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The trustees asked for two weeks time to act on the verdict. Take four weeks, the apex court ruled while warning that failure to implement the order after that will amount to contempt of court.

It may be recalled that Noorjehan Safia Niaz and Zakia Soman of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) had petitioned the Bombay High Court after all BMMA’s efforts to persuade the dargah’s trustees to roll back their regressive decision in 2011-12. Overnight, they restricted women’s access to the dargah compound, stopped them from going up to the mazaar (sanctum sanctorum) of the Sufi saint.

Following an earlier order of the Bombay High in early April, directing the Maharashtra government and police to ensure women were not restricted from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the Shani Shingnapur and all other temples in the state, secular-minded individuals and groups among Muslims and others from Mumbai had launched the ‘Haji Ali Sab ke liye’ forum in support of the right of women to equal access on par with men to all sacred space.
 

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"Admittedly, the Haji Ali Dargah Trust is a public charitable trust. It is open to people all over the world, irrespective of their caste, creed or sex, etc. Once a public character is attached to a place of worship, all the rigors of Articles 14, 15 and 25 would come into play and the respondent No. 2 Trust cannot justify its decision solely based on a misreading of Article 26. The respondent No. 2 Trust has no right to discriminate entry of women into a public place of worship under the guise of `managing the affairs of religion' under Article 26 and as such, the State will have to ensure protection of rights of all its citizens guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution, including Articles 14 and 15, to protect against discrimination based on gender. Infact, the right to manage the Trust cannot override the right to practice religion itself, as Article 26 cannot be seen to abridge or abrogate the right guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution." Excerpts from the Judgement of the Bombay High Court, August 26, 2016

The Bombay High Court has today ruled that women have the right to enter the core or inner sanctum of Mumbai's famous Haji Ali shrine, the Bombay High Court has ruled.  

However, the verdict has been put on hold or suspended for six weeks to allow the trustees of the dargah to appeal the decision in the Supreme Court.

The Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) had petitioned the Bombay High Court challenging the decision of the trustees of Haji Ali dargah to restrict women's access to the shrine. BMMA's demand was supported by the 'Haji Ali Sab Ke Liye' forum comprising of secular-democratic minded individuals and organisations.

Full text of the Bombay High Court order may be accessed here.

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Before and after: How access to the mazaar has been blocked for women. Sketches by BMMA. 

“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.”

~ Rumi the Mystic

A new phase has arisen in the struggle for women’s emancipation, whereby women of faith are asserting their right to equal access to sacred space, be it a temple, masjid, church or a dargah (tomb). Even as they assert their constitutional rights as equal citizens of India, women are simultaneously challenging the patriarchal hegemony, male-centric interpretation of scripture and tradition.

In 2012 women were overnight barred from going close to or touching the mazaar (elevated grave) of Haji Ali, which is an iconic part of Bombay’s syncretic, secular landscape. Women questioned this “innovation” for which no reason or logic was offered by the dargah’s trustees.

Refusing to be pushed back, Noorjehan Safia Niaz and Zakia Soman, co-founders of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) challenged the arbitrary manner in which the trustees had relegated women to second class believers. For two years they knocked on the doors of the Maharashtra government, but to no avail. The all-male trustees of the dargah refused to even meet them. They finally filed a petition in the Bombay High Court in 2014.
The case lingered on in the court, till on January 26 this year, when the Shani Shingnapur movement emerged, with a valiant group of women of the Bhumata Brigade led by Trupti Desai attempted to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Shani temple in Ahmednagar. 

This acted as a catalyst for women across all religions who no longer accept their relegation to an inferior status. For believing women it’s a question of spiritual equality.

They scoff at the laughable and irrational illogical arguments hurled at them including the notion of purity-impurity, challenge male-supremacist interpretation of religious scriptures, argue that tradition and culture be tested against constitutional principles of justice and parity. In debate after debate in the print and electronic media, women and progressive men have demolished the rationale offered by the religious orthodoxy.

