Triple talaq stayed due to appeasement: Shah

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

Union Home Minister and BJP president Amit Shah today said politics of appeasement was the reason for the continuance of the “evil practice” of triple talaq for so long. He was speaking at an event organised by the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation on ‘Abolition of Triple Talaq: Correcting a Historic Wrong’.

Shah defended the law criminalising triple talaq stating that it established gender equality. “Some people level allegations against the BJP government that such action is anti-Muslim. I want to make it clear that this is only and only to benefit Muslims, not Hindus, Jains or Christians,” Shah said.

Terming the practice a "nightmare" for crores of Muslim women who were denied of their rights, he came down heavily on the Congress for continuing to oppose the law. Shah said it took several decades to end the “evil practice” because of the Congress that “always followed politics of appeasement”. Referring to the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to bring a law to overturn the Supreme Court judgment in the Shah Bano case, he said it was a “black day” in the history of Parliament.

There is no doubt in the minds of those favouring triple talaq and those opposing it that it was an "evil practice". People should welcome moves for eradication of any evil practice, but there is opposition for which “politics of appeasement is responsible”, he said.

Shah said in the five-and-a-half years, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government had taken more than “25 historic decisions”, giving the country a new direction. This, he added, was a “reflection on Prime Minister Modi’s decisive leadership”.

“The Modi government has been working for the all-round development of all classes of people,” he said.