her, he carefully uttered triple talaq using the present tense. Three days later, he reaffirmed the oral divorce through a written talaqnama, which he sent to Zeenat on WhatsApp.
Enraged, Zeenat decided she had finally had enough. She yelled at the maulvi for writing the talaqnama without asking for her side of the story, went back to the police, secured an order restraining her husband from entering their house and is now doggedly pursuing a domestic violence case against him. It is the triple talaq, however, that worries Zeenat the most. At least two other maulvis – including one from the local office of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board – have assured her that her divorce is invalid, and she is praying for the Supreme Court to ban the practice.
Zeenat is clear that she doesn’t want a divorce, and lists three reasons for it. “First reason is that I love him,” she said. “My daughters don’t understand it, but I was married at 19 and have only lived with him. Besides, he cannot just pay me a little money and expect his responsibility to be over.” The third reason, Zeenat said, is society. “I don’t want people to point fingers at my girls and say that their mother got divorced after 20 years of marriage. It is a taboo.”
Despite this, Zeenat’s recent experience fighting the domestic violence case has made her see a downside to a ban on triple talaq. “I have met a Hindu woman who has been trying to get a divorce in court for years and she is actually envious of how quick our triple talaq is,” said Zeenat. “So maybe what we need is not an end to triple talaq, but some strong law that will make husbands scared of divorcing their wives.”
Zeenat Shaikh's talaqnama, sent to her by courrier.
‘Believe in Sharia more than any court’
Like many wives in abusive marriages, Sabina Khan put up with her husband’s violence for two reasons: she had been taught from childhood that such conflicts were normal between married couples, and she believed that one day, he would change for the better.
A 25-year-old tuition teacher from Dharavi, Mumbai, Sabina had an arranged marriage in 2011 and a daughter two years later. In the first four years of their marriage, Sabina grew increasingly wary of the regular beatings and frequent divorce threats. “He never worked, never looked after our daughter and wanted sex all the time,” said Sabina. “I would tell him I am not a machine, but he often forced himself on me.”
Two years ago, during a bitter fight, her husband uttered talaq three times. When Sabina’s father confronted him, he “begged for forgiveness and claimed he had said it by mistake”. But Sabina’s family believes in the validity of triple talaq and refused to accept his sudden remorse. After that, her husband left the city after that and has not showed up since.
“But his family now claims that I am lying, that he never gave me an oral divorce and that they will not let me marry again,” said Sabina, who tried to file a police complaint against her missing husband in October 2016, but claims she received no support from the police.
Sabina has visited several muftis who have assured her of the validity of the oral talaq. But the ongoing Supreme Court case makes her nervous: if triple talaq is outlawed, she says, she would be bound to her husband again. “I believe in Islam and what the Sharia says is more important to me than what any court says,” said Sabina. “But now all I want is written proof of my divorce through a talaqnama, so that I am free to move on.”
The female Jamaat activists were holding a clandestine meting on Sunday night
Police have detained 37 activists of Jamaat-e-Islami’s women wing, including its Narail unit chief, with a huge stockpile of Jihadi books from the town’s Bhouakhali area.
Narail Police Superintendent Rakibul Islam said they had been tipped off about a clandestine meeting of the female Jamaat members at the residence of the party’s district unit chief Ashak-e-Elahi on Sunday night.
He said they had found a large number of Jihadi books and donation receipts at the house.
“We detained 37 female activists, including their district unit leader Hosne Ara,” the SP added.
It is a matter of profound shame to admit that Indian governments of every shade and description have had a long history of collaboration with tyrants in Muslim majority countries.
PM Modi with Turkish President Ergodan
Everyone else’s father is in prison in Istanbul,
they want to hang everyone else’s son
in the middle of the road, in broad daylight
People there are willing to risk the gallows
so that everyone else’s son won’t be hanged
so that everyone else’s father won’t die
and bring home a loaf of bread and a kite.
