On Friday November 7, 2025, a Bollywood movie, Haq is scheduled to be released. This is a biopic on Shah Bano (1916-1992) Meanwhile, Siddiqa, daughter of Shah Bano has served the film-maker with a legal notice alleging him to have misrepresented the deceased lady who led an embattled life possibly since 1946, or earlier, when her husband, Mohd Ahmad Khan, a rich advocate in Indore (Madhya Pradesh, India), married Halima Bano.
Note: Meanwhile, Shah Bano’s daughter has approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Tuesday (November 4) claiming that the movie ‘Haq’ starring Yami Gautam Dhar and Emraan Hashmi affects the personality rights of her mother, depicts her image in a derogatory manner and must not be released. After hearing all the parties–including the producers and the Censor board, Justice Pranay Verma reserved his verdict in the matter.
In the 1970s, Shah Bano filed a suit for maintenance from her husband. As the court proceedings ensued, just to unburden himself from paying maintenance to his separated wife, Shah Bano, he (Mr Khan) divorced Shah Bano (reportedly inside the Court itself), and argued that un-Quranic Instant Triple Talaq (ITT) didn’t provide for maintenance. The litigation reached up to the Supreme Court which ruled in favour of Shah Bano, in April 1985. This created a huge furore. Muslims and the Urdu press initially welcomed it (according to Nawaz B Mody’s essay). By August 1985, the Muslim conservatives began to massively agitate asking for upturning it through legislation. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, was persuaded/misled to oblige the Muslim conservatives. Ever since then, the Ayodhya-Babri Masjid dispute took a new, sharper turn, giving an excuse to Hindutva supremacists to influence wider Indian society and the polity.
Five years ago I wrote:
….In the 1980s, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB)—guided forces among Muslims made their own contributions of fodder to rising majoritarianism. On January 15, 1986, in a session of the Momin Conference at the Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi announced his intention to amend the law to nullify the Supreme Court’s April 1985 verdict in favour of Shah Bano. A bill was introduced in March and it became the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in May 1986. In January 1986, there were strident Muslim protests against the progressive verdict, which had granted Shah Bano, a Muslim woman, alimony after her divorce.
The approach of the conservative Muslims became pretty clear from the Urdu memoir, Karwan-e-Zindagi, published in 1988 by Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Miyan Nadvi (1914-1999). In Volume 3, Chapter 4, Page 134, Nadvi clearly narrates that it is he who had persuaded Gandhi not to accept the proposition that many Islamic countries have already reformed their personal laws. Nadvi’s narration is triumphant; he rejoices in the successful accomplishment of his effort to stymie a similar reform in India. He says his persuasion had a particular psychological impact on Gandhi and that his “arrow precisely hit the target— woh teer apney nishaaney par baitha”.
On page 157 comes Nadvi’s candid “confession”: “Our mobilisation for protecting the Shariat in 1986 resulted into complicating the issue of Babri Masjid and vitiated the atmosphere in a big way— is ne fiza mein ishte’aal wa izteraab paida karney mein bahut bara hissa liya,” he writes.
For further substantiation, one must read Nadvi’s memoir in Nicholas Nugent’s book, Rajiv Gandhi: Son of a Dynasty, published by BBC Books, in 1990. On page 187 Nugent writes:
“…a decision had been taken by the Congress High Command in the early 1986 to ‘play the Hindu card’ in the same way that the Muslim Women’s bill had been an attempt to ‘play the Muslim card’… Ayodhya was supposed to be a package deal… a tit for tat for the Muslim women’s bill… Rajiv played a key role in carrying out the Hindu side of the package deal by such actions as arranging that picture of Hindus worshipping at the newly unlocked shrine be shown on television.”
