ESSAYS HMAHMADAN SOCIAL REFORM. DELAWAR. R IIOSAEN AHMED MEERZA. VOL. II. CAJLCUTTA TIIACKEK, SPINK AND CO. Solar Jlejreh ia68-6g. CALCUTTA PRINTED BY MESSRS. THACKER, 6PINK AND CO. A. D. 1889. CONTENTS. Page. 5. NOTES ON MOHAMMAD AN MABEIAGES AND DIVORCES. BY B. H. AHMED, B. A. 7 6. THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAMITE CIVILIZATION. BY D. H. AHMED MEERZA 23 7. THE MOHAMMADAN LAW OF SUCCESSION. BY D. H. AHMED MEERZA O 87 8. THE MOHAMMAD AN LAW OF SUCCESSION. No. 2 ... 126 NOTES ON MOHAMMADAN MARRIAGES AND DIVORCES. 1881-1882, IF statistical knowledge is of any worth, the regis tration of marriages is likely to give a good deal of aid to the Government in administrative purposes. It is trying to obtain reliable statistics in regard to births and deaths, because such statistics are useful The registration of marriages will be doubly useful useful as supplying independent statistics and as supplying co-ordinate statistics. The time is rapidly coming when some sort of in direct checks will have to be established against marri age. It is futile to say that the Government will not permit death from starvation among the people it must have the means of adjusting the balance between popu lation and subsistence. Unless the Government should take upon itself to put indirect checks upon marriage, it would be absurd for it to say that death from starva tion must not occur. It is not necessary for the present argument to state what those checks should be but the registration of marriages and births will give us the right experience will shew how far such indirect checks might be applied without increasing illegitimate connections be tween the sexes. The security of person and property 8 Mohammadan Marriagesand Divorces. ensured by the English Government the gradual decay of military devastations the control of epidemic mor tality through medical doctors and dispensaries the absence of every prudential check on marriage all these circumstances have stimulated the inordinate growth of population, and have thus made famines more frequent during the last twenty years. To prevent the rapid recurrence of these famines ia future, it will soon become necessary to arrest the rapid multiplication of population. For this purpose we must devise some easy means of restraining indis creet marriages. The registration system may, after the lapse of several years, be extended to the Hindus of Bengal and we shall then have a good machinery for collecting statistics of marriage. These statistics, aided by the statistics of birth and the census statistics, will, in time, -enable us to devise indirect checks against improvi dent marriages and the inordinate increase of population, For the sake of the Mohammadans themselves the registration of marriages is an absolute necessity. It is all very well for those who live in districts, with a small Mohammadan population, generally descended from immigrants from beyond the Sindh, to say, that the law is not wanted or for those who live in towns, where the active competition of life obscures social phenomena, to feel indifferent about the law but it is no exaggeration to say, that all over Northern, Central, and Eastern Bengal, the marriage bond is extremely loose among the lower orders, who are chiefly descend Mohammadan Marriages and Divorces. 9 ed from native converts, and who form, probably, ninety nine-hundredths of the whole Mohammadan population of thedistricts comprising the Presidency, the Baaj shaahi, the Dhaaka, and the Chittagong Divisions. I have had experience of one or two districts in all these Divisions, and I can say without the least hesitation, that the looseness of the marriage tie among the lower classes is due partly to the facility with which the fact of marriage itself may be denied, partly to the facility with which a husband is able to divorce his wife, and partly to the facility with which women are remarried...