People, good people,
Call out from the four corners of the world,
say stop it,
Don’t let the executioner tighten the rope
[ Nazim Hikmet, 1954 ]
Its best to stay as far away as possible when two m***a dons meet to talk business. Especially when their deep state security detail has a disturbing tendency to shoot first and ask questions after. Today, Delhi’s roads are emptier than usual, even on a Sunday. And I am reading Nazim Hikmet, because a thug is coming to town.
The Turkish president Recap Tayyip Erdogan’s motorcade will soon be speeding from Palam Airport. He is on his way to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi right now. They have a busy two days ahead, so many meetings, so many handshakes. Perhaps, later today or tomorrow, to save time, they could resort to the latest bit of political technology that they are both known to be found of – the hologram, to engineer at least one or two successfully ecstatic public appearances. Imagine two giant holograms – Modi and Erdogan, illuminating the growing darkness of a New Delhi night, hand in hand. What a sight that would be for sore neo-fascist Hindi-Turki eyes.
Today, in Turkey and in India, the head hangs low, the mind is running scared.
But seriously, the agenda is full. Back-to-back, man-to-man meetings – there’s so much to talk about, so many notes to compare. How to strike a deal about what needs to happen so that India can brown nose the Nuclear Suppliers Group (where Turkey packs a heavy punch). The minor matter of how to deal with pesky little Cyprus (which Modi just did, last week, by telling the visiting Cypriot president that Erdogan was next in queue, so Cyprus had better hurry up and go).
How to win elections and run a declared-undeclared emergency at the same time. How to have the media fight over who gets the choicest crumb thrown from the high table while they salivate for more. How to have cronies rake in the loot on an unprecedented scale and still pretend to be a saint running a corruption free government. Then there is the usual question of how to kill more Kurds, sorry Kashmiris (same difference). Not to forget – how to arrest students, professors and shut down universities. Busy, busy, busy. Like the bromance of two real men at the helms of state ought to be.
And Modi gets a bonus, a real Turkish delight, a halva to remember. He gets a photo op with Erdogan,and voila – some pliant minoritarian ‘opinion makers’ (also known as men with Muslim names available for rent to the highest bidder) agree to forget the Gau Rakshaks, ignore Love Jihad paranoia and the genocide fantasist Yogi-Chief Minister. You can almost hear them say “Agar Modi-Erdogan Ho Bhai-Bhai toh Hindu Rashtra Bhi Why Not Try”. (If Modi and Erdogan Can be Brothers, why Not Accept a Hindu State’. Nice. Or as they would say in Turkish – Mükemmel.
A few hired Maulanas, a few ‘community leaders’ and a tame vice-chancellor in attendance, in their best ironed sherwanis and gleaming polyester suits, bent and smiling that eager but absent-mindedly fake smile that terrified subjects offer to bored, violent and venal sultans.
In exchange, Erdogan gets a shiny Re-Designed for Dictators Doctor of Letters Degree over tea and kababs (broiler chicken, not beef) at Jamia Millia Islamia. With a few hired Maulanas, a few ‘community leaders’ and a tame vice-chancellor in attendance, in their best ironed sherwanis and gleaming polyester suits, bent and smiling that eager but absent-mindedly fake smile that terrified subjects offer to bored, violent and venal sultans.
As for honorary degrees, what’s the big deal? Jamia Millia Islamia gave it to Ban ki Moon, to the Dalai Lama, and what was that pesky economist – Amartya whatsisname Sen. That was a mistake, bad mistake. But listen, they did give it to the useful Saudi Superslime, who’s par-dada log were mere vassals of the Ottoman Empire. So why not Erdogan, the Neo-Ottoman Caliph in Waiting. Why not indeed? It feels nice to bask for a moment in the fleeting light of the comet-tail of a passing tyrant when you have no dignity left to call your own.
At the last count, 1,00,155 people have been detained; 2,099 educational institutions (including several universities) across Turkey have been shut down; 7,317 academics have lost their jobs, and 2,824 student activists are in prison.
