RELIGION BULLETIN-BANGLADESH: Family Laws Need to Include Women

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Tabibul Islam

SYLHET, Bangladesh, May 24 1998 (IPS) - Twenty four-year-old Alauddin was on the frontpage of national dailies in Bangladesh recently for marrying 17 times.

“Marriage,” the struggling cycle-rickshaw driver from a village in Sylhet, 240 km east of Dhaka, boasted, “is my hobby.” He went on to assert that marriage posed no financial burdens on him, instead he got to keep the money his wives earned.

“My wives mostly work in the houses of well-to-do people in the nearby neighbourhoods and hand over their earnings to me every month,” he was quoted saying.

Only five of those he married have remained. The rest have left him, but not because he forced them out, Allauddin likes to insist. While three are living on their own, in separate homes, two stay with him including Nurjahan, who he married a year ago.

Though still in her teens, Nurjahan had two children from a previous husband, but they no longer live with her. Asked if the gossip about Allauddin and his many wives bothered her, she said firmly, “I don’t care what people say. The fact is as I have a husband, no man will dare to take advantage of me. I am at least safe.”

There are hundreds of women in Bangladesh who would agree with Nurjahan that marriage gives them a status that society otherwise denies women in Bangladesh, particularly in the rural areas where women are considered “drawers of water and hewers of wood”, says sociologist Katherine Rozario in Sylhet.

“Most people treat their wives as a pair of shoes, taking a second or a third paid at their sweet will and turning them out of their houses any time they want,” said Rozario, an associate professor in the Science and Tecnology University.

The 1974 census pegged the number of polygamy marriages in Bangladesh at 140,000. That figure rose by six times in 1981, shooting up to 1.4 million in 1991. Demographers believe that the numbers are probably much higher.

Afzaddun Sarkar, 71, a very wealthy land-owner here, took a young woman, who could have been his grand-daughter, as his fourth wife recently. Her parents said they gave their daughter in marriage, because Sarkar was very wealthy and would take care of her.

Polygamy is permitted under Islamic law — allowing men to marry as many as four times. The social scales are tilted against women, who would generally never challenge divorce, or fight for maintenance and custody of their children.

Under this country’s Muslim Family Law of 1961, a man has to get the consent of his first wife if he wants to marry a second time. Lawbreakers could be punished with a jail term of a maximum one year and fine of 1,000 takas.

In 1992, the government further amended the Muslim Family Law to tighten loopholes and make polygamy less easy.

According to the amendment, if a man wants to marry a second time, he has to apply to the Union Council chairman and the petition must be endorsed by his first wife. The chairman will then give him written permission after consulting with an arbitration council that inludes two representatives from both sides – husband and wife.

The arbitraton council will first verify the husband’s stated reason for wanting to take a second wife that could range from claiming that his wife is mentally unsound or sterile, or unwilling to live with the husband, before deciding on the matter.

However, there are loopholes to even this. There have been instances when the Union Council chairman’s decision has swung in the favour of a rich claimant for divorce and a wife forced to accept a second wife with threats of divorce.

Only when a man marries a second time without the permission of his first wife and the Union Council does the Muslim Family Law permit her to seek divorce and compensation.

For years, women activists in Bangladesh have been campaigning for just laws for women in a country where ironically the two most powerful political leaders are women, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, and her predecessor, now main opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia.

Advocate Sigma Huda, an activist, stresses the need for waging a relentless movement for the realisation of the rights of women in all spheres of life.

Though women constitute roghly 48 percent of the population,

they lag behind the men in all spheres. “e have a long way to go for the introduction of a uniform family code and realisation of many other rights,” she said.

The present Awami League government has no plan to reform laws to regulate polygamy. Most women activists admit that this would be too much to expect also from a society where male domination is widespread.

Only a concerted struggle by activists will change the status quo and return to women the rights of gender equality they deserve.