The Indian clerics' views supporting bigamy is met with disgust by most middle class Muslims.

'The system of bigamy is inherently unfair to women and such practices should be stopped,' thundered Arshan Alam, assistant professor at the Centre For Jawaharlal Nehru Studies in Jamia Millia Islamia here.

He said that to stop such practices, the Indian state, as it has acted in the case of Hindus, 'must take the initiative because it has the authority to regulate and legislate on such issues'.

Alam is opposed to the veto power the largely conservative Ulema appears to hold over Muslim issues that affect millions. The government needs to rope in liberal and intellectual Muslims, he said.

Shazia Naz, 27, a housewife in Delhi, agreed with Alam.

'If my husband marries another woman, it would be one of the most humiliating things in my life,' she said. 'In such cases I would prefer to get a divorce.'

Naz also said the Indian Muslim community needed to take the initiative to battle social customs out of tune with today's world.

Although many Indians are under the impression that Muslim men tend to take more than one wife, government-backed statistics prove that this is a myth.

According to a 1974 government survey, one of the last on the subject, tribals account for around 14 percent of all bigamous marriages in India.

Surprisingly, Muslims are at the bottom with 5.6 percent of bigamous marriages while upper caste Hindus come a notch above them -- 5.8 percent.

'In any case, how can Muslim men have two wives when there are not so many Muslim women in the country?' asked Alam.

(Khalid Akhter can be contacted at khalid.a@ians.in)