Communalism

Inadequate reportage, no shortage of opinion: Where does Big Media stand on the hijab row?  By Kalpana Sharma 17 Feb, 2022  https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/02/17/inadequate-reportage-no-shortage-of-opinion-where-does-big-media-stand-on-the-hijab-row  Misinterpreting the high court’s order, fanning the flames, the rare nuanced take – we saw it all.

It began on December 28, when six students of the Women's Government Pre-University College in Udupi were not allowed to enter their classroom wearing a hijab. Now, with the arguments being heard currently in the Karnataka High Court, the controversy poses several challenges to the media.

Will the media help tamp down emotions or add fuel to the fire that has already been lit? Will it, as seems inevitable in the highly polarised communal situation prevailing in Karnataka and elsewhere, ratchet up the blame game, creating false binaries such as Muslims vs Hindus, hijab vs saffron, etc? Or will it report with responsibility and context?

Soon, politics took over. The Campus Front of India, which is affiliated to the Social Democratic Party of India, spoke up on behalf of the Muslim students in Udupi. It was only a matter of time before other actors entered the fray, principally the Hindu Jagarana Vedike, which is a part of the Sangh Parivar and has been active on a number of incendiary communal issues in Udupi and nearby districts of Karnataka. This region has been in the news for years with such right-wing groups hounding Hindu-Muslim couples and raising the bogey of “love jihad”.

This report (TNM investigation: How Hindutva group mobilised saffron-clad students at Udupi college :)  in the News Minute is particularly revelatory as it establishes that what was attempted to be portrayed as a spontaneous reaction by Hindu students to the demand of Muslim students for their rights was, in fact, stage-managed. The scarves and turbans were made available, and then collected once the media had given the demonstration coverage.

Civil Society New, New Delhi

Published: Feb. 29, 2024

SOCIAL reforms have for long eluded Indian Muslims because of an obdurate clergy. Among the few willing to take them on has been Zakia Soman and women activists of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan working with her.  But their efforts have met with little success and the established order has been able to brush them off. https://civilsocietyonline.com/interviews/ucc-is-right-on-polygamy-wrong-on-moral-policing/ 

Now, a law ushering in a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in Uttarakhand does away with polygamy, sets 18 as the marriageable age for girls and, in addition to the earlier abolition of triple talaq, outlaws unilateral divorce.

Soman says she has no option but to welcome the UCC in the absence of voluntary reforms within the Muslim community. But she worries about social issues being used for political ends by the BJP. Moral policing is also a matter of concern. The UCC is both good and bad in parts, she says in an interview to Civil Society. 

 Uttarakhand thus becomes the first state in independent India to pass a common law on marriage, divorce, inheritance and even live-in relationships between two consenting adults. https://thewire.in/government/talking-uniform-civil-code 

According to the note which seems to have been disregarded, the Bill was built along the patriarchal Hindu law template and retained several discriminatory aspects that would deny women an equal agency . The leaders of the Muslim community have also protested over the UCC overtaking Muslim personal laws. The new law lacks clarity for both groups and that may cause heavy snarls when it is implemented.

It seems to promote intrusive moral policing and may result in  discriminatory harassment of adults in a relationship that has been considered autonomous and consensual. Some of the rules may become clearer when gazetted but the compulsory registration of live-in relationships is full of explosive landmines.

by Mrinal Pande

12/02/2024 

Justice for All, Not One Law for All: What the Constitution Says on Uniform Civil Code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeDow2aEAJA Dil se with Kapil Sibal.