From Shah Bano to Manusmriti: Reading Tahir Mahmood’s Writings Within a Long Tradition of “Protection” as Control

IN HIS SEPTEMBER 1, 2026 Indian Express commentary on the Manusmriti, legal scholar Prof. Tahir Mahmood (former Dean, Law, University of Delhi, and an AMU alumnus) purports to rescue ancient legal traditions from the perceived distortions of colonial translation by offering a benevolent, protective reinterpretation of the famous verse Na striswatantrayamarhati. He contends that when the text sequentially places a woman under the guardianship of her father in childhood, her husband in youth, and her son in old age, it does not declare her inferior or unfit for independence. Instead, Mahmood argues that the verse imposes a sacred obligation of “protection” (raksha) and safety upon her male relatives. By translating swatantrayamarhati as “never left unprotected,” he attempts to harmonize classical Dharmashastric jurisprudence with modern statutory maintenance laws, asserting that male oversight is merely an ancient counterpart to a family’s legal duty to provide food, housing, and security for dependent women. 

For illustration, Sir William Jones (1794) in Institutes of Hindu Law: or, the Ordinances of Manu, translated swatantrayamarhati as “never fit for independence” (or in related passages as, “ought never to enjoy independence”), creating the classical British legal rendering that entered Anglo-Hindu colonial jurisprudence. British Indologist Sir George Bühler (1886), In The Laws of Manu (Oxford University Press, Vol. 25, of Sacred Books of the East), similarly rendered it as, “A woman is never fit for independence.” Meanwhile, Prof. Tahir Mahmood renders the concept as “never left unprotected” by re-reading swatantryam not as political or personal “freedom”, but as absence of protection/custody, understandably, drawing from classical Indian commentators such as Medhātithi and Rāghavānanda, who interpreted svātantryam in this specific context as rākṣitṛ-rahitatvam, that is, “being left without a guardian or protector”.

However, when this 2026 defense of ancient Hindu jurisprudence is placed alongside Mahmood’s long-standing jurisprudential positions, most notably his January 1986 Frontline interview during the Shah Bano controversy, a consistent ideological trajectory emerges. Far from a progressive effort to humanize legal history, Mahmood’s intellectual framework represents a sophisticated defense of systemic patriarchy. Across four decades, his legal logic systematically rebrands female subordination as benevolent care, denies women’s non-monetary economic contributions, and reduces women to perpetual financial and social liabilities who require lifelong male custodianship.

The ‘protection’ argument is a facade for misogyny

A foundational pillar of Mahmood’s legal philosophy is the absolute rejection of women’s independent economic agency within the marital unit. In his 1986 Frontline interview (“Secularism on the Bend”), Mahmood forcefully criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mohammed Ahmad Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985), which had granted a meagre maintenance allowance to a 73-year-old divorced woman under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Mahmood argued that Shah Bano was not entitled to maintenance from her former husband because she was an affluent woman with three adult, solvent sons—one of whom was a practicing lawyer. Under his interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence, the primary financial liability to support an elderly mother falls squarely upon her male offspring rather than her former spouse, regardless of the duration of the marriage.