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Unfortunate legacy from a confused irreligious PM

Reader comment on item: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East
in response to reader comment: India is also an example...

Submitted by Devasahayam (United States), Jun 19, 2008 at 09:16

This particular allowance to that huge minority was enacted by Rajiv Gandhi after a Muslim was ordered by court that his "3-talaq" divorce did not exempt him from alimony obligations (the man was about 72, the woman Shah Bano about 63) especially after 40 years marriage--after India's horrible top mullah Abdullah Bukhari (his equally horrible son Ahmed now occupies that post) had pressed him on this.

Note also that the Shah Bano divorce case occured after Muslims (urged-on by Bukhari, and MP Syed Shahabuddin) had started riots in Meerut and Bijnaur Districts in 1987!

Rajiv Gandhi's father was a Mumbai Parsi named Firoz, no relation to "Nation's Father" Mohandas:

  • his birth certificate was marked "Birjis" (a Parsi name--though he wasn't raised as one, after his parents separated)
  • his marriage certificate was marked "Robert"
  • he showed the proof of his lack of religiosity in attempt to win hearts of Prayag-constituency voters in a 1988 byelection--by displaying "sacred thread" over outer garments--act equivalent to one in West doing so with undergarments! Needless to say, this backfired handing a decisive victory to another party's candidate, Vishwanath Pratap Singh (who later served as India's PM for less than one year).
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