UN Commission on Human Rights 55th Session

1 October 1999

Mr/ Madam Chairman,

Minority Rights Group International (MRGs) has recently published a report studying a wide range of human rights violations suffered by Muslim women in India. In this statement we will summarize the reports main findings and recommendations.

India has the second largest population of Muslims of any country, yet nationally they constitute an oppressed minority. Communal bigotry and violence are currently on the increase - the recent killings of Christians (widely reported in the western media) being just one prominent example. In particular, the failure of state protection with regard to minority rights has at times amounted to collaboration in the persecution of Muslims. Wherever religious violence has erupted, women have been particularly vulnerable to gender-specific forms of violence. The report reminds us, for example, of the atrocities in Surat in 1992, when Muslim women were raped and hacked to death by extremist Hindu mobs. No police intervened and no prosecutions have ever resulted.

Muslim women in India, who are an extremely diverse population, have been variously affected by this polarization of politics. On the one hand, there has been an appropriation of Muslim womens issues by the Hindu right-wing, resulting in a campaign to replace Muslim family law with a Uniform Civil Code. This raises fears that an essentially Hindu code may be imposed on the Muslim community in the guise of national integration. On the other hand, extremist Muslim parties also subordinate the rights of Muslim women to their demands for community identity, thus denying them their rights as Indian citizens. As one Muslim woman states: "…the pressure to be the bearer of ones own community has further intensified. We are the ones who are controlled; we are told that we are supporting the BJP [a pro-Hindu Party] if we demand our rights."

Muslim women are among the poorest, most educationally disenfranchised, economically vulnerable and politically marginalized group in the country: 59.5 per cent of Muslim women are illiterate in urban India, compared to 42.2 per cent of Hindu women and 22.7 per cent of Christian women. Similarly, the percentage of women who attend secondary school is far lower for Muslims than for other religious groups. They are often `invisible` workers within the informal economy, having the lowest rate of participation in salaried work of any group in India.

This evidence is in stark contrast to the Indian states proclaimed commitment to enforcement of human rights principles. It is contrary to the ideal of non-discrimination expressed both by international human rights law and Article 14 of the Indian Constitution.

Muslim women, building upon the nascent womens movement at the turn of the last century, are themselves seeking to address this discrimination. Initiatives, such as a series of Public Hearings of Muslim Women instituted by the National Commission for Women, or the efforts of a non-governmental coalition to draft a model marriage contract which could better safeguard Muslim womens rights, deserve our support. They are evidence, Mr/Madam Chairman, of the true universality of human rights.

The Minority Rights Group strongly urges the Indian government and the international community:

1. to ensure that the State Minority Commissions are not disbanded and are allowed to function independently; 2. to support initiatives from within the Muslim community to reform Muslim family law so that it is based on the needs of Muslim women and the principle of equal treatment; 3. to support Muslim womens efforts to reclaim their right to religious knowledge and to participate in the contemporary debate on womens rights within Islam; 4. to support debate within the Indian Muslim community on improving womens socio-economic status and their level of participation in public life, paying particular attention to the education and employment of Muslim women; and 5. to take pro-active steps to achieve these improvements: for example, through the implementation of loan schemes, special schemes for the education of girls and women and the appointment of women teachers, making textbooks available in minority languages and providing adult literacy reading rooms for Muslim communities.

Further, we call upon the Indian government:

1. to take action against those who practise or propagate religious discrimination, and to ensure that educational materials are free from such bigotry; 2. to train police and paramilitary forces on the equal protection of all citizens rights, particularly in situations of communal conflict, and to ensure that minorities are proportionally represented within law enforcement agencies.

In conclusion, we note that the situation of Muslim women in India is in fact common to minority women around the world. Reform is a matter of reconciling the rights expressed in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women with those expressed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. We believe that Muslim women can and should be empowered to achieve this reconciliation of their identities, based upon their own ethical interpretation of Islam.

Thank you, Mr/Madam Chairman.