‘Historic’ is a word that gets tossed about too often when it comes to legal verdicts. But here it would be quite apt, tangled up as the issue was in a long timeline of debates over the uneasy fit between the modern Constitution and the place for older ‘personal laws’ within it. The Supreme Court’s majority decision holding the pronouncement of triple talaq in one sitting as illegal has been a hard-won victory. The activists and petitioners who had sought the end of the practice are jubilant that it has been recognised as a form of cruelty and shown the door. In the public mind, justice for Muslim women is now also etched into an arc that begins from Shah Bano and ends with Shayara Bano.