Bill criminalising instant divorce passed in India

A bill that seeks to criminalise “triple talaq”, a style of instant divorce used by some Muslim Indians has been passed.

India’s lower house of parliament passed the bill which now criminalises the practice which had continued despite the country’s top court suspending the custom in August.

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Speaking after introducing the bill in parliament in New Delhi, Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s law minister and a senior member of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP, said, “In the Republic of India, if a woman is suffering owing to the cruelty and inhumanity of triple talaq, should we remain silent?

“Muslim-majority countries have regulated triple talaq in one go, why can’t we as a secular nation do it? We are not interfering in sharia [Islamic law].”

The bill is, in part, the result of decades of campaigning by Muslim women’s groups and victims against a practice that allows Muslim men to divorce their wives instantaneously by uttering the word “talaq” three times.

 

 

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