Amrit Dhillon is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Momentum is building in India to ban a Muslim practice that makes Muslim women live in terror – the custom that allows their husbands to divorce them instantaneously, there and then, by saying "talaq" three times in a row.
Many Muslim countries banned this practice, called triple talaq, long ago. Yet in India, where Muslims form only 13 per cent of the population, Muslim men "enjoy" this right. Women have been divorced in this fashion in person but also on the telephone, by post, by e-mail, text messages and through WhatsApp and Facebook.
The trigger can be anything: burning the dinner, hair starting to go grey, weakening eyesight. The lives of Muslim wives are haunted by the knowledge that this is all their husband has to do, and they have no recourse against it.
The conservative Muslim clergy have happily accepted this form of abuse and refused to let any government interfere with what they consider their right to practice their religion as they wish. Governments in India have shied away, preferring not to meddle with something so potentially inflammatory. India has different laws on marriage, divorce and property rights for different religions out of a desire to preserve religious and cultural diversity.
But over the past year or so, Muslim women's groups have had the courage to push the clergy's feet close to the fire by condemning triple talaq as "un-Koranic" and filing a petition in the Supreme Court in India asking for it to be outlawed.
The debate has reverberated in papers and TV studios with the various camps digging their trenches. The dimensions of the debate are multiple: Is the custom genuinely Islamic or a patriarchal distortion? this a good time to tinker with Muslim customs when a Hindu nationalist party is in power and has been creatIng social tensions over Muslims? Are Muslims being singled out even though Hindu evils such as dowry and dowry deaths are equally repugnant? What is paramount – gender equality as guaranteed by the constitution or the dictates of religion?
The government has taken the bull by the horns, albeit gingerly. Ministers have argued it is absurd for India to allow triple talaq when 22 Muslim countries have banned it. They say they cannot allow Muslim women to suffer this injustice and want to give them the same protection under the law as other Indian women.
The Muslim clergy, bristling at the prospect of the courts intervening in what they think is their private domain, have said the community itself will reform unjust practices. Muslim women activists laugh at this, and have wryly asked: "What's stopped them from prohibiting triple talaq all these years?"
Achieving a consensus on this looks near-impossible. Even if the Supreme Court rules that triple talaq is unconstitutional, clerics have said they will not accept the verdict. In the past, everyone would have reverted to the status quo. This time, something is different. Muslim women's rights groups will not stop campaigning until triple talaq is banished.
"Muslim men observe India's criminal code but they refuse to observe India's civil laws on divorce. How convenient. If they wanted sharia, they should be arguing for stoning and cutting off hands but no, it's only those practices that are anti-women that they want to defend," Muslim politician Shazia Ilmi said recently.
Despite the complexity of the issue, the push for a ban has an air of unstoppability about it. It's not about one party being stronger, more popular or more resourceful. Rather, it's that triple talaq flies in the face of our most fundamental notions of justice. So, yes, it's complex. But it's also dead simple.