Making nice with Erdogan Aqa is another way of staying in the good books of Modiji and Yogiji. Who knows which minor governorship might come one’s way? There are always advantages to accommodation, just like some ‘community leaders’ of Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe thought, while managing their communities’ transport arrangements with the likes of Hitlerji and Himmlerji. Remember, this was done in exchange for a slight postponement of the dates of their particular appointments with the Zyklon B technicians. One must always learn from history.
The last time a Turkish head of government came visiting India, in 2000, he was also conferred with an honorary doctorate – and this was Bülent Ecevit, who was felicitated with a doctor of letters (Honoris Causa) degree, no, not by Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, but by Vishwa Bharati University, Shantiniketan.
Bülent Ecevit
Ecevit, like many politicians of his time, was a complex character, combining a hardline Turkish secular nationalism (which prompted him to issue orders for an armed invasion of Cyprus) with a commitment to an open, democratic and broadly centre-left consensus, that was opposed to the deep structures of militarist power in the Turkish state, an enlightened, secular cultural and educational policy, and a sincere appreciation of basic civic rights. One can at least look back at his legacy with a certain degree of ambivalence. But there cannot have been any doubts about his having deserved an honor from the university founded by Rabindranath Tagore.
An early edition of Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, Translated by Bulent Ecevit
It is a little known and little appreciated fact that Bülent Ecevit, apart from being a hard-nosed survivor and wily left of centre Turkish politician, was also a fluent Bangla speaker, Sanskrit scholar and translator of Rabindranath Tagore.
Ecevit and Erdogan are a study in contrasts. Ecevit was a contradiction, an ivory tower intellectual who had the guts to take on the Turkish military at the height of the cold war, a ruthless Turkish chauvinist who could also be an open minded liberal, a deeply learned man of culture who was also a savvy backroom politician, as well as a bit of a demagogue.
Erdogan, on the other hand, is a street thug and a smart operator who made it to the big time courting the tails of shady imams. Many Turkish men and women of a certain generation can suddenly pull line after line from Tagore in chaste Turkish, especially after a few rounds of Raki, because they say that during the years of the military coup in Turkey, Tagore helped them think about a time when their country could once again awaken to a state ‘where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high’.
Incidentally, there was a period in the 1970s in Turkey, when Turkish translations of the writings of Tagore (and interestingly Charu Mazumdar !) were banned, together with translations of the Upanishads and the Gita – because these books were often found in the hostel rooms of leftist students. Turks owe their Tagore to Ecevit. To Erdogan, they owe mainly an epidemic of shiny shopping malls.
Today, in Turkey and in India, the head hangs low, the mind is running scared.
Both Erdogan and Modi are authoritarian, dictatorial leaders buoyed by electoral victories achieved through masterly media manipulation and messaging, both invoke religion and majoritarian anxieties cynically, both deploy fantasies of global great power status to excite large populations of insecure men who are kept busy as armies of trolls and vigilantes, and both nurture a deep, pathological hatred of intellectual dissent and openness.
Erdogan and Modi are both leading civilian regimes which despite having elected parliamentary majorities behind them are intent on behaving like insecure military dictatorships. Both have a growing and ugly cult of personality, and both seem particularly irritated by the idea that universities should be places where anyone should learn anything other than how to chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Hai’ or “Huzur, Güvenlik, İstikrar” (Peace, Security, Stability) in classrooms about as empty as the minds of the two dear leaders themselves.
Ever since the brutal repression of the peaceful Gezi Park citizens protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in 2013 (to resist the demolition of a popular park to make way for a mosque and mall complex in which members of Erdogan’s inner circle in the AK Party have commercial interests – through ties to the controversial construction company Kaylon – but which rapidly turned into a wide ranging general protest against the Erdogan regime) and a few high profile investigations threatened to reveal the mountain of corruption carefully nurtured by Erdogan’s son and his cronies, (including cabinet ministers) the AKP regime has taken a decisive turn towards authoritarianism.