The lock was opened within an hour of the judgment being delivered by the district court of Faizabad on 1 February 1986. As said earlier, the deal between the Prime Minister, the Muslim clergy and the Momin Conference’s Ziaur Rahman Ansari (who died in 1992) had already been struck in January 1986. There is a reference to this in his biography, Wings of Destiny, 2018, written by his son Fasihur Rahman. Yet, a nagging question remains: who wanted to open the locks, and why? After all, the elections were four long years away and so Gandhi did not have a direct electoral stake in the event…”
This biographical timeline of Shah Bano therefore attempts at capturing the journey of the India(n) republic veering around the issue of Muslim resistance to reforms in Personal (Gender) laws and surge in Hindu majoritarian influence. This timeline also provides a significant reading list, by many including some of the dramatis personae in this saga. Many of these facts pertaining to the issue remain largely unknown even to informed readers. They provide an informed reading.
1916: Shah Bano Begum was born; [the year when Congress-Muslim League & Moderate-Extremist Pact took place at Lucknow].
1932: Shah Bano marries Indore-based advocate Md Ahmad Khan (1913-2006), her cousin. [The year Gandhi-Ambedkar Poona Pact happened].
1937 to 1939: The Shariat Application Act was enacted. Jinnah, the pork-eating non-practicing Muslim, was the pilot of the legislation. The roles of Maulana Azad, Maulana Madani, etc., in this legislative pursuit not known, so far. A daughter (of the Punjab’s Khizr & Sikandar Hayat Khan family) asks for inheritance in landed property, as per Shariat. [Tiwana-Jinnah] deny this right, invoking cunning arguments, such as, (i) Customary laws deny daughter’s share in land, and (ii) that land & agriculture was a state Subject whereas the Shariat Act was a Central law! Thus, Muslim women are made to suffer from the Shariat Act on two fronts: the marriage-divorce issue as well as the inheritance rights in parental assets.
1938 to 1947: Muslim League & Savarkar led Hindu Mahasabha come together, ally, pushing India towards Partition, with the active support of the British colonial state.
1946: Mr Md. Ahmad Khan marries again (second marriage), with Halima Begum, a cousin of Shah Bano.
1946-1950: Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD) on Article 44, Uniform Civil Code (UCC), Articles 25 to 28 and 37.
1947: Partition happens; millions are raped, displaced, looted, amputated, mutilated. Jinnah’s goal of consolidating Muslims politically through the enacted Shariat Act gets accomplished and manifests in Partition, leaving an unending legacy of bloodshed, communal hatred. India’s Muslims are rendered ever more vulnerable.
January 30, 1948: Gandhiji was assassinated by Hindu bigots affiliated with radical Hindu outfits. Just ten days before, they had failed in their attempt to assassinate Gandhi and one of them was arrested. Yet, for many hours after the killing, on January 30, 1948, an apprehension prevailed about the identity of the assassin until then Prime Minister Nehru and Home Minister Sardar Patel clarified the situation, declared the reality.
1951-1961: Nehru led govt reforms Hindu Personal Laws; expects the religious minorities to initiate reforms at their own, from within. (For details see, Reba Som’s essay, “Jawaharlal Nehru and the Hindu Code: A Victory of Symbol over Substance?”, in the Modern Asian Studies, 28, 1, Feb 1994).
1962: Pakistan reforms Muslim personal Laws; the reforms which elude India’s Muslims even in 2025.
1972-1973: The Indira-led govt amends the Cr P C 1898 to help deserted women & abandoned old parents, with maintenance, and for adoption of child. Muslims protest across India against the essentially Hindu law reforms by coming out on streets– April 1973 the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) at Hyderabad, spearheads these protests.
(Despite the fact that the custody of Zayd, the son adopted by the Prophet continued with him till Zayd was martyred; Zayd’s son, Osama, also continued to enjoy utmost affection of the Prophet. The Quran doesn’t prohibit “adoption” per se, it only prohibits erasure of biological paternity.)
1975: Mr Md Ahmad Khan drove Shah Bano out of her home; she had three sons and two daughters and one Bahu (daughter-in-law) who was said to have been in support of Mr. Khan in driving Shah Bano out of her home. [The same year Emergency was imposed in the country].
