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From: rao@cvl.UUCP (Kambhampati Subbarao)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: Supreme Court Judgement
Message-ID: <1046@cvl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 14-Dec-85 14:24:56 EST
Article-I.D.: cvl.1046
Posted: Sat Dec 14 14:24:56 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Dec-85 04:52:53 EST
References: <2599@sunybcs.UUCP> <1031@cvl.UUCP> <2522@umcp-cs.UUCP> <4271@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: rao@cvl.UUCP (Kambhampati Subbarao)
Organization: Computer Vision Lab, U. of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 40

In article <4271@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> bhatnaga@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Bhatnaga) writes:
>						 Still, in my opinion 
>she deserves all the praise. Before  yielding she started and fought a war 
>which can be termed to be the first of its kind in India or possibly in the 
>world- a woman's fight against fundamentalism. I sizable percent of moderate 
>muslims, big percentage of muslim and non-muslim Indian women a significant
>percentage of all men had their sympathies with her. It must also have 
>forced some people to do some soul-searching.
>
>Neeraj Bhatnagar
>------ ---------

	I always felt a uneasy about the special status the Indian judicial
system gives the Muslim minority.. the foremost among those being allowing 
such things as polyandry, divorces which put the male partner at tremendous
advantage etc. All this when there is a separate sensible 'marital law' 
governing the rest of the country.  I mean religious tolerance is one thing
and giving the type of privileges as above another. I do not want our 
system to parallel those of some arab countries where the law of the
land blindly enforces the tenets of the majority religion on people
who do not belong to it.  But such muslim marital practices as are condoned
by the indian courts are clearly unjust (by any rational standards) and
discriminate against the muslim women while trying to give religious 
independence to 'islam'.  To me giving religious freedom or independence
does (should) not imply that state should condone practices of a group 
that are deemed to be harmful to some other citizen of the state just to
preserve the speicial status of the said group. (An interesting example
i came across is the case of a chrisitian fundamentalist group some where
in midwest usa who believe that any type of medical help is against god. 
I believe the members of the group try to 'faith heal' their ailing children
and this has caused high 'infant mortality rates' among the group.  Now 
should or should'nt US prosecute the group members?!)
Thus I think it is time indian penal code was changed to make such special
previleges accorded to muslims void.. any comments?
-rao
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