|
Indian
soldier Arif Mohammed spent five years in a Pakistani prison, during
which time his wife remarried, believing he was dead. But then he
returned. Strict sharia law was to decide whose wife she was until
a TV channel - and the whole nation - got involved.
Randeep Ramesh,
Tuesday October 19, 2004, The Guardian
Far from the
sickly-sweet smell of his home in India's northern sugar belt, sapper
Arif Mohammed trudged through the snow of the Siachen Glacier, just
a few months after the world had come close to a nuclear exchange
on the world's highest battlefield.
It was September
1999 and Arif, a soldier in the Indian army's 108 Engineering Regiment,
had not seen much action when Indian and Pakistani troops had fought
over the ice-tipped peaks and frozen wastes of the Himalayas that
summer. Just married to his teenage bride, Gudiya, Arif's thoughts
were of love, not war. But for the next five years, Arif would not
see his wife or his village, or even the craggy ranges of Kashmir
that he once patrolled.
Inadvertently
straying over the border into Pakistan, Arif was captured and held
in prison for half a decade. What happened when he returned last
month, to find his wife not only eight months' pregnant but married
to another man, has gripped India and cast a harsh light on hitherto
private affairs.
Filling television
screens and newspaper columns, the travails of the Mohammed family
have been picked over and consumed by an Indian public rarely exposed
to the intimacies of married life, let alone those of a poor, conservative
Muslim couple.
After Arif
was detained that September, and while he stared at the bare brick
walls of his small, windowless cell in Pakistan, his 16-year-old
bride was pining for her missing husband. But as days became weeks
and weeks became months, the thought of becoming a "half-widow"
gnawed away at Gudiya. She began to spend more time with her mother
and father.
"There
was a decision in my family that Arif was gone," she says.
"I could not go on alone, so it was decided that I should remarry.
I still loved Arif and remembered him and thought about him. I waited
for four years."
Soon Gudiya
met a another man, Taufiq. "Taufiq cared for me and I began
to be slowly involved with him. I had to go on with my life and
that meant slowly trying to forget Arif. You cannot have two husbands.
Life is not a game."
Gudiya decided
to annul the marriage. This should have been a mere formality since
sharia law, which has governed the life of Muslims in India since
the days of the British Raj, allows for the dissolution of a union
after four years. But rather than taking the case to the sharia
courts, Gudiya and Arif's marriage was declared over by a village
priest. This was her first mistake. While the local imam has authority
over many areas, his writ does not run to dissolving the union between
man and wife.
Unbeknown to
Arif, his difficulties were multiplying. Not only had his family
given up on him and his wife left him for another man, but his country
had abandoned him; the Indian army formally declared him a "deserter".
"I spent
my days and nights thinking of going home to see my family and my
wife, that is what kept me alive," says Arif, sitting in the
courtyard of his home in the village of Mundali, 120km from Delhi.
Arif says that
he only found out about his wife's new life from his sister-in-law
when he first returned across the border last month, the event captured
on camera, just as the past month of his life has been. Dressed
in a light blue sherwani, the traditional dress of Pakistan's Punjab
province, and surrounded by the khaki uniforms of Indian officers,
Arif waved, smiled and then broke down sobbing in the arms of his
brother, Abdul Hamid, and sister-in-law, Sanjida. "I was happy
to be back in my country. I was alive again," says Arif. Soon,
however, the mood changed. Gudiya was not there. Hope became dread
in Arif's mind.
"I was
worried then because I had not been able to see or speak to Gudiya.
I then found out she was with a child. It was hard, yes."
Arif could
not come home immediately. He had to be debriefed by the Indian
army, which makes the 29-year-old very cautious when talking about
his "stay" in Pakistan. In the celebration and confusion
of his eventual homecoming, the question over what to do about his
marriage lay unanswered.
There were
lengthy discussions between the three families involved. Religious
leaders were called in and a village council hastily convened.
A two-hour
meeting between Arif and Gudiya - the first time that they had been
alone together since his return home - convinced Arif they could
be happy together. "I asked her if she loved me still. She
said she could and I knew then that we could make this marriage
again," he says. "Gudiya had waited for four years but
there was pressure from family and village to remarry."
The problem
was that while Arif wanted his wife back, he did not want to raise
the child she is expecting. "Gudiya told me that if I did not
accept the child, she would not come back to me."
To make matters
worse, Taufiq, the second husband, also said that he did not want
to give up his new family.
Caught between
two lifes and two loves, a heavily pregnant Gudiya at first said
that she wanted to be with her second husband, then said she would
go back to her first spouse, only to recant both statements.
Because the
first marriage had not been annulled, the issue still had to be
decided under sharia law by Islamic judges, or ulema . Usually,
this would be considered an intensely private affair, but instead
it became public property, thanks to the country's burgeoning rolling
news networks.
One in particular,
Zee News, took great interest in the story and created a show the
like of which had never been seen on Indian television before. Gudiya,
her two husbands and the village elders were persuaded to appear
in a studio in the presence of Islamic scholars, to make a decision
on which husband to stay with and what to do with the child.
The programme
was an immediate sensation. With questions flashing up on the screen,
such as "Whose Gudiya?" and "What kind of relationship?",
viewers were encouraged to ring in with questions for the guests.
While this treatment may be a mainstay of British day-time television,
India's billion plus population has rarely been exposed to the kind
of voyeuristic thrills that shows such as Jerry Springer or Oprah
have brought to the west.
The programme
lasted seven hours and moved from drama to farce. Burning with fever,
Gudiya spoke from beneath the folds of an orange duppatta to say
that she was not "above the sharia" and that she would
abide by whatever decision was arrived at.
The mock village
council, or panchayat , decided that Gudiya would return to Arif
and that the child would be raised in his house for a few years.
The decision, which was attributed to Gudiya but was heavily influenced
by the priesthood, was unsurprisingly popular with community leaders.
A bearded Islamic
scholar, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, broke down in tears at the end
of the programme saying that he, "had not thought how important
a role television can play for society".
Taufiq, having
lost both a wife and his child, looked dumbstruck and since the
programme has disappeared from public view. His father rushed out
of the studio and demanded half a million rupees (£6,000)
in compensation.
Arif and Gudiya,
meanwhile, have gone back to his home in Mundali. While they appear
reconciled, there are still issues over what will happen to the
new addition to their family. Although he beams for photographs,
Arif still says that the child his wife is expecting is his erstwhile
rival's. He looks blank when questioned about what happens after
the child is born, saying that, "If Gudiya wants to keep the
kid herself then I have no problem. The ulema said it is Taufiq's
child. So it is right for it to go back to him."
Sitting in
a cool, dark room, Gudiya shifts uncomfortably under the weight
of her belly. The 21-year-old speaks slowly and without much feeling.
"I do not know what the fate of the baby will be. Please do
not ask me about its future. Who knows if it will live?" It
is hardly a vote of confidence in the new baby's future.
When asked
about such dire musings, Arif says that his wife is ill and that
he will look after her. After all, he points out, he has five years'
pay to collect. He has plans to build a "double-storey home"
in the village. "There is a lot I want to do. I want to go
back to my unit and serve my country. But I will be taking my wife
with me this time." |
