In India, instant Islamic divorces — known as 'triple talaq' — face a supreme court challenge

Imagine if getting a divorce only took having to mumble (or email or text) three words to your wife and the whole thing would be over.

Now the practice, which is banned in much of the Islamic world, faces a test in India — home to the world’s third-largest group of Muslims and one of the last places it is permitted — as the nation’s supreme court considers a case seeking to end the custom.

In “triple talaq,” a man only has to say or write the word “talaq” (divorce) to his wife three times, and the marriage is considered to be over.

There have even been instances where Skype, WhatsApp or Facebook have been used for the purpose.

According to the BBC, the case is being heard by a bench of five judges — a Hindu, a Sikh, a Christian, a Zoroastrian and a Muslim. The suit, which is supported by the government of reformist Prime Minister Narenda Modi, is the result of several petitions by rights groups and Muslim women.

Meanwhile, Muslims who support the practice cite the separation of government and religion, the BBC reported, and that the courts have no role in reviewing it.

Also at issue is the plight of the divorced women in a country with almost no safety nets, who either end up back with their parents or facing extreme poverty. According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, a woman divorced under India’s secular laws is entitled to a third of her ex-husband’s salary while she most often receives nothing following triple talaq.

Mother-of-two Shayara Bano, 35, one of the petitioners challenging the ritual, told the BBC that she was visiting her parents in her home state in October 2015 when she received a letter from her husband telling her that he was divorcing her and cutting off communication.

"He's switched off his phone, I have no way of getting in touch with him," she told the BBC. "I'm worried sick about my children, their lives are getting ruined."

A women’s rights activist, Zakia Soman, told the Guardian that triple talaq is “a totally unilateral” and one-sided. “The wife need not be present,” she added. “She need not even be aware.”

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The custom persists in India, the paper reported, in part because the British, who ruled India until 1947, permitted India’s huge number of religious groups to run their faiths separate from government regulations. After independence, much of the Indian legal system became based on colonial-era practices, meaning that Muslims can be governed by the Islamic laws, known as sharia.

Soman, however, says sharia has no references to talaq. “Triple talaq is totally un-Quranic,” she told the Guardian. “The Quran nowhere has any mention of it. A Muslim marriage is a social contract and the right to divorce is given to both husband and wife.

“The Quran insists that if and when divorce happens it has to be just and fair to both parties,” she added.

Testimony in the case is expected to end on May 19 with a decision coming several weeks later.