The convenient spectacle of a Turkish Islamism and Ottoman revivalism (exactly like its twin – Hindutva and Great Indian Nationalism) has been deployed by Erdogan’s government to roll back freedom in public spaces, to attack the rights of women (for instance to free and safe abortion) and sexual minorities and to turn a vibrant, open, deeply secular society into one riven by paranoia, patriarchal grandstanding and cultural censorship.
Artists, writers and musicians have been attacked, the state has deliberately insulted, targeted and provoked religious minorities such as the Shia Alevi, workers and working class activists have been assaulted, state terror against the Kurdish minorities unleashed, and despite overt statements to the contrary, the Erdogan regime has flirted with the ISIS in Syria and Iraq, especially to provide safe passage to ISIS fighters engaged in combat with the militantly secular, feminist and anti-state partisans of the Kurdish dominated YPG guerrilla forces in northern Syria, who are locked in a triangular battle against the Syrian state and its Iranian mentors, the ISIS rebels and the US and Saudi backed Al Nusra front.
The latest wave of repression in Turkey, following a shadowy coup attempt apparently involving Gulenist elements (Fethullah Gulen is a US based soft-Islamist cult leader and sometime ally of Erdogan who has fallen out with him of late) had led to a total crisis, especially in the universities and intellectual and cultural life in Turkey. The repression is reaching unimaginable proportions. Just for example, as of today, you would not be able to follow some of the links in the this post, which lead to Wikipedia pages on the Gezi Park protests, or to the 2013 corruption scandals, because today, the Erdogan regime decided to ban access to Wikipedia in Turkey.
To try and stem the crisis of legitimacy of his regime, Erdogan recently called for a plebiscite to affirm constitutional changes to expand and consolidate his power. It is widely acknowledged that the plebiscite, which took place under repressive conditions and a gagged media, and widespread, well substantiated allegations of electoral fraud, is deeply flawed. For whatever its worth, it is true that Erdogan won the plebiscite, Trump style, by a very narrow margin, while completely losing the confidence of every major Turkish city. The comparisons of this victory with Ahmedinijad’s stolen election in Iran of 2009 are by no means unwarranted.
The Erdogan–Modi chemistry is transparent (Marine Le Pen, the far right French leader revealed an interesting truth when she said that she believes that the world has changed, that it is now a Trump-Modi-Putin world. She forgot to include Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban in this axis, but she might as well have had). Both Erdogan and Modi are authoritarian, dictatorial leaders buoyed by electoral victories achieved through masterly media manipulation and messaging, both invoke religion and majoritarian anxieties cynically, both deploy fantasies of global great power status to excite large populations of insecure men who are kept busy as armies of trolls and vigilantes, and both nurture a deep, pathological hatred of intellectual dissent and openness.
At the last count, 1,00,155 people have been detained; 2,099 educational institutions (including several universities) across Turkey have been shut down; 7,317 academics have lost their jobs, and 2,824 student activists are in prison. Academicians for Peace, a group of more than one thousand Professors who signed an open letter condemning human rights violations in Turkish Kurdistan were charged with treason and are now being prosecuted. Professors expelled from universities are now well attended taking classes in open public spaces.
One has only to read a minor detail in this litany of horrors to understand what exactly is happening in Turkey under Erdogan. Here is an extract from a report of April 3, 2017 (exactly twenty seven days ago) of the English language site of Hurriyet, a mainstream Turkish newspaper.
CHP deputy Özel said the number of arrested and convicted students was “terrifying.” (CHP is a moderate centre left opposition party)
“It is above our estimations. Even the students unfurling banners about free education are charged with [crimes related to] the armed terrorist organizations. The prosecutors trying to create criminals seemed to have achieved that,” Özel said.
Galatasaray University student Cihan Kırmızıgül was arrested for wearing a “poshu” scarf in Kağıthane in Feb. 2010 and was kept under arrest for 25 months. “Since the piece of cloth called poshu was used for the intention of a crime, it is decided on his confiscation according to the Article No: 54 of the Turkish Penal Code,” the court’s verdict for Kırmızıgül read.