Dharna organised by 'Haji Ali sab ke liye forum near Haji Ali dargah on April 28. Photo credit: PTI

Within days of the Shani Shingnapur agitation, at BMMA’s initiative, we held a cross-community protest demonstration at Azad Maidan, Mumbai to express our solidarity with the demand of women for equal access at Shani Shingnapur temple (Ahmednagar, Maharashtra), Sabarimala temple (Kerala) and elsewhere. The participants included BMMA activists led by Noorjehan, Khatoon Apa and, Zeenat Shaukat Ali (Islamic scholar), Jyoti Badekar (Vaghini), Javed Anand (Muslims for Secular Democracy), Salim Saboowala, Jatin Desai, this writer.

Some of our friends from within the secular fraternity were ambivalent or indifferent. A few even questioned the wisdom of secularists getting associated with women of faith demanding for gender parity in religious rituals and practices.  

However a large majority among the progressives felt differently. Firstly, they argued that all of religion cannot be reduced to superstitious beliefs and blind faith. Secondly, being secular is not synonymous with being an atheist. Thirdly, the issue is not whether I believe or not, but the right of believing women to equality in the domain of religion. In other words, it was essentially a matter of right to equal access to sacred space. It was about democratising religious, social, cultural spaces and structures of beliefs and power.

The assertions and demands continued to grow encompassing the Sabarimala temple, the Trimbakeshwar temple (Nasik, Maharashtra), Haji Ali dargah, Mumbai. Soon the issue was being debated and discussed among sections of the Muslim community. Many Muslim women and men spoke out about the right of women to pray inside masjids (mosques).

On March 8, International Women’s Day, we organised a major programme at the Azad Maidan around the central theme: “Women from all religions have an equal right to worship and sacred space”. A separate march organised by various leftist, feminist organisations had also included this demand within their larger programme. Thus the assertion by women of faith was crossing new boundaries.

Azad Maidan solidarity demo in support of women's right to equal access to temples/dargahs  at ; Photo credit: DNA

After the historic verdict of the Bombay High Court (March 31, 2016) in favour of women’s access to the sanctum sanctorum of temples across Maharashtra, some of us decided to take the struggle for women’s equal access to the Haji Ali dargah to the next level.

On April 20, a cross-community forum, ‘Haji Ali sab ke liye’ was launched jointly at a press conference by prominent Muslim intellectuals, activists and artists (men and women), supported by over a dozen secular-democratic mass organisations. The name of the forum had a simple but powerful inclusive message. It was a message that the Haji Ali trustees and their supporters found very difficult to counter.

At the press conference it was announced that a peaceful dharna will be held near Haji Ali Dargah on April 28. Trupti Desai who had shown interest in the forum’s initiative was invited to the press conference where she declared that she too would participate in the dharna along with other organisations and individuals.

The struggle for equality at Haji Ali dargah has raised some key questions that are now being widely debated within the Muslim community. It is also leading to a new assertion of Muslim women, who cannot see any logic in being treated as second class believers in masjids and some dargahs, even as they stride forward in the fields of education and employment.

Sanatani Hindutva organisations who had vehemently opposed Trupti’s temple entry agitation had earlier challenged her to enter Haji Ali dargah. It is to be noted that at the joint press conference she made no mention of her plans to enter the dargah on the day of the dharna.

In the backdrop of the Bombay High Court’s order on women’s right to enter the sanctum sanctorum of all temples throughout the state, some of the remarks from Supreme Court judges during the ongoing hearing in the Sabarimala temple case, and with the Bombay High Court’s ruling in the Haji Ali dargah case pending, all that the forum planned was a peaceful gathering of progressive Muslim women and men, along with leading secular organisations and activists. The objective was to create public awareness about the right of women to equal access, on par with men, to sacred spaces.

Before the proposed dharna, several TV news channels carried heated debates where several forum members were pitched against the Muslim clergy and other conservatives. The latter’s premise was that the Quran, Hadiths and Sharia prohibited women from getting close to the mazaar. Forum members and other progressive individuals participating in the debates asserted that this was not an issue concerning religion but custom and tradition which could not override constitutional principles.