April 1978: Shah Bano went to the trial court (Indore) asking for maintenance; the Court issued an interim order for payment of maintenance.
August 1979: the local magistrate directed Khan to pay a sum of Rs. 25 (US$2) per month maintenance to Shah Bano who alleged that her former husband earned a professional income of about Rs.60,000 annually (US$4,600).
November 1979: Mr Khan protested this in the court invoking personal law; the judge said even under the existing interpretation of and codified Muslim Personal Law, a separated wife does remain entitled for maintenance. On hearing this, right inside the court, before the judge, Mr Khan pronounced the un-Quranic instant triple divorce. Simply to avoid payment of maintenance, of a meagre allowance of amount Rs 179/- per month.
1979: The Supreme Court verdict (in the Tahira Bi vs Ali Hasan) for maintenance to the divorced Muslim woman.
1980: Shah Bano filed a revised application for increased maintenance, and the High Court of Madhya Pradesh raised the amount to Rs.179.20 per month (US$14).
1980: Supreme Court verdict for maintenance in the Fazlun Bi vs Qadir Wali case.
Feb 19, 1981: Meenakshipuram (Tamil Nadu) Dalits Converted to Islam, en masse, and the village was renamed Rahmatnagar. This created furore and communal strife. [For details see, Theodre P Wright Jr (October 1982), “The Movement to Convert Harijans to Islam in South India”, The Muslim World, 72, 3-4, pp. 239-245]
February 1983: Nellie (Assam) Massacre [See Myron Weiner (June 1983), “The Political Demography of Assam’s Anti-Immigrant Movement”, Population and Development Review, vol. 9, Issue 2]
8 April 1984: “VHP gave a clarion call for the removal of the Babri Masjid”. [A G Noorani, 2019, The RSS, p. 207].
September 25, 1984: Former BJP President, Lal Krishna Advani-led Rath Yatra began
October 31, 1984: The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated; Rath Yatra suspended.
April 23, 1985: The Supreme Court, hearing the appeal (High Court also retained maintenance), endorsed the verdict (for maintenance of Rs 500/- per month) given by the Lower & High Court. Justice Y. V. Chandrachud’s observations were not confined to Quran alone; the verdict subjected (the patriarchic aspects of Hinduism as well as Islam) to criticism.
Last Friday of Ramzan (1985) observed as Yaum-e-Tahaffuz-e-Shariat.
August 1985: Signing of the Assam accord, widely considered to be a political concession made at the cost of the immigrant Muslims.
Aug 1985: Arif M Khan, Union Minister of State in Rajiv cabinet, spoke in Parliament welcoming the Supreme Court verdict.
October 23, 1985: Rath Yatra resumed from 25 places. Deadline of Shivratri (March 8, 1986). Before this, discussions on the possibility of the locks of the Babri Masjid sought to be opened, by former PM, Rajiv Gandhi were discussed, according to Neerja Chowdhury’s report in the Statesman.
Nov 15, 1985: Succumbing under mass protests before Shah Bano”s house in Indore, she was forced to affix her thumb impression to a statement saying she disavowed the Supreme Court verdict. [Ritu Sarin, “Shah Bano: The Struggle and the Surrender”, Sunday, 1-7 Dec 1985].
December 1985 to January 1986: Five lakh Muslims came out on the streets of Bombay, Calicut.
The Hindu Mahasabha retaliated by handing out the same treatment to the effigies of Maulana Ziaur Rahman Ansari (d. 1992), Union minister of state for environment, who leads the fundamentalist pressure group within the Congress (I).
In the first few weeks after the Shah Bano verdict, most Urdu press welcomed the verdict and expected that the Muslims will introspect and will launch reforms (Nawaz B Mody’s research essay, Asian Survey, 1987).
December 1985: Ziaur Rahman Ansari (MoS Environment, in Rajiv cabinet) spoke against the verdict in a three-hour long speech in Parliament. He used casteist slurs against the judges: something like this, “Kya ab teli tamboli bhi Sharaiat mein dakhal dengey!” (Indian Express, December 21, 1985).
