DISPUTE OVER A MOSLEM DIVORCE ENSNARLS GANDHI
                                 By Steven R. Weisman, Special to the New York Times
                                             The New York Times, February 9, 1986
                                                       Dateline: New Delhi, Feb. 8

She was cast aside by her husband after 43 years of marriage, a not uncommon occurrence in much of the world. But Shah Bano reacted differently for an Indian woman, especially for a Moslem woman. She went to court to demand money from the man who divorced her.

It took 10 years for the case to reach the Indian Supreme Court, which last year awarded Shah Bano a $40 monthly maintenance fee to be paid by her former husband, a well-to-do lawyer in the city of Indore.

Then the furor began. In noisy demonstrations across India, angry Moslems have been protesting the Shah Bano decision as an unwarranted intrusion into their religious affairs.

Divorce and divorce settlements, the protesters say, are matters of Moslem personal law, out of the range of civil courts. Such laws do not require payments from former husbands when marriages dissolve, they say.

An Imam's Outrage

''We don't recognize this decision,'' said Syed Abdullah Bukhari, the Imam of Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, in the heart of Old Delhi. ''We will not accept such a direct interference with Moslem personal law.''

To the people who favor overturning the Shah Bano decision, an important aspect of India's identity is at stake. This is the India of diverse religions and cultures that holds itself together because it respects the practices of its minorities.

Pitted against this group are those who see India as a progressive, secular nation with uniform laws and universal rights.

''It is a dangerous trend when a minority community says it should be exempted from a Supreme Court judgment because of religion,'' said Subhadra Butalia, a leading feminist writer and lawyer. ''A woman's right to claim redress before a court of law should not be compromised.''

It is estimated that there are 75 million Moslems in India, which is a little more than 10 percent of the population. But the case is more than a new source of grievance from India's largest religious minority or even a new cause celebre for feminists.

In recent weeks, it has become a vexing political quandary for Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an apostle of secularism but a politician worried about losses among his Moslem constituents.

Mr. Gandhi has been meeting with feminist and Moslem leaders in his own party to sort out the issue. His aides are known to be worried about a recent trend in which Moslem voters have been abandoning their longtime support for the ruling Congress Party.

The Moslem defections were hastened by Mr. Gandhi's negotiation of a settlement last year with the leaders of the troubled northeastern state of Assam. The Prime Minister agreed to the disenfranchisement or expulsion of millions of Moslems who had illegally moved to Assam from nearby Bangladesh.

The accord infuriated Moslem leaders. They organized their own political party and in December helped hand Mr. Gandhi's party one of its worst electoral defeats in years. Shaken by the results, the Prime Minister's aides fear that Shah Bano has created a genuine crisis.

Politicians who have met with Mr. Gandhi say he will probably support legislation to reverse the effects of the Shah Bano decision. But feminists have served notice that if this happens, his party will ''forfeit its claim to represent women,'' as one leader put it.

In fact, Moslems in the Congress Party are themselves divided over the case, although those who want the Prime Minister to stand by the Shah Bano decision acknowledge they are in the minority in their communities.

Mr. Gandhi reportedly exhorted a group of feminists not to impose ''Western perceptions'' on others. ''He is very concerned that a Government decision should not start communal bloodshed,'' said Mrs. Butalia, who was among those who met with Mr. Gandhi.

Plaintiff to Drop Claim

Shah Bano herself, meanwhile, has clouded the issue by announcing her intention to drop her claim, saying she was unaware that it violated religious tenets. ''I am an illiterate old woman, so how was I to know all this?'' she said at a news conference in December.

But her case is still on the books, and there has already been a proliferation of court orders for maintenance payments in conformance with it.

The legal basis of the decision is ambiguous, making it all the more controversial.

A section of the national criminal code clearly permits a judge to order payment of a maintenance fee to an impoverished divorced woman.

But some years ago the criminal code was amended to exempt any claim if the woman had already received what she was due ''under any customary or personal law applicable to the parties.''

Moslems say Shah Bano did receive a lump-sum payment upon the divorce, and that Moslem law clearly says a divorced woman's maintenance is to be paid by her own immediate family or the community at large, not by her ex-husband.

In his decision, the Supreme Court's Chief Justice, Y. V. Chandrachud, who has since retired, started further controversy because, in effect, ruled that a maintenance payment was permissible under Moslem personal law.

The idea of a Hindu judge ruling on what is permissible in Moslem law was especially galling to Moslem clergymen. So was the judge's larger suggestion that the nation adopt a clear and uniform code for everyone.