Afterlife of a Landmark

The Shah Bano case redrew the boundaries of Muslim women's rights across India, but what she received was a permanent public trial

- Mohammad Ali

ON a fading street in Indore's old city, where balconies lean toward one another like neighbours in whispered conversation, the woman at the centre of India's most contentious maintenance case lived out her final years in near anonymity. To the world, Shah Bano was a landmark-a name that redrew the boundaries of women's rights. But inside her cramped haveli, she was simply a mother trying to keep her family from collapsing under the weight of a battle she never imagined would reshape the nation.

Mohammed Ahmed Khan, an affluent and well-known advocate, took a younger woman as his second wife 14 years after he had married Shah Bano. After having lived with both wives for years, he threw Shah Bano and her five children out. When he stopped giving her the Rs 200 per month he had apparently promised, she fought-and won-a seven-year legal battle for maintenance.

When the Supreme Court delivered its historic 1985 judgement in Mohd.

Ahmed Khan vs. Shah Bano Begum, it transformed a 62-year-old widow from Indore into a national symbol. But behind the headlines, her family-already fractured by years of marital conflict, financial distress and domestic tension-found their lives permanently reshaped.

Did the court verdict improve their lives? The short answer: No. The longer answer: It may have made them worse.

Four decades have passed. What her children still remember is not the court victory, but the cost they paid, and continue to do so.

"My mother was a simple, purdah-observing woman. Being divorced at the late age of 60, the publicity, paper-baazi...she was very ashamed of all this. She didn't say much but kept stewing over it," Bano's youngest son Jameel remembers.

The judgement did expand the rights of Muslim women across the country, but for the woman who fought the case, the aftermath turned into a kind of quiet punishment.

A Symbol to the Nation, a Scandal at Home