Muslims protested against the Supreme Court verdict and the observations recorded in the verdict (misleadingly propagating that Islam alone was targeted by the Supreme Court). Asghar Ali Engineer’s columns in Bombay’s Urdu Blitz kept appreciating the verdict and kept talking of the reformism.
December 1985: Shah Bano met Rajiv Gandhi at his invitation, in which Gandhi persuaded Bano to refuse the maintenance telling her the situation was very critical.
Post-verdict, till January 1986: Ali Miyan Nadvi (+ Syed Shahabuddin+Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait) led AIMPLB “bargained” with the Prime Minister to legislate against the verdict. “In exchange”, locks of Babri Masjid to be opened, via the Faizabad Court; the opening to be telecast on Doordarshan.
This is “confessed” by Ali MiyaN (1914-1999) in his Urdu memoir, Kaarwaan-e-Zindagi (1988; vol.3, chapter 4, pages 134-137, 157); corroborated by Nicholas Nugent’s biography (1990, p. 187) of Rajiv Gandhi. Neerja Chowdhury (Statesman, 20 April and 1 May 1986), “There is evidence of a connection between the opening of the doors of the disputed ram Janmabhoom in Ayodhya and introduction of the Muslim [Women] Bill in Parliament…”
Ali Miyan Nadvi had also promised the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that the Muslim clergy would make “some arrangement” for maintenance of divorced Muslim women out of the Waqf assets. This promise remains forgotten.
August 1985 to January 1986: Rallies and Protests in Bombay, Calicut, Indore, Assam, Patna, Lucknow, etc. against the Verdict— “Shariat Bachao!” Different responses of the Muslim civil society, academics, and politicians. Over 500 teachers of AMU and a good number of teachers in JMI (barring a few dozen teachers of Left-Liberal leanings) side with the Muslim conservatives and reactionaries.
19 December 1985: Vir Bahadur Singh, the Congress CM of UP visited Ayodhya’s Ramayan Mela organised by the government agencies.
January 1986: The deal to legislate against the Supreme Court Verdict was finalized/endorsed by Ziaur Rahman Ansari (& Momin Conference?), with the PM, Rajiv Gandhi. See the biography (2018) of Ansari, Wings of Destiny.
January 25, 1986: Umesh Chandra Pandey, a 28 years old local lawyer filed an application in the Munsif Court, Faizabad, seeking removal of restrictions on the puja at the disputed Babri Masjid site. The Munsif declined as the files were in the High Court since 1961.
January 31, 1985: Appeal was filed in the Babri Masjid dispute court of the District Judge, Faizabad;
February 1, 1986: The case was heard. Md Hashim’s application was rejected who was already a plaintiff. The District Judge (K M Pandey) heard the District Magistrate and the SSP Faizabad on the law-and-order situation.
February 1, 1986: Faizabad Court orders (at 4.40 pm) opening; within less than 40 minutes of the verdict, unlocking done (at 5.19 pm) & televised, “as per the deal between the AIMPLB & PM” (see Urdu memoir of Ali Miyan Nadvi, Kaarwaan e Zindagi, vol.3, chapter 4, p. 134, 135, 157; also read, Nicholas Nugent’s biography of Rajiv Gandhi, 1990, p. 187).
Ali Miyan’s offer and the promise to the PM to institute a measure for looking after the abandoned, helpless women through Waqf or any other way, was a part of the deal which everybody including Ali Miyan chose to forget. The Qaum (community) never asked him about this, even after he wrote about the promise and deal in his Urdu memoir, Kaarwaan-e-Zindagi (1988, vol. 3, chapter 4).
“There was a prior understanding between Indira Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi and VHP on the opening of the locks”, writes Noorani (The RSS, 2019, p. 207) citing Neerja’s two reports in the Statesman.
February 19, 1986: Bill tabled to nullify the Supreme Court verdict.
March 8, 1986: Shivratri, Deadline of the VHP’s Rath Yatra to open the locks.
