Triple Talaq: A Comparative Study Of Reforms In Pakistan, Egypt, And India
Ms. Kalyani Acharya, Assistant Professor of Law,School of Legal Studies, Department of Laws, Central University of Himachal Pradesh
Prof. (Dr.) D.P. Verma, Principal and Head of Law, Regional Centre of Himachal Pradesh University, Dharamshala
ABSTRACT
The instantaneous, extra-judicial repudiation of marriage known as talaq-e- biddat, or triple talaq pronounced in a single sitting, occupies a contested space between classical Islamic jurisprudence and modern statutory law. Although a majority of classical Sunni jurists treated the practice as legally binding despite condemning it as sinful, a substantial number of Muslim- majority and Muslim-minority states have, over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, restricted or abolished it by statute. This paper undertakes a comparative doctrinal and legal-historical study of three jurisdictions that responded to the problem of triple talaq through markedly different legislative strategies: Egypt, which pioneered procedural reform through the Personal Status Law of 1929 and its 1985 amendment; Pakistan, whose Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 embedded triple talaq within a mandatory arbitration-and-reconciliation framework without criminalising it; and India, which arrived at reform only in 2017 through constitutional adjudication in Shayara Bano v. Union of India, followed by criminal legislation in 2019. The paper's central argument is that these three jurisdictions do not represent interchangeable variations on a single reform agenda, but three distinct legislative logics substantive redefinition of talaq's legal effect, procedural constraint on its exercise, and criminal deterrence against its pronouncement and that, of the three, Pakistan's model of procedural neutralisation offers the most balanced template for reform elsewhere, because it targets the absence of notice, arbitration, and a reconciliation period that makes triple talaq harmful, without exposing the practice to the disproportionate and potentially counter-productive instrument of criminal law. Drawing substantially on Muhammad Munir's comparative account of reform trajectories across Muslim states, the paper further argues that Egypt's approach demonstrates the value of early, incremental codification, even though its own procedural safeguards developed only gradually over the course of the twentieth century. The paper concludes with recommendations for how procedural safeguards, rather than criminal sanction, might better protect the interests of Muslim women without provoking a backlash rooted in claims of religious persecution.
