Table of Contents
Courts of injustice
Context The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) is proposing to establish sharia courts all over the country. Darul Qaza (sharia courts?) are not courts in the strictest sense of the term but a counselling or arbitration centres. * The apex court in Vishnu Lochan Madan case (2014) stated that sharia courts are not courts because the Indian legal system does not recognise a parallel judicial system.
Sharia Courts in India
✓Sharia courts have provided speedy and inexpensive justice to poor Muslim women. ✓There are also women-run sharia courts in some parts of India. ✓Maharashtra has the highest number of such courts followed by UP. ✓Their orders are not binding and lack legal sanctity. ✓However, it’s perfectly legal if all the parties concern They preach that triple talaq (instant divorce), nikah halala (a divorced woman must marry another man, sleep with him for a night, then get divorced in order to reunite with her former husband) and polygamy are “Allah’s laws” which none dare question till doomsday come? The decline of the civil justice system is a major phenomenon of our times. In fact, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms are the new normal
Sharia Courts in UK
• In 2008, the UK set up 5 sharia courts whose rulings are enforceable with the full power of the English judicial system.
• But they been a subject of heated debate with any number of women’s rights and human rights groups alleging that “both the intent and the process of the sharia courts is abusive and discriminatory and promote the full range of fundamentalist goals such as strict gender segregation, imposition of hijabs and other dress codes, homophobia, bigotry and discrimination against non-Muslims and Muslim dissenters, blasphemy laws and attacks on apostates.”
• Sharia councils are presided over by hard line or fundamentalist clerics who are intolerant of the very idea that women should be in control of their own bodies and minds. They are often corrupt, primarily interested in making money and abuse their positions of power by shaming and slandering dissenters. •
• Women pay a huge price for not submitting to domestic violenc
• Campaign -“One Law for All”
• In May 2016 home secretary, Theresa May, was forced to appoint a Review Committee to examine “whether, and the extent to which, sharia law is being misused or applied in a way that is incompatible with the law of the land?”
• Review Committee’s recommendations – ✓Amendments to the Marriage Act to ensure that civil marriages are conducted before or at the same time as the Islamic marriage ceremony ✓awareness campaigns – a clear message must be sent that an arbitration that applies sharia law would fall foul of the Arbitration Act and its underlying protection. ✓creation of a body that would set up the process for Sharia councils to regulate themselves.
• UK Home office after the report of review committee- ‘Sharia law has no jurisdiction in the UK and we would not facilitate or endorse regulation, which could present councils as an alternative to UK laws’ • Justice from India’s courts of law is a long-drawn and costly process • An alternative dispute redress mechanism may be a great idea.
• What fidelity (loyalty) will the sharia courts and clerics have towards the constitutional principles of equality (Article 14), non-discrimination (Article 15) and right to life with dignity (Article 21) ?
Sins of Commission
• Charges of sexual abuse on priests in Kerala
• National Commission for Women’s recommendation – confessions in churches be banned over as they could lead to blackmailing of women. • NCW as an institution is failing • ‘Foot soldier of frivolousness’
• No real mechanisms offered for women who want to speak out against abuse by clergy • Only sensationalism and news bytes are targeted
• Becoming a political post for ruling party women leaders
Borders For Doctors – Medical Council of India guidelines are unfair to people with disabilities
Expanded committee on disability constituted under the Medical Council of India (MCI) has recommended that candidates with this learning disability as well as those with autism are not suitable to pursue medical education under the disability quota. Out of 110 students selected under the disability quota in the NEET exam this year, the Directorate of Medical Education declared 8 st Examples of outstanding doctors with disabilities Willem Kolff – dyslexia Father of artificial organs and pioneer of haemodialysis As young doctor in a rural hospital in World War II he invented the first artificial kidney. Later he built the first artificial heart. Dr Suresh Advani – Locomotor disability over 80% Hemato-oncologist Dr BC Roy award, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan. As per the MCI’s guidelines (both new and old), he is not “competent” enough to be a doctor.
• Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 extended the list of disabilities from 7 to 21
• Benefit seen – when a candidate with thalassemia was denied NEET admission , the Supreme Court (SC) directed the government to grant her a seat.
• Policymakers and doctors without the lived experience of having a disability must not assume what persons with disabilities can and cannot achieve.
• The MCI committee, the assessment committee of the health ministry and the job identification committee of the social justice ministry must reevaluate their guidelines and reconstitute their committees with the inclusion of doctors with disabilities.
Can EU ruling affect crop gene research?
➢ Genetically modified organisms (GMO)
• any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques
• introduction of DNA from another organism using recombinant DNA ➢Gene-edited crops (GEC)
•editing of the organism’s native genome. •gene editing does not involve the introduction of DNA from another organism. GEC are made possible by a gene-editing technology called Crispr-cas9
➢ Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats ➢ Done by introducing a protein (Cas9) containing the code of a defective gene
➢ The protein then seeks out parts of the defective DNA that match this code, attaches itself to it, cuts it out, and then the DNA is allowed to repair itself by getting rid of the defect.
➢ ‘’we know exactly which gene would be edited and can be sure that that will happen. In GMO, it is more of trial and error.”
➢ It is virtually impossible to detect whether the DNA of a plant or animal has been edited or not – because the changes involved are indistinguishable from naturally occurring mutations.
➢ GEC are important to increasing productivity of agriculture – Mushrooms that don’t brown. Wheat that fights off disease. Tomatoes with a longer growing season
• EU Court ruled that gene-edited crops are genetically modified organisms, and therefore must comply with the tough regulations that apply to plants made with genes from other species.
• Regulation has traditionally been stricter in Europe than in the US and Canada.
• Other countries like India can follow the EU court lead
• Scientists had hoped that gene editing technologies would find wider acceptance than GMO.
• The new ruling will affect research and development everywhere
• Today India does not have any regulations on CRISPR as it does on GMO crops – but that might change in future.
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