India

India: Landmark judgement - Best Bakery case

"I am satisfied," commented Teesta Setalvad, the "judge has conducted the retrial in a fair and transparent manner."

India: Beyond borders - shared traditions in Gujarat challenge the communal divide

Exactly four years ago, Gujarat witnessed a state-sponsored genocide that culminated in the deaths of some three thousand Muslims and led to a complete breakdown of inter-community relations, the scars of which have still not healed.

India: India to place new ruling on child marriages

The seemingly ineradicable practice of child marriage in India will face new legal obstacles following a Supreme Court decision requiring marrying couples to register their age and consent with local authorities.

India: Till the state recognises us

The Supreme Court’s directive for compulsory registration of marriages will be nothing short of a revolution. Whether it will lead to a corresponding social revolution in the protection of rights, especially of women and children, remains to be seen.

India: India 'to register all marriages'

India's Supreme Court has given the federal and state governments three months to enact legislation making it compulsory to register all marriages. The court said the public's views would be invited on the new legislation.

India: Don't work with men, Muslim clerics tell Indian women

Muslim women should not work with men or go shopping where they could mix with strangers of the opposite sex, according to an edict issued by the influential All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which claims to represent the nation's 140 million Muslims.

India: Shia cleric advocates family planning

The Shia leader Maulana Kalbe Sadiq has advocated for family planning, and expressed dimay that people link it with religion.

Dossier 27: Reforming Muslim personal laws in India: The Fyzee formula

The recent meeting of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) in Lucknow has once again highlighted the vexed issue of reforms in Muslim personal laws (MPL). Hopes had been raised that the AIMPLB would finally and explicitly outlaw the practice of triple talaq, which is one of the major concerns of the advocates of reform. The AIMPLB, dominated as it is by conservative ulema, did not, in its wisdom, choose to do so, however. All that it decided was to promote awareness about the negative consequences of triple talaq, and encourage, through moral suasion, Muslims to abstain from it.

India: Nikaah in Shiv Sena 'first family'

Times are changing, and faster than Bal Thackeray knows it. The Shiv Sena patriarch watched his party bite the dust yesterday in its Konkan stronghold, routed by a former Sainik.

India: Voices from wounded Gujarat

In a tribal village Tejgarh in rural Vadodara in Gujarat, economic boycott continues vigorously against the petty local Muslim traders even today.