Satyen Bordoloi

The conservatives claimed that the Indian constitution gives them the right to freedom of religion under Article 25 & 26, which is more important that the right of equality guaranteed under article 14. There were some who made the outrageous proposition that to the Sufi saints (men) buried in the dargah, women appear naked and that is why they must not be allowed up to the mazaar. Asked to explain the logic, if any, all they would say was: “It’s in the Sharia”.

It’s the very same non-logic that is applied by some for barring Muslim women from entering a cemetery, where the souls of the dead and buried, it is claimed, were hovering around and they too could see women naked. On being told that the same logic should apply to the souls of dead and buried women who could also see man as naked, they were speechless.

The fact is that Sharia appears to mean different things at different dargahs. Women are barred from getting close to Haji Ali’s mazaar since 2012, whilst at the Mahim dargah of Makhdoom Baba just a few kilometers away and at Ajmer Sharif (the dargah of the most revered Sufi saint in South Asia) there is no such restriction or gender segregation.

Yes, the constitution does grant minorities the right to religious freedom but not the right to discriminate and oppress women in the name of religion. Women are now asserting their right to interpret scriptures and personal laws, which is no longer the exclusive domain and monopoly of the male clergy.

As the day of our protest approached, the cacophony of our opponents also grew. Haji Arafat (Shiv Sena), Abu Asim Azmi (Samajwadi Party), Shamsher Khan Pathan (Awami Vikas Party), the Indian Muslim League, Owaisi’s MIM, all turned out in large number to prevent Trupti from entering the dargah premise.

Here both Trupti and the coalition against her erred. In yet again projecting an anti-women perspective, those arraigned against her provided ballast for the media. In unilaterally over-stepping the commonly agreed programme of the forum, Trupti herself created confusion and chaos.

In any case, the struggle for equality at Haji Ali dargah has raised some key questions that are now being widely debated within the Muslim community. It is also leading to a new assertion of Muslim women, who cannot see any logic in being treated as second class believers in masjids and some dargahs, even as they stride forward in the fields of education and employment.

It is also compelling the Muslim conservatives to take a fresh look at the many uncomfortable questions being raised at every TV debate. The Urdu press in Mumbai has also been supportive of the push for gender equality and this too is a welcome development.

The reality of the situation is that Muslim conservatives, fanatics and extremists stand exposed the world over, even as the edifice of extremist political Islam continues to implode.

The onus now lies on progressive, liberal Muslims. There is a need for Muslim intellectuals, scholars, lawyers, artists and activists within and outside secular democratic mass movements and political parties with broader agenda to join the struggle for long overdue reform.

The progressive Muslim women’s movement is already leading the struggle for equality and emancipation, reinterpreting the scriptures, asserting their constitutional rights, challenging the citadels of patriarchy. It’s time for progressive Muslim men to come out in large numbers, organise themselves and stand in solidarity with the struggle of Muslim women.

Today women have been relegated to an inferior status at the Haji Ali dargah. Tomorrow it could be other dargahs. Who knows, next they may demand that only those Muslim women wearing a burqa would be allowed. Then they might pronounce that music is haram so Qawalis are a no-no.

Where does this plague of patriarchy and fanaticism stop?

Which is the next dargah they will target?

Could it be the Ajmer dargah itself?

This is a battle we must not lose.

(The writer is among the initiators of the ‘Haji Ali Sab Ke Liye’ forum).

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Sometime ago, Vimochana, a Bengaluru-based forum for women’s rights organised an 'Aapa ki Adalat' with six Muslim women who had gruesome accounts to narrate about being tortured by their husbands. They had earlier been to various shariah courts in various mosques but were unable to tell their tale as these were shameful accounts of sexual torture which they found difficult to narrate before men.
 
