The Kerala High Court’s recent judgment in the case of a 46-year-old beggar seeking polygamy has left many Indians bewildered; both by the facts of the case and the reasoning of the bench. Instead of grounding its decision firmly in the Constitution and the law of the land, the court veered into interpreting the Quran, lecturing on monogamy, polygamy, and Muslim customary law. Last we heard, India was a secular republic and not a Sharia state. But with this judgement, it surely seems there are Sharia courts all around and Sharia law, rather than the Constitution, is what frames the basis of judgements!
If one reads through the judgement, one can conclude that milords have “virtually assumed the theological authority to determine which tenets of a faith are essential to any faith”, as observed by constitutional scholar Rajeev Dhavan.
What Was The Case About?
The facts are stark. A Muslim man who is blind, by his own admission a beggar, marries a second time and intends to marry a third time. When his wife approaches the court for maintenance, the court faces a simple question: Can a man with no means be allowed to evade his responsibilities by hiding behind religious custom? The answer, in any constitutional democracy, should have been a resounding no. Instead, Justice PV Kunhikrishnan embarked on a theological deep dive, interpreting the Quran to conclude that polygamy is an “exception” and that this particular beggar wasn’t following the “true spirit” of the holy text.
The job of the court was straightforward: apply constitutional and statutory law to decide whether a man with no means can shirk his duty of maintenance. Instead, Justice PV Kunhikrishnan chose to interpret the Quran, effectively treating religious scripture, not the Constitution, as the primary authority.
The Taxpayer Subsidy for Religious Choices
The judgment’s implications go further. The court directed the Social Welfare Department to provide the petitioner wives, victims of a man’s deliberate choices, with food and clothing. Wait a minute.
The court’s order effectively creates a perverse incentive: a Muslim man can marry multiple women with zero capacity to support them, and when his wives are left destitute, the state meaning you and I, will pick up the tab.
By directing the state to support the wives, the judgment socializes the costs of one man’s private choices. The message is perverse: a husband may contract multiple marriages without means to support them, while the taxpayer – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian alike is conscripted as a surrogate provider.
This judicial Solomon has essentially declared that when a Muslim man makes personal religious choices, the burden falls on the state and, by extension, on taxpayers who had no role in these matrimonial decisions! Welcome to Sharia Republic!
The husband in this case reportedly earns ₹25,000 monthly through various means including begging. If he possesses the financial capacity to sustain multiple marriages, a right his personal law ostensibly grants, why should the secular state subsidize the consequences? The court has effectively socialized the costs of religious practices, forcing Hindu, Sikh, Christian, and other taxpayers to fund the lifestyle choices permitted under Islamic personal law.
The court’s logic, that a blind beggar cannot be forced to maintain his wife, so society must step in – this is a dangerous inversion of accountability. The man, despite his claim of begging as livelihood, earns enough from various sources to support a modest lifestyle. If he is able to generate income, why should the state, funded by ordinary citizens’ taxes, subsidize his failure to uphold his marital obligations?
The Real “Robots” Would Have Followed the Constitution
The judge notably said, “judges are not robots.” True. But robots would have followed their core programming without deviation. In this case, the core programming for a judge is the Constitution. A truly courageous court would have done two things – upheld the supremacy of constitutional morality over religious personal law, especially in cases involving destitution and gender justice and enforced the husband’s liability by attaching his admitted earnings of ₹25,000, proving that no one, not even a beggar, is above the law.
Instead, the court took the path of least resistance – moralizing about the Quran and writing a blank check on the public exchequer. This judgment sets a dangerous precedent. It tells Muslim men that they can contract multiple marriages without the means to sustain them, and it tells women that their recourse is not against their husband, but a plea for alms from the state.
The Kerala High Court has not delivered justice. It has delivered an Islamic Sharia-compliant sermon, rewarded fecklessness, and punished the common citizen. If this is the new norm, we might as well replace the scales of justice with a begging bowl.
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