Did Muslim women in colonial India before 1939 have to become Christian to divorce?
Upvote:6
Conversion to Christianity was not the only option women had. The purpose of the 1939 Act was to “consolidate and clarify” provisions already available to Muslim women. Contemporary writer Sheikh Abdul Haq pointed out the use of conversion to obtain a divorce had two issues. First, that it was a misinterpretation of Muslim law by non-Muslim courts. Second, that it was the result of women having almost no other options.
From the book Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women: An Annotated Bibliography & Research Guide by Tahera Aftab:
He goes on to argue that the traditional Islamic law should be restored, which would grant women more leverage.
‘Tafwiz’ refers to “talaq-i-tafwiz” which is the right of a Muslim woman to dissolve her marriage on her husband's behalf. This option for divorce was delegated to a wife if her husband chose to do so.
From Talaq-i-Tafwid: The Muslim Woman’s Contractual Access to Divorce: An Information Kit
This publication primarily focuses upon a procedure recognized by Islam – talaq-i-tafwid or the contractual delegation to the wife of the right to pronounce talaq on behalf of her husband in regard to her own marriage.
From the same publication there are two excerpts from pre-1939:
“Delegated divorce, talaq-i-tafwiz. This is a curious survival of the old property rights of the husband over his wife. He may appoint an attorney to divorce her on his behalf just as he might appoint an attorney to deal with his property.”
Seymour Vesey-Fitzgerald, Muhammadan Law: An Abridgment According to its Various Schools(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 77.
Delegation of divorce is the assignment of a power . . ; it is not agency, and therefore the husband can not retract from it; so much so that if he gives her . . . [such authority], and then swears that he will not repudiate her, but she divorces herself, according to the most approved opinion, the husband shall not be treated as guilty of breaking his oath
Muhammad Ala-ud-Din Haskafi, Durr-ul-Mukhtar (trans. by B.M. Dayal; 1913 edn. reprinted Law Publishing Co. Lahore, n.d.), p. 172
In addition I have found the term khula, mentioned in this thesis:
I didn't find many useful references to this term, but in concept it seems similar to Tafwid. 'Mehr' is a kind of dower, paid by the groom to the bride. Women who initiated divorce often lost the right to their own dowry as well. In many of the references to Tafwid, I found that it was primarily upper class or intellectuals who were allowed to use (or knew of) this method for divorce.
If using conversions was due to courts misinterpreting Islamic law, the chances of an uneducated woman knowing her options were slim. For those who had no means of navigating a divorce, conversion may have been the least strenuous option. The question also asks how common this was, which is difficult to estimate given that India is a huge and diverse country, and laws can be interpreted differently from place to place.
More post
- 📝 What happened to UK national debt when the NHS was created?
- 📝 Did anyone in Spain support the return of Alfonso XIII?
- 📝 Were barcodes used in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 When were public roads cleaned electromagnetically?
- 📝 Has any generation generally agreed that the next generation was better?
- 📝 Looking for a (preferably digital) collection of McCarthy speeches (transcripts)
- 📝 Why didn't Thailand have to pay more for its involvement in WW2?
- 📝 Did the Gallic army besieged in Alesia conduct itself well when expecting relief?
- 📝 Are empires inherently stable over time?
- 📝 How could West Berlin had access West Germany/world while the wall was up?
- 📝 What evidence is there of the vision aids people used before the invention of eyeglasses in about 1286?
- 📝 Did the Seljuk consider themselves Roman?
- 📝 What has prevented the United Nations from failing the same way as the League of Nations?
- 📝 More honorable to plunder than to work for Germanic tribes in antiquity
- 📝 Was murdering a slave illegal in American slavery, and if so, what punishments were given for it?
- 📝 What differentiated Rome from other Mediterranean (e.g. Greek) city states?
- 📝 What received constitutional understandings did Pitt break in 1784?
- 📝 Has there ever been an instance of a business attempting or succeed a coup?
- 📝 Cost of peac**k throne vs Cost of Taj Mahal
- 📝 How did people wake up early before clocks?
- 📝 Why did the Dutch West India Company allow Quakers in the New Netherlands?
- 📝 How can prices be compared over time?
- 📝 Treatment of h*m*sexuals in Nazi Germany
- 📝 Are there Indian accounts of the Battle of the Hydaspes Rivers?
- 📝 What are the hay effigies in this Japanese movie?
- 📝 What developments in Jefferson's life caused him to withdraw from the topic of slavery in political discourse?
- 📝 When was the first pentecostal church created?
- 📝 Were the Chinese Warlords backed by other countries?
- 📝 How was Taiwan involved in the Thirty Years' War?
- 📝 What right/legitimacy did Normans have to a kingdom in Southern Italy?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did Muslim women in colonial India before 1939 have to become Christian to divorce?
- 📝 Why did Nepal and Bhutan not become a part of India like other princely states when colonial rule ended?
- 📝 Did Muslim states hire Western European knights as mercenaries before the Crusades?
- 📝 Did any British working class men have the vote before 1918?
- 📝 Why did Roman women have no praenomen?
- 📝 How did people have access to ice in warm areas before the industrial revolution?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 Did airports have security checks before the 1970s?
- 📝 Did Japan have any continental colonies before modern times?
- 📝 How did the South USA become more overtly Christian than the North?
- 📝 How did India become a founding member of the UN?
- 📝 How did the Dutch East India Company (VOC) have so much revenue when they only control small part of Indonesia?
- 📝 Did people have better nutrition before agriculture?
- 📝 Did unmarried Spartan women have longer hair than men?
- 📝 Did ancient Egyptian women have legal equality with men?
- 📝 What rights did women have in Switzerland in the first few years of the 20th century?
- 📝 What attributes did Yahweh have before becoming a monotheistic deity?
- 📝 Did any Muslim empire/kingdom have its capital in modern Pakistan except Lahore?
- 📝 Did any native US-Canadian tribes have written language before the advent of the Europeans?
- 📝 When did India become a major trading center?
- 📝 What degree of relations did the different Hawaiian islands have between themselves before Kamehameha's unification?
- 📝 Did Christopher Columbus ever have any direct contact with the Genoese colonial Aegean region?
- 📝 Why did emperors of India and China have so many mistresses?
- 📝 Did medieval stores have names?
- 📝 Why exactly did telegraphs have to use "STOP" instead of a period and "QUOTE" instead of a quotation mark? (Or special codes.)
- 📝 Did slaves have slaves?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 How did people wash dishes before dish detergent?
- 📝 Did cows in Medieval times have calves in spring or all year round?
- 📝 What did babies eat before the advent of modern blenders?