If we think that Modi is rapidly pushing India into a space where educational institutions and universities become empty ghosts of their former selves, we have no idea of implications of the scale of repression that Erdogan has unleashed in Turkey. Our worst nightmare would be to have India emulate Turkey, Modi learn how to fine tune repression from Erdogan.
Screenshot from the Scholars at Risk Webpage
[For more information on the educational emergency on Turkish campuses please see the section on Turkey in the ‘Scholars at Risk’ website.]
That this should happen is not surprising in itself, and frankly I do not care how many times Modi kisses Erdogan’s Ottoman, but it comes as a terrible surprise and shock to learn that Jamia Millia Islamia, the university where I studied, which gave me and my batch mates at the Mass Communication Research Centre (AJ Kidwai-MCRC, as it is known today) a precious gift of time to learn how to think critically, should now honour this monster.
The Jamia that I was in had stalwarts like Prof. Anwar Jamal Kidwai, and Prof. Habib ur Rahman Kidwai, who were proud of the university’s traditions of openness and liberality, and determined to inculcate a critical attitude in their students.
The Jamia that I was in had stalwarts like Prof. Anwar Jamal Kidwai, and Prof. Habib ur Rahman Kidwai, who were proud of the university’s traditions of openness and liberality, and determined to inculcate a critical attitude in their students. I cannot imagine someone of the stature of AJ Kidwai bending his ram-rod straight spine to genuflect to a third rate fraud like Erdogan, or even Modi.
Today, the Jamia administration’s actions reflect a tragic transformation, the alteration of the university’s character into a pathetic, provincial, narrow minded shadow of its former institutional self, ever eager to conform to every diktat of an authoritarian regime, always willing to police and restrain its students, and shorn of the dignity that it once had as a proud and independent institution.
It is for this reason that a petition was initiated yesterday on Change.org to campaign amongst students, faculty, alumni of Jamia Millia Islamia to express their strongest possible condemnation of the university authorities’ shameful decision to act as a tool of the Modi regime in the course of its appeasement of Erdogan. I urge as many people as possible to sign this petition.
I am aware that some friends who have shared the petition, especially young women student activists, have received pathetic, misogynist and obscene hate messages, from people who claim that Erdogan makes them feel proud to be Muslim. This only shows, yet again, that there is a perfect convergence in the interests and operational styles of Hindutva and Islamist goons. They are everywhere, the identical enemies of freedom. The same macho morons.
Nothing can be further from the truth. I know this, because I started the petition, and the charge that someone like me has something to do with Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, his version of Islamism Lite (erstwhile supporters of Erdogan before things turned sour, as already noted) is about as high in terms of probability as the suspicion that I am connected to the charlatan called Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his *art of Living (who also may in time become erstwhile supporters of Narendra Modi. It is politics, after all, things change.)
It is a matter of profound shame to admit that Indian governments of every shade and description have had a long history of collaboration with tyrants in Muslim majority countries. It does not matter at all who the powers of the moment at either end are. In the midst of the relentless Pakistan phobia that is drummed up constantly in our media, we forget that India consistently kowtows to tyrannies every where else in the Islamicate world.
We, the citizens of this unfortunate republic, owe it to our friends and comrades, in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria, Indonesia and indeed, everywhere else in the ‘Muslim’ world, to stand by them in their times of trouble. We have long historic ties with these societies, which we cannot allow be torn down by the actions of all our tyrants, secular or sectarian.
We need urgently to listen to the great Turkish communist poet, Nazim Hikmet to speak out from “our corner of the world and say stop” when the executioner, also known as Erdogan proceeds to “tighten his rope“. Let us say, in Jamia Millia Islamia, in every university in India, that we do not want “everyone else’s father in prison in Istanbul, everyone else’s son hanged, in the middle of the road, in broad daylight’.
This much, at least, we owe our friends in Turkey, and to ourselves, and to our linked futures.
