Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the debate should be between Muslims who want reforms and those who do not want reforms.
Amid the ongoing debate over the practice of triple talaq, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the government could not allow lives of Muslim women to be destroyed by triple talaq.
Triple talaq is a practice among some Muslims that allows a man to divorce by three consecutive utterances of the word talaq, meaning divorce.
Addressing a rally in Mahoba, a district in the impoverished Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, Modi said, "It is the responsibility of the government and the people of the country to give justice to Muslim women under the Constitution."
"The debate should be between Muslims who want reforms and those who do not want reforms," he added.
Stating that he was surprised that some parties, for vote bank politics, wanted to keep Muslim women bereft of their natural rights, he added, "Is it fair for a man to say "talaq" thrice over the phone and a Muslim woman's life to be ruined?"
The Prime Minister also asked people to not to politicise the issue. "I request people who participate in TV debates not to make women rights into Muslim-Hindu issue. Women's right is a development issue. Let’s take proper measures to give equal rights to women as well."
A day ago, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi had accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "converting the triple talaq issue into a political tool" ahead of assembly elections in some states.
"Around 7.36 crore Muslims are married in the country and they have not divorced. Hardly one per cent of Muslims have gone for talaq. But, (Narendra) Modi is making this a tool in his 'Mann ki Baat' for political gains in view of the forthcoming elections," Owaisi told a public meeting at Kausa in Mumbra township, a Mumbai suburb.
On October 7, for the first time, the Centre had opposed the practise of triple talaq, nikah halala -- in which a divorced couple cannot get back together until the woman marries someone else, and her second husband either divorces her or passes away -- and polygamy among Muslims in the Supreme Court, and had favoured a review on grounds of gender equality and secularism.
The Ministry of Law and Justice, in its affidavit, referred to constitutional principles such as gender equality, secularism, international covenants, religious practices and marital law prevalent in various Islamic countries to drive home the point that triple talaq and polygamy needed to be adjudicated upon afresh by the apex court.
The law panel's move was significant as the Supreme Court had recently said it would prefer a wider debate, in public as well as in court, before taking a decision on the constitutional validity of triple talaq.
(With agency inputs)
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