Daily Times

The Spiritual Science Research Foundation (SSRF), ‘bridging the known and unknown worlds’, is a non-profit research organisation registered in Australia, USA and Europe, founded by ‘His Holiness’ Dr Jayant Balaji Athavale, a Consultant Clinical Hypnotherapist from Mumbai, India. The SSRF has declared that 30 percent of the world is possessed by ghosts and negative energies and women are more prone to demonic possession as compared to men, and in fact, 70 percent women as against 30 percent men attract negative energies! Well, that explains all the ‘demons’ in guise of the other sex that plague women on a daily basis!

Jokes aside, demonic possession is a very serious business, and anyone who saw The Exorcist in their childhood — and yes I know it was rated ‘X’ — would know first-hand the way the bed rose up into the air, the green vomit, the rolling eyes, the blood-curdling voice of the demon, the downright scary actions of the possessed girl; yes, very serious business indeed! Now SSRF describes demonic possession as ‘when a ghost or some other type of negative energy controls the mind (emotions or thoughts) and intellect (decision making ability) of a person by merging with the person’s consciousness. As a result, they also control the person’s actions.’ The esteemed ‘scientists’ of SSRF have given amazingly plausible reasons for their findings, which range from physical to psychological, including ‘personality defects, ego, etc’, and spiritual, and how the negative energy manifests itself according to gender!

Lately, I am of the view that our Union Council personnel and administrators appointed to head them have benefited greatly from the pearls of wisdom that have flowed from the SSRF website and its offices around the world. Though, albeit unfortunately for the 70 percent unpossessed men, the people of Pakistan including women, probably ‘possessed’ and non-possessed both, struggled to get an effective set of family laws legislated more than half a century ago, the women of this country still struggle for their lawful rights. Islam is a lenient and fair religion; it grants women permission and provisions to bow out of a relationship they cannot pull along in. Just as a man has an absolute right of divorce — a much trumped about one, where no reason is required or needs to be assigned to sever the marital tie — women can exercise the absolute right to khula (dissolution of marriage), through the courts of course, and can, if they are lucky enough, exercise the right of tafweez or delegated divorce if they have been given one by the husband. The law says that no matter what the mode of divorce and/or dissolution of marriage, it has to go through an identical procedure to become ‘effective’ after an expiry of 90 days (under normal circumstances) from the date the notice is received. If a woman decides to pronounce talaq (divorce) upon herself in exercise of the delegated right of divorce or obtains a decree of khula from a family court, she has to give a copy of the divorce deed or the court decree along with a mandatory notice to the chairman/administrator of the Union Council (UC) where she resides. The chairman of the UC has to send a summons to both the parties within seven days of receiving such notice to nominate a representative each, who in turn have to respond within seven days of the notice with a nomination. Within 30 days of the notice sent by the party exercising the right to divorce, the chairman has to constitute an Arbitration Council, which has to try and bring about a reconciliation between the spouses. But what happens if the woman does not wish to reconcile with the husband? What if she does not wish to appoint an arbitrator? What if she gives her statement to that effect? Can the chairman or the staff force her to attend reconciliation proceedings against her will? Is this what Islam says?

But the reality is that most UCs have turned into a kind of a ‘torture cell’ for women applicants. After all, isn’t the standard practice of exorcising demons out of a possessed women a good beating with the proverbial jharoo (broom)? The jharoo used by the UC is of procedural delays and hurdles, so much so that the demon that dictates ‘leave-your-husband’, after being dragged, badgered and harassed endlessly, may decide to leave the weak and worn down body and intellect, forcing a battered and exhausted woman into ‘reconciliation’. The sad thing is that when a woman goes to a UC to give notice, no ‘receiving’ on the application/notice is deliberately and malafidely given in order to stretch out the mandatory 90 day period to whatever is needed for a full exorcism. Mostly notices are not issued within the seven-day period, again to facilitate the process of reconciliation; if a woman appears in person, and makes a statement that she does not wish to reconcile, she is harassed and pressurised into submission. At the end of 90 days — mostly there is no end in sight — no certificate for effectiveness of divorce is issued. If anyone ever cared to take a good look at the working of the chairmen/administrators/secretaries of the UCs they would find that more often than not, proper files are not maintained of cases/proceedings. Notices are ‘issued’ and kept in the file to be forcibly signed by the parties and ‘proceedings’ are all written up when the need arises to issue a certificate, mostly in cases where the exorcism has failed, in the same manner as a police investigation officer hurriedly writes up fabricated ‘zimnie’ or ‘daily case diaries’ the night before a court appearance in a criminal case!

The SSRF declares: “Due to women being more emotional and having more destiny to undergo compared to men, fewer of them attain Sainthood. They have to undertake intense spiritual practice to attain Sainthood. There are physical reasons in addition to these spiritual reasons for less women attaining Sainthood.” Well this is absolutely brilliant! Finally, I know, like my countless ‘possessed’ sisters why the prefix of ‘Saint’ eludes our names, though I must admit ‘Saint Hina’ does have a nice ring to it!

The thing wrong with this demonic exorcism is that there are laws — and as long as there are laws in this country, in fact as long as parliament decides not to repeal these laws or the superior courts decide not to strike them down — we are all bound by them, whether we like it or not, demon or otherwise! If someone thinks that women are possessed by demons, let them. If someone else thinks that they are abusing their right of divorce, which is going to lead to a massive destruction of the social fibre, let them, as long as there are laws that grant these rights to women. The breaking-up of a family unit is undesirable but it is so to the same extent and magnitude as when a man is the reason for the break-up. Why should it be different when a woman decides to end a relationship? Blaming women and trying and rope them in with procedural difficulties negates the intention of the legislature and violates the teachings of our religion, causing immense miseries to them. If the ‘possessed’ ‘sainthood-less’ women choose to exercise their rights — whatever they may be, negative energies and all — please, at least give them enough rope to hang; it sure will be better than the noose others put around their necks!

The writer is an advocate of the High Court