ABSTRACT
On 22 August 2017, the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark judgment, terming the pronouncement of instant triple talaq (talaq-e-biddat or heretical and irregular mode of divorce) as ‘unconstitutional’ by a 3:2 majority vote in a five-judge bench. In this respect, this chapter will analyse the legal and the theological discourse that has been part and parcel of the public debates on instant triple talaq and how the judicial pronouncement has created a condition for the possibility of reforming the Muslim Personal Law in India. In doing so it will foreground a precedence of deterrence to instant divorce in Islamic history and Islamic theological discourses.
