Talking to Mrs Uzma Naheed was an amazing experience being that she is extremely experienced and knowledgeable in her field as well as being a well-known and respected women’s rights activist in India and around Asia. She is on the board of an NGO in India called Iqra International Women’s Alliance (IIWA), focussing on empowering women and fighting for their rights all across India. One of her biggest accomplishments was a mecca contract she had designed that provided women with the proper recourse and support against Instant Talaq. This contract had taken her ten years to implement and put into effect.

Being a woman, my initial assumption about her view was that she would be for the bill as it meant that women who had been affected by Instant Talaq would get to see justice. However, her perspective surprised me when she said that she believed that Talaq should be allowed in India. Nevertheless, she did believe that the current issue in India is a misuse of the proper form of separation and that the bill is not the right course of action to take in such a situation.

Firstly, she believes that this misuse comes from lack of knowledge about the Quran and the proper way to give Talaq. She stated that the proper way to give Talaq is in periods, which give the man and the woman time to reconsider their decision which can sometimes be said in the heat of the moment. A very interesting point that Mrs Naheed had pointed out was that the Talaq will not be considered if the man is under the influence of alcohol, not paying the fees he has to, not maintaining his marital duties or if he has been beating her. However, she mentioned that without this knowledge, people will give Talaq under these conditions.

As for a solution to the problem, she believes that the current bill is not the right way to go. Because the man is the earning member of the family, she believed that the bill will result in more bad than good. With the man in jail, the family will lose their source of income, which is not of benefit. Her solution is that there should be a monetary punishment for not giving Talaq the right way, which would mean that the man will have to reconsider before misusing the “law”.