Oral Divorce in India: Muslim Divorce by Voice or Text No Closer to Ending

This week on WINGS, we hear a documentary on the conditions faced by suddenly-divorced women in India.  During the past three years, Muslim women in India have held protests against a system that allows them to be left destitute with their children by a brief oral statement (or even a text message) from their husband. A draft codification of Muslim family law has gone nowhere.

Featured guests/speakers:

Protesters Nazima Khatoon, Asiyan Bibi, Rukmina Bibi; divorced/separated women Nazima Bibi and Fatema Bibi; Afroza Khatoon. chief of the local West Bengal women’s rights organization Rokeya Nari Unnayan Samity; Ayesha Khatoon, of the Muhammed Bazar backward class development society; eminent lawyer and woman activist Chandrayee Alam; Mrs Sunanda Mukherjee, chairperson, West Bengal State Women’s Commission; Muslim educationist and former member of the West Bengal State Women’s Commission, Mrs. Miratun Nahar.

Credits:

Produced by Kalpana Pradhan; series producer, Frieda Werden.


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