India's Agonies
                                                The New York Times, May 27, 1996

Byline: by Steven R. Weisman

The growing alienation between Hindus and Muslims in India may seem difficult for outsiders to grasp. But consider the story of a destitute Muslim woman who, two decades ago, dared to file for alimony in an Indian court when her well-to-do husband divorced her after 43 years of marriage. Her case provides a window into the agonies of modern India, demonstrating why it is often hard to reconcile the ideals of civil society with the anxieties of a beleaguered minority community.

In 1985, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that Shah Bano, the divorced woman, was entitled to a $40 monthly payment from her ex-husband, even though Muslim law calls for no such thing. Instead, Muslim law requires a divorced women to get financial help from her own family or the community at large. After a storm of protest by Muslims that their own personal law should govern the Muslim community, as promised from India's earliest days of independence, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi rammed a bill through Parliament reversing the Supreme Court decision. It was a deeply unpopular move, contributing greatly to the disenchantment with Mr. Gandhi among feminists, secularists and, most of all, the broad Hindu middle class.

As it happened, Mr. Gandhi's attempt to keep Muslim voters in his political corner has not succeeded. In the recent Indian election, Muslims defected from the long-ruling Congress Party in droves. The Hindu middle class in the north, meanwhile, helped give the country's leading Hindu nationalist party its biggest victory, and the first opportunity to govern, in history. With 35 percent of the seats in the new Parliament, the party appears unlikely to be able to put together a majority. But part of the danger posed by the party remains its pledge to repeal the Shah Bano law and force Indian Muslims to live under a uniform civil code that applies to all.

Eleven years after the original divorce decision, it is amazing how passionate Indians can be on the subject. My own sympathies are deeply divided. It seems grossly unjust to force Muslim women to live under a medieval code of religious law inside a society based on secular ideals. Muslim law itself is not sacrosanct in many Muslim countries. Pakistan, for example, does not cut off the hands of thieves or stone adulterers, though some Muslim clerics would like to see that happen.

But for India's Muslim minority, the issue has important symbolic overtones that cannot be ignored. Though many Muslims have risen to prominence in Indian society, most are economically worse off than the Hindu majority. Many centuries after the Mogul and Persian invasions and mass conversions to Islam, the Hindu nationalist parties see Muslims as interlopers much the same way that Serbs in Bosnia question the loyalty of Muslims there. After Hindu gangs tore down a prominent mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, other mobs carried out the worst anti-Muslim riots since independence. In Bombay, there was evidence of police involvement in what can legitimately be described as a pogrom.

Unfortunately, there is little doubt what would happen if a Hindu rightist coalition were to try to throw out the Muslim personal law as it applies to Muslims. Muslims would rise up in protest, as they did after Ayodhya, and the Hindu rightist gangs that support the Hindu parties would wage war against them across the country. These gangs already have a long list of mosques they would like to destroy, and the Hindu political parties have a sorry record of controlling their gangs.

Muslim leaders have not acted responsibly on the issue. Many secular Muslims are afraid to speak up against the mullahs who try to stir up trouble. They should work instead to bring the Muslim civil code into the modern era. But the primary obligation resides with India's Hindu majority, which is at a dangerous crossroads. Kashmir, the one region with a Muslim majority, must be handled sensitively. If India wants to keep it from seceding, it cannot take the other step demanded by the Hindu rightists, repealing laws that prevent Hindus outside Kashmir from buying property there.

Those stirred by India's lofty ideals are often heartbroken by India's failure to live up to them. But the reason we care is that India is struggling with the problems of building a democratic society while respecting diversity.