The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : `Muslim women doubly oppressed'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 02, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Muslim women doubly oppressed'

Staff Reporter

SHARING VIEWS: Subhashini Ali, president, All India Democratic Women's Association (seated), and K.S. Vimala, AIDWA State secretary, speaking to Muslim women at a meeting held in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: The Sachar Committee report may have made startling revelations about the poor conditions in which Muslims live and highlighted the stepmotherly attitude of successive governments towards them, but Muslim women are doubly oppressed at the hands of male-dominated religious entities, Subhashini Ali, president of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), has said.

Addressing a meeting of Muslim women organised by the Bangalore district committee of AIDWA here on Thursday, Ms. Ali said the Sachar Committee report had observed that Muslims across the country invariably had the least access to water, hygiene, education and jobs. Police harassment of Muslims was more acute than other communities, she said.

`It begins at home'

Muslim women should realise that their oppression began in their own homes, as daughters, sisters and wives. The menfolk cited the Sharia or other Muslim personal law codes to deny women the rights that Islam allowed them, Ms. Ali said.

Citing the Imrana case, in which she was allegedly raped by her father-in-law, and the religious leaders ruled that she should not cohabit with her husband, Ms. Ali said women should know that talaq is as much the right of the woman as of the man. Even the Nikahnamah was something that the woman could use to ensure she was not abandoned or oppressed in her marital home.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had grown in strength, was fomenting hatred of Muslims, Kerala and West Bengal remained the only States where they were harassed to a lesser extent. Karnataka had become the new destination where communal clashes and riots were increasing at an alarming rate, she said.

But there was light at the end of the tunnel for Muslim women if only they took the first step.

"Demand water, hygiene, schools, your rations and everything that the community must be given as a matter of right," she said.

AIDWA, which works to integrate all communities, had an unusual experience recently in Gujarat. It successfully organised a self-help group of Muslim and Hindu women in a small town, and when they went to open an account, the manager of the bank refused to do so and warned the women that they would end up quarrelling and losing all the money. The women launched a protest and argued until the manager had no option but to relent. "This is the mindset you are up against, and you have to begin fighting at your community level, in your home, if you want a revolution," she said.

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