March 29-April 4, 1986: The Eve’s Weekly quoted Arif Md Khan’s resignation who also said, within law, “Indian Muslim women will be the only women to be denied maintenance anywhere in the world”.
April 1986 (Muslim India monthly): “AMU Teachers Support the Bill”; “As for AMU, the few dozens of teachers who signed the petition against the Muslim Women’s Bill paled in comparison to the more than 500 teachers (including sixty-three women) who signed a memorandum to express their ‘whole-hearted suport’ for the Bill”, and stated that the Muslims were hurt by the Supreme Court judgement [Laurence Gautier, 2024, p. 379].
May 1986: Parliament legislated law on Muslim Women, against the Supreme Court Verdict.
1986: Shah Bano pressurised to refuse to take the maintenance.
1986: Ram Shila (Bricks) Pujan Rath Yatra.
1989: Kar Seva in Ayodhya and the police firings on them.
1990: Mandal Report Implemented followed by caste riots and Advani’s W(r)ath Yatra.
1991: Narasimha Rao led govt brings in neo-liberalisation
1992: Shah Bano Begum dies; hardly any obituary was published by the press.
Sunday, December 6, 1992: Babri Masjid demolished, followed by massive pogroms across the country, and then a bomb blast in Bombay on Friday 12 March 1993.
April 1994: Allahabad High Court declared Instant Triple Talaq (ITT) illegal.
BJP kept rising, expanding and consolidating to emerge soon as the dominant and hegemonic political power, transforming the society, polity, administration and every other institution.
2001: Supreme Court verdict in Daniel Latifi case (after a few months of Latifi’s death) clarifying/reiterating that the law legislated in 1986 does provide for maintenance under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code of India.
Feb 2002: Gujarat pogrom.
2006: Md Ahmed Khan died in Indore at the age of 93.
May 2014: NaMo Era comes and stays.
August 22, 2017: Supreme Court verdict (in the case of Shayera Bano of Allahabad) declared the ITT (Instant Triple Talaq) unconstitutional. The AIMPLB was respondent no. 7 in this case. It had submitted its affidavit that Court shouldn’t intervene; Parliament should. Yet, even after the verdict, the AIMPLB didn’t submit its draft proposal/bill, of reforms, in the Muslim Personal Laws.
February, 10-11, 2018: While going for its 26th plenary at Hyderabad in early February 2018, the AIMPLB announced that the session would prepare a model nikahnama, but reneged on it.
August 1, 2019: The Parliament criminalised ITT (Instant Triple Talaq). Maintenance to the divorced/abandoned women remains ignored as ever.
Feb 2024: Uttarakhand legislates for UCC; AIMPLB & Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind (JUH) contemplate challenging the legislation in the court of law, without reforming the Muslim Personal Laws.
July 10, 2024: Supreme Court upholds Telangana High Court verdict for maintenance of Rs 10 000 per month to a divorced woman.
July 14, 2024: AIMPLB resolves to find ways of protesting against the verdict.
Further Readings
- Asghar Ali Engineer (1987), The Shah Bano Controversy.
- Zoya Hasan (January 7, 1989), “Minority Identity, Muslim Women Bill Campaign and the Political Process”, Economic and Political Weekly, 24, Issue 1.
- Ziya Us Salam (2018), Till Talaq Do Us Part
- Shekhar Gupta, Inderjit Badhwar, Farzand Ahmed (January 31, 1986), “Shah Bano judgment renders Muslims a troubled community, torn by an internal rift”, India Today.
- “Secularism on the Bend”, Frontline (English Fortnightly, Madras/Chennai), 11-24 January 1986.
Disclaimer: The author is unaware of the content of the biopic, Haq scheduled to be released on Friday, November 7.
Prepared by Mohammad Sajjad, Professor, Modern & Contemporary Indian History, AMU, Aligarh.
[Biography of Shah Bano: Biography of the Indian Nation-State]. Updated on 27 Sept 2024
Hindi Rendering published in Baya, Oct 2024 to March 2025
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