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Foreword - The <strong>Shah</strong> <strong>Bano</strong> Hullabaloo in India<br />

regards the third proposition, again it is difficult to find fault with the<br />

learned judges of the Supreme Court.<br />

Thus it is difficult to find a rational explanation for the outcry that<br />

the learned pontiffs and their supporters mounted in the aftermath of<br />

the <strong>Shah</strong> <strong>Bano</strong> judgement.<br />

The <strong>Shah</strong> <strong>Bano</strong> case sharply divided the independent Muslim<br />

intelligentsia from the reactionary pontiffs and their henchmen. At a<br />

reception hosted by a foreign embassy in New Delhi, Mrs. Humayun<br />

Khan, wife of the Pakistan envoy at New Delhi, told me, “Five Muslim<br />

Ambassadors from five Muslim countries were at my husband’s house<br />

last night. They all agreed that the Supreme Court of India correctly<br />

decided the meaning of the Holy Quran.” An impressive list of former<br />

Indian diplomats and vice-chancellors of universities met the Prime<br />

Minister, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, and asked him to go slow with any<br />

legislation contemplated to nullify the Court’s decision.<br />

During the apogee of this agitation and controversy, in February<br />

1986, I was invited to address a mass meeting of 25,000 Muslims at<br />

Calcutta, in the open air Netaji Stadium. I supported the Supreme<br />

Court decision. As soon as I read out Imam Shafei’s ruling on this<br />

question, the large audience expressed their satisfaction at the<br />

decision of the Supreme Court. Shortly afterwards, in the municipal<br />

elections, they voted en masse for the Marxist party and government<br />

that had openly stood by the Supreme Court. But the politicians in<br />

New Delhi had set their course.<br />

Nevertheless, it is undeniable, as noticed by the eminent Judge and<br />

Jurist, former judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Krishna Iyer, that<br />

there occurred at this time an unprecedented uproar that echoed<br />

throughout the country and, indeed, the media world. This provoked<br />

even a sober and sympathetic observer like him to comment:<br />

The fundamentalist fusillade, fuelled by the “red flag” of “religion in<br />

danger” has inaugurated a “jurisdictional jihad” against the Court. The<br />

argument is that Muslim Personal Law is of Koranic vintage to be handled<br />

with care exclusively by Kazis and Ulema, unpolluted by heathen robes of<br />

the highest Court. This sacerdotal logic takes one to the silent legitimacy<br />

of the militant pleas that even Parliament cannot legislate on Muslim<br />

Personal Law. Bluntly put, behind this obscurantism is a poisonous<br />

political theory, a new testament of the dead two nation theory, a hard<br />

core negation of the secularity, integrity and authority of the State to<br />

adjudicate or legislate for Muslims. 5<br />

5. Manthan Quarterly, New Delhi, July 1986, pp. 35 fol, at p. 38.<br />

9

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