Vimochana, headed by Ms. Donna Fernandes, Madhu Bhushan, Shakuni etc gathered some leading Muslim social activists and made a few Muslim men like us sit behind a curtain to listen to their woes. Vimochana encouraged the Muslim community to have their own organisation to listen to, counsel and rehabilitate Muslim women who have been driven out of their homes, are locked in marital disputes, have been victims of domestic violence, or at the hands of alcoholic husbands.
 
So we helped Sajida Aapa in Bangalore to set up 'Aasra Home for Women' where there is a facility for keeping such women for three months. We get cases of Muslim women from police stations who ask us to settle these disputes within the community rather than taking to courts, police and jails. Sometime such women call Sajida Aapa and Aasra from other states which we are not able to accommodate. 
 
Recently Parveen Taj, 42 who was released from Mysore jail after passing a 12-year sentence (she had murdered her husband due to constant torture from that rascal), went knocking at the Jail's door to take her back as society was not accepting her. She was turned away from her brother's house. Her daughter had been married and settled in life and two sons had been taken away by a cousin. Other members of the house had moved to another location in order to get away from the infamy in the small town of Srirangapatna. The kind jailer approached a Hindu community run Nari Niketan to accommodate her as she could not be taken back inside prison.

The world judges us by our social, economic, intellectual standing among communities, not by claims that are mostly bogus, fake, false and farcical. 
 
We never tire of proclaiming that Islam is a religion of peace, justice and equality. But do we Muslims ever think about the plight of such women? Aasra is in talks with Niketan to see that Parveen Taj is rehabilitated. I wonder if we have such a facility anywhere in the country. I wish the answer is a ‘yes’ from somewhere.  Our clerics are totally unaware and unconcerned about what happens to women in our society. They feel everything is, will be, hunky dory if they are women accept the subordination of their men. This of course suits men who happily follow the clerics.    
 
It is easy to state in the Supreme Court that men and women are equal in Islam but difficult to work in a society where women are totally subjugated due to their low education, no economic clout and social pressure not to speak up against their men. Speeches are capable of going global. But practical action is always local and hardly gets any limelight. 
 
We must drop all these pretences to being supreme among all religions, best among all communities and bearers of the pristine Divine message. The world judges us by our social, economic, intellectual standing among communities, not by claims that are mostly bogus, fake, false and farcical. 
 
MA Siraj is a Bengaluru based journalist and activist.

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Right? Perhaps you should think again.

There is something the ulema does not teach the faithful. What do you do when every edifice erected by some architect collapses in no time? What do you do with a doctor who kills more patients than he cures? And what do you do when the ulema tell you that the practice of triple talaaq “though socially repugnant, is theologically valid”?

Look elsewhere maybe? If you have the time and the inclination, the internationally acknowledged Islamic scholar and champion of gender equality, Aziza al-Hibri, would be a good person to learn your Islam from. If you are not the scholar type, her simple five-word mantra should suffice as moral compass: “If it’s unjust, it’s un-Islamic”.

So here we have it, as simple as that: because it is unjust, a male-centred society can never be Islamic, never mind what men with long beards and flowing robes preach. In his unguarded moment, even the maulvi sahib will concede that there is no priesthood in Islam. “To seek knowledge is the sacred duty of every Muslim and Muslimah (female),” said Prophet Mohammed. He also said: “Seek knowledge, even if you have to go as far as China.”

Taken together, two things are evident. First, all knowledge is sacred; Islam recognises not boundary between sacred and secular. Second, the pursuit of knowledge is a sacred duty that must not be sub-contracted or outsourced to the ulema; faith is too important a thing to be left to the “experts”. Perhaps the ulema should explain to the ummah why in direct violation of the Prophet’s message they compartmentalise knowledge and set themselves up as barriers, not facilitators, between Muslims and their sacred text.

Whether the explanation is forthcoming or not, one thing is certain: the mullah’s monopoly over “The Message” is increasingly under question in India and across the Muslim world. Those who have chosen to go directly to the source of Islam are astounded to discover the huge gulf between the gender parity message of the Quran and the male supremacy myth that the ulema have been peddling through the centuries.

