South Asia Citizens Web

Former Dean of Delhi University’s Law Faculty and former Chairman of the National Commission for Minorities Prof Tahir Mahmood is an internationally recognised expert on Muslim Law. He speaks on the system of divorce among Muslims and how maulvis and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board have thwarted reforms that could have benefited the community. Excerpts from an interview:
In your book, Introduction to Muslim Law, you have written, 'In India Muslim law is applied as a part of the (…)

PUDR strongly condemns IG Bastar, SRP Kalluri’s threat of taking severe action against certain NGOs in Chhattisgarh for allegedly aiding and abetting the Maoists under the guise of helping Adivasis. At a recent Press Conference he said that many such organisations were already under surveillance. The IG‘s list of suspicious activities included providing legal assistance to ‘Naxalites’ – a thinly veiled reference to the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JagLAG), a small NGO active in Bastar since 2013, that provides legal aid to Adivasis many of whom are falsely implicated in cases of Naxal activities.

how will ordinary citizens have confidence in the impartiality, fairness, objectivity and independence of a person who owes his current position as Governor of a state to the pleasure of the ruling Central Government?

In times when political parties are led by supremos for seemingly endless durations, what a welcome contrast the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has provided us!...

What are we afraid of? What are our generals afraid of? Is Pakistan a morsel on a map that anyone can swallow? But we conduct ourselves and we talk as if we face an ‘existential’ threat from our neighbour to the east. I wish we would take this word existential out of our lexicon. It has been worked to death. The only threat Pakistan faces is: 1) from incompetence and 2) from fantasies about ‘jihad’ — about conquering lands to our west and east, fantasies which have brought us to our present pass.