Missing: Muslim women in Parliament

Ambedkar condemned the Manusmriti for legitimising both caste and gender degradation, famously burning it in 1927. To him, women's subjugation marked a society bereft of moral compass. Nehru concurred, declaring that 'the women of India have an additional task… to free themselves from the tyranny of man-made customs and laws'. Both leaders sought egalitarian modernity, but their efforts did not—or could not, in the face of Indian society—go far enough. Muslim women have been especially excluded from politics since independence. While India's democratic arena promised individual agency, Muslim women's participation has remained minimal. The issues most pressing for their welfare—maintenance after divorce (as in the Shah Bano case), triple talaq (in the Shayara Bano case) and polygamy—have been fought in courts and civil society forums rather than Parliament, where their absence has silenced their voices. Even in the Constituent Assembly of 299 members, only 15 were women, and just one was Muslim: Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasool. She championed civic nationalism and opposed communal representation. Later, as a Rajya Sabha member, she fought against clerical diktats, working to deliver Muslim women not as privileged as herself from the suffocating grasp of intra-religious domination, all in the face of formidable odds. 'There was,' wrote she in her autobiography, From Purdah to Parliament, 'much propaganda against me, especially a fatwa by the ulemas that it was un-Islamic to vote for a non-purdah Muslim woman.' Before the first general elections, Nehru urged Chief Ministers to allow women provincial legislators to resign and contest Parliament. His vision of women MPs shaping laws and expanding rights has remained elusive. Out of the 18 Lok Sabhas till 2025, five had no Muslim woman MP at all. Never has their number exceeded four in a single tenure. Today we stand at half that number. Women's voices, and especially those of minority women, are indispensable in the nation's highest deliberative forum because they bring lived experiences that differ profoundly from those of the male majority. Policies on education, healthcare, employment, family law, and social welfare affect women in ways that men cannot fully grasp. Minority women, in particular, often face a double burden: discrimination on account of both gender and community. Their presence in Parliament ensures that legislation reflects the realities of those who are most vulnerable, and that the promise of democracy (and in particular of that much-vaunted trio, liberty, equality, fraternity) is not hollow rhetoric but a lived truth. Without their voices, the nation risks crafting laws blind to the needs of nearly half its citizens and deaf to the concerns of those pushed to the margins.