The mullah’s monopoly over “The Message” is increasingly under question in India and across the Muslim world. Those who have chosen to go directly to the source of Islam are astounded to discover the huge gulf between the gender parity message of the Quran and the male supremacy myth that the ulema have been peddling through the centuries.

A good example of this was the two-day consultation on the theme “Codification of Muslim Personal Law” organised jointly by Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer’s Institute of Islamic Studies and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) in Delhi on February 4 and 5. Present at the consultation were a maulana, two (Muslim) judges (one serving, the other retired), Islamic scholars from Jamia Millia Islamia, two (Muslim) members of the Law Commission of India, a large number of women activists from all over the country and a few journalists.

The most remarkable thing about the consultation was the free and frank atmosphere that marked the discussions and debate. No one threatened another with the apostasy/blasphemy charge. The fact that the majority of the participants were confident, articulate Muslim women activists — a rarity at ummah gatherings — and each with a hundred horror tales to recount on the injustices and indignities that continue to be heaped on their sisters in the name of Islam certainly helped.

None may have heard of Ms Al-Hibri. But, ironically enough, they have heard the maulvi sahib assert on countless occasions that Islam is a religion of insaf (justice) and masavat (equality). Now, unfortunately for the ulema, having read the Quran on their own, they know how gender equality is but a logical and theological extension of the core Islamic principles of insaf and masavat. Looks like the maulvi sahebs will have much to account for in the coming years.

The first salvo has already been fired. For starters, the gathering of Muslim men and women punctured the hollow claim of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board that what goes in the name of Muslim Personal Law in India is “Allah’s law”. If anything, it’s a colonial legacy which until Independence was referred to as “Anglo-Mohammedan Law”.

Casting aside the colonial hangover while keeping the Quran, the teachings of the Prophet and reforms in many Muslim-majority societies as their sole reference points, the consultation arrived at a broad consensus on the essential elements of a codified Muslim Personal (Family) Law for India: The obnoxious unilateral practice of oral and instant divorce (triple talaaq) must be banished.

In case of marital conflict, divorce must compulsorily be preceded by attempts at reconciliation as enjoined in the Quran (talaaq-e-ahsan). Divorce by mutual consent (mubarah) should also be incorporated in the codified law. Following divorce, the husband must pay a fair amount towards maintenance of the wife and children.

As to who should have custody of children, it was agreed that the “best interest of the children” should be the paramount criteria. The minimum age for marriage must be 18 years for a woman and 21 years for boys and all marriages must be registered with state authorities. The mehr (bride price) should not be nominal as is the prevalent practice today but equal to a year’s income of the bridegroom. While there was near consensus on many issues, the polygamy question remained unresolved.

The majority of the participants took the view that the Quranic verses when read in the context of our times can only mean strict monogamy. For tactical reasons, others favoured putting in place such stringent conditions as to make a second marriage virtually impossible. The codification campaign is sure to be fiercely resisted by many among the ulema. For freeing Muslim women from the clutches of patriarchy, rescuing Islam from the stranglehold of its male supremacist clerics may be the only option. A long battle lies ahead but the battle lines have already been drawn. 

(This article was first published in The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle; February 2012).
 

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Source: shanidev.com Police on Tuesday, January 26, 2016, foiled the women march toward Shani Shingnapur temple and detained many activists including Bhumata …

Six busloads of members of the Pune-based, Bhumata Brigade who sought entry into the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, to secure for themselves a right enshrined in the Indian Constitution – that there shall be no discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth were arrested this Republic Day. Trupti Desai, a leader of the brigade had announced that, if they were refused entry, they would persist with their programme, albeit unconventionally, in a helicopter descent. But the police also thwarted this. Earlier, the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS) had issued a call for the mobilisation of Hindu men to ‘protect’ religious tradition.
 
The Bhumata Brigade, which came into being in 2007, has taken up a number of other issues. News reports detail its support for the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement, farmers’ agitations on crop-loans, the Ajit Bank's multi-crore scam, etc. On January 11, rattled by its announcement to take on the temple, the Shani Shingnapur Temple Trust appointed a woman, Anita Shetye, as its chairperson, and another woman, Shalini Lande, on its board of trustees. 
 
