On 22nd August, the Supreme Court of Indias five judge bent ruled that instant Triple Talaq

was illegal and unconstitutional. This is but a small change in the Muslim Personal Law in
the Indian Union which needs much more comprehensive reform. In the 1950s, several
laws passed by the Parliament of India to codify and reform Hindu personal law in
India. Muslim personal law was left untouched. There run up to this verdict and its
aftermath has been clinched upon by media agencies as a public discussion point. In
this case the religious group in question was the minority. These were the Hanafi law
following Sunni Muslims of the Indian Union who's practices were in question.

The large swathe of British acquired lands of South Asia was partitioned in 1947. This
resulted in two religious communally majoritarian states and as of 2017 three communal
states. In each of these entities, what is common among the constitutions is that everybody
has the freedom to practice their religion. What is not common is whether a particular
religion in an official sense has some special status in the state though unofficially all the 3
states are religious majoritarian states. This was Hinduism in the Indian Union and Islam
in Pakistan and later also in the People's Republic of Bangladesh. In each of these cases there
exists in practice a hierarchy in a religious sense about who is a first class citizen and who is
not. This has important implications if you are a first class citizen, that is, the state has been
formed tacitly in your name to secure your benefits in preference to everybody else's. Then
the state speaks in the voice of that first class. That voice is not neutral. It can never be
neutral but it is dangerous and sociopathic when it actively marginalizes minorities who have
no power to defend or to lean on. This marginalization can take many forms. The commonest
form of this is not active destruction but the withdrawal of resources and attention. For this
can be called the policy of calculated apathy. Here the minority is left as to stew in its own
soup. In this way of looking at things, an analogy is helpful. The first class citizen is of a
particular religious identity. That first class citizens religion and its various forms or
whatever goes under the name religion can be reformed by parliamentary will. It will be
considered as if they are the states own children. When you have your own children you are
concerned about their future trajectory. You have empathy and concern. The practical
meaning of such empathy and concern is resources and attention from the political class, the
media class, the judicial class as well as civil society, considering it a priority question. You
can be harsh with your own child, for his own good, with less riskschants of My religion is in
danger going forward. As for the minorities, they face harshness on most matters except
those about their internal religious matters. This lack of harshness is lack of considering the
minority as own. This non-interference is neglect. It is the opposite of freedom.

The religious majority is like the own child. Its concerns are everybodys concerns and it can
be reformed on a priority basis. However for the religious minority in any such entity who are
left to stew in their own soup, such privileges are not available. They have to shout much
shriller than others to make their voices heard or hope to become a pawn in a political game
like the triple Talaq issue became one in the hands of the BJP. When that happens, a sordid
display of opportunism and cunning is seen. The party of anti Muslim mass killings of
Gujarat also doubles up as the friend of Muslim women.

The religious minority is considered somebody else's child in this post partition
subcontinental religion national imaginary. Thus, Muslims of the Indian Union are children
of Pakistan by definition. In certain areas of the Indian Union, Muslims also tend to be
children of Bangladesh. The Indian Union is only holding other people's children indefinitely
and as infants a crche of sorts. One does not care for and hence think of reforming the
children of others as one does for ones own progeny. Some significant sections of the
political class within the Indian Union consider the continued presence of these others
children as the unfinished project of partition. This is true for Hindus in Pakistan and
particularly true to this day for Hindus of Bangladesh. Pakistan became almost minority free
in all practical purposes quite soon after its formation. The anti Hindu narrative, though used
to inculcate religious hate ideology within the Muslim population, has relatively less practical
implications when compared to the Bangladesh situation where Bangladesh Hindus are still
a non-negligible proportion of population. Hindus of Bangladesh and Pakistan belong to
India by the same logic and this is a charge they often hear - of dual loyalty. As far as this
discussion goes, they are considered not even the stepchild but the child of someone else,
whose long-term well-being is not your concern. Hence if there are serious situations within
it, if there is no particular political mileage to be gained, it can be left to fester because you do
not beat up another person's child. This is dangerous logic because the practical meaning of
not beating up course means lack of state support and attention to problems. Those
problems have real consequences and real victims. The lack of attention means the states
indifference to the plight of the victims Muslims in India. Thus family and inheritance laws
that are more regressive then the ones prevalent in Pakistan and Bangladesh govern them.
Similarly Hindus of Bangladesh are governed by much more regressive laws compares to
those that the Hindus of the Indian Union live by . Often, this means even means no law. Till
recently, marriages of Hindus in Bangladesh were not registered and divorce has no place in
the Hindu personal law of Bangladesh. This is also a legacy of Partition. We often think of
Partition as an effect of religion. As is turns out, religion indeed has shaped Partition but
Partition has also shaped religion in South Asia.