By: Abdul Rashid Agwan
The reporting in Indian Express about the recently released data on community-wise divorce rates in the country is not objective from any count. The heading of the article wrote by Zeeshan Shaikh, “Muslim women of age 20-34 remain most vulnerable to divorce: Census”, is itself telling. The timing of the release of data by the Ministry of Home Affairs strangely coincides with the case of triple divorce already under hearing in the Supreme Court. The policymakers of the community are eagerly waiting for literacy and other educational data of religious demography appertained to census 2011 but they are now burdened with marriage data to deal with. The article places as backgrounder the debate on Uniform Civil Code and issues related to Shah Bano case, which seem beyond the scope of the article. While mentioning age-specific vulnerability among Muslims, the writer has not mentioned the state of affairs in an analytical way.
The divorce rate of Muslim women was 5.3 per thousand women in 2001 census, which has become 5.63 in 2011 census, showing a slight increase in a decade’s time. So in a decadal scene, nothing unusual has happened with the community in the backdrop of faster divorce growth rates among other sections.
In an article published in New Indian Express in April 2015, while quoting census 2011, it has been mentioned, “The proportion of divorced and separated has marginally increased in the case of both the sexes.” A BBC report of 2011 highlights the rising menace of divorce in India thus, “There’s been a 100% increase in divorce rates in the past five years alone.” Last year, Hindustan Times reported, “This is an unusual trend in a country where the divorce rate was just 1 in 1,000 ten years ago, and is still a relatively low 13 per 1,000 – as compared to the US average of 500 per 1,000. While India has no central or even state-wise registry of divorce data, family court officials say the number of divorce applications has doubled and even tripled in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Lucknow over the past five years.”
Great!