Muslim woman says scholars seem to have denied us this right for long
When Akhtar Sultan Begum heard that the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) had rejected the idea of granting women the right to divorce at the time of marriage, she knew it was time to tell her story.
For, this graceful and dignified 88-year-old had set a precedent by getting a clause, granting her the right to divorce (tafviz-e-talaq), inserted in her nikahnama in 1936. Since then, she has also ensured that every woman who got married into her family got the same benefit, Begum, however, never had to invoke that clause as she "lived happily" with her husband Dr Ajamal Hassan Khan till his death in 1985.
"But with all due respect to these Muslim scholars, I want to say that they (AIMPLB members) seem to have denied this right to women for so many years, either due to lack of knowledge or gender bais," Begum, hailing from a royal family in Kucknow, told The Indian Express.
Even the lone woman representative in the AIMPLB executive committee, Naseem Iqtidar Ali, had got one of her daughters married to a member of the Begum's family, she adds.
"I want all those who deny this right to Muslim women to listen to my story. We were five sisters. My father got my elder sister married to a man, who tortured her a lot. We tried hard to get my sister back, but the man refused to give her talaq. It took my father 10 years to get rid of him. Since then, he decided not to get any of his other daughters married without getting them the right to divorce in the nikahnama," Begum recalls.
"My father did not get a match for all of us, as he was demanding a huge amount as mehr and an unconditional right to divorce. At the time, when girls used to get married at the age of 12 and 13, we faced lots of problems. I got married at 20."
Begum's carefully-preserved nikahnama, written in Arabic, reads: "I saw Akhtar Sultan Begum, daughter of Abdul Majeed Khuraja, agreed as mehr thje amount of Rs. 75,000, half of which is Rs. 37,500 in cash, in the advocacy of Abdul Majeed Khuraja and in the presence of witnesses. I declare that I will follow moral decency, fair play and courtous behaviour with my wife and on being asked by my wife, I give to her the rights of divorce."
Says Begum's son Dr Mansoor Hasan, Professor of Cardiology" "We don't mean to dishonour the Muslim scholars. Nobody, however, has a right to discuss this issue. The right to divorce, for Muslim woman already exists. It is only has to be formalised."
But AIMPLB chairman Rave Hasmi Nadvi
insists that the Board will not consider the clause again. "We had proposed
this at our meeting in Banalore in 2000. Our women members said how could
a word like talaq be even mentioned at such an auspicious occasion like
a wedding and rejected it," he told The Indian Express.