The storm the Bhumata Brigade has kicked up over the entry of women to this temple is matched, perhaps in a more muted fashion in the legal arena, with discussions of the right of women to two other places of worship – the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala and the Haji Ali dargah in Mumbai. In all these places, women of these faiths are demanding the Constitutional right to practice their faith and worship alongside men, without any discrimination.
 
Last year, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan filed a writ petition before the Bombay High Court to demand the right to enter the mazaar of the Haji Ali dargah and the Indian Young Lawyers' Association (IYLA) filed a writ petition to seek the entry of pre-menopausal women and post-puberty girls into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.
 
In both petitions, significant aspects of constitutional rights are at stake, though the trustees of these places of worship have proffered different reasons for restricting or banning the entry of women. While Article 15 of the Constitution of India prohibits any discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, the IYLA petition has challenged the ban under Art 14 (equality before law) and Arts 25 and 26 (freedom of religion) of the Constitution. The ban on the (Sabarimala) temple itself is enforced under rule 3 (b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965.

There has been much debate on the myths and the reasoning behind the restrictions (including the arduous trek to the shrine through forests that used to be populated by wild animals) but the Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the Samarimala Temple, maintains that the restriction is necessary because the presence of women of reproductive age would disturb the celibate god. (See https://sabrangindia.in/article/unholy-and-unconstitutional-ban-women-sabarimala)

The Shani temple does not specify any clear reason why women are not allowed into what is called the ‘foundation’ – the raised granite wall which encloses the idol. Pictures and information of the Shani idol on the website of the temple (a tri-lingual one – available in English, Marathi and Hindi) clear show the foundation was added later on the donation of a local trader. Interestingly, the HJS site says that prohibitions on women is a matter of ‘spiritual science’ and quotes the Sanatan Prabhat to say that a movement must be started to protect religious traditions!

The Haji Ali DargahTrust proffers more prosaic administrative reasons. Here, women were allowed till as recently as 2012, when a decision was taken to prohibit the entry of women on grounds of their safety and security!

While the hearings on the Sabarimala temple entry are on, the Bombay High Court has decided to wait for the Supreme Court’s decision before giving its verdict on the BMMA’s petition on entry into the Haji Ali dargah.

      
 
For several years now, women have been trying to push the ossified frameworks that govern religious practice. There are instances of daughters of the Hindu faith who performed the funeral rites of their parents (the latest being Mallika Sarabai who lit the funeral pyre of her mother and celebrated danseuse Mrinalini Sarabai just last week). There are less publicised instances of Hindu widows who participate in the weddings of their children. Hindu women have chanted the Vedas and other Sanskrit shlokas and some of them also conduct religious ceremonies.
 
Hitherto, these attempts to push the envelope were seen as private acts that impacted family or friends and the immediate community. Even when women worshippers tried to enter the Sabarimala shrine or the Shani Shingnapur temple, they were seen as stray rebels or worshippers who entered the forbidden area by mistake and elaborate purification rituals were undertaken to ‘restore’ the sanctity of the shrines.
 
But now, it is clear these efforts have entered the more public realm of organised religion, especially with trusts that command a lot of influence and manage substantial funds. The trusts are accountable to the laws of the land and do have state and political patronage, either in the form of long leases on the land they occupy or in the composition of and appointment of the trustees and administration.
 
Granted, the struggle to seek their rightful place before their gods is a fundamental expression of the faith of these women. But the edifice of religious practice is not merely a question of faith. When women confront these structures, as they have done and are continuing to do in matters of personal law, matrimony, maintenance, child custody, property and inheritance rights, they have had to wage protracted battles to secure the most minimal of rights. The restrictions on the entry of women into places of worship are only one manifestation of the patriarchy and misogyny that marks much of organized religion. Much more than mere tradition is at stake here.
 
 (This writer is a senior and independent journalist)
 

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