Hadiya’s agency upheld

BY pronouncing that the NIA cannot investigate about Hadiya’s marital status, the Supreme Court Bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, has reaffirmed the constitutional right of autonomy and agency of the adult woman. It upholds 24-year-old Hadiya’s freedom to independently choose her life partner, good or bad. It is satisfying that the court, in a long due decision, has stood by the young medical student who has time and again remained unwavered in her decision to have converted and married Shafin Jahan, the man of her choice, on her own. Her conviction in her choice has stood many tests: of time, of parents’ opposition to the marriage, of the annulment of the marriage by the Kerala High Court, of incarceration in her parents’ home and probes by state agencies. 

In these times of polarisation and strengthening of regressive thinking, this decision restores faith in the judiciary’s capacity to provide sane course correction. By hearing the voice of a lone ordinary woman, who finds herself embroiled in an extraordinary case of alleged forced conversion from Hinduism to Islam and allegations of religious indoctrination and alienation by her family, the SC has come across as a champion of liberty and open-mindedness. The underlying message that there be minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens as long as they do not flout any law sets a good precedent. Earlier, in November, the SC had given Hadiya the first reprieve by freeing her from her parents’ custody where she had been confined under a troubling order of the high court. It had asked her to go to the homoeopathy college in Tamil Nadu to complete her course, stopping short of allowing her to live with her husband. Due credit also goes to the husband who appealed against the Kerala High Court annulling their marriage.

But it is not yet “and-they-lived-happily-ever-after” for the young couple. They still face the law in the other cases. The Hadiya case has turned out, also, to be a test of the higher judiciary and its institutional ability to interpret the law irrespective of the ruling passions and prejudices in the society and the political arenas. Mobs cannot be allowed to write judicial verdicts.