Decoding the Uniform Civil Code for UPSC : The democratic experiment in as hugely diverse a country as India has indubitably been pulled off notwithstanding many prophets of doom declaiming to the countrary at the time of her inception. But still there remain a host of issues to be attended to and to be tackled, the issues, which sprung up in the social churning that followed. And one of such issues staring us right in the face and racking the brains of the social scientists and keen observer of the nation-building process is the issue of the Uniform Civil Code [UCC].
Decoding the Uniform Civil Code for UPSC
The democratic experiment in as hugely
diverse a country as India has indubitably been pulled off notwithstanding many
prophets of doom declaiming to the countrary at the time of her inception. But
still there remain a host of issues to be attended to and to be tackled, the
issues, which sprung up in the social churning that followed. And one of such
issues staring us right in the face and racking the brains of the social
scientists and keen observer of the nation-building process is the issue of the
Uniform Civil Code [UCC].
The desirability of a UCC in this
country has evoked more passions than a reasoned debate. Now the point is, is a
UCC such an important thing the absence whereof might undermine the very
ontology of the Indian nationhood. Definitely not. After all, we have survived
those stormy and fateful fifty-five years without the UCC being there in place.
But does that mean that we would never need one in future. The answer is again
in the negative. A UCC would be needed to aid the slow but steady pace of our
nation-building process.
Its opponents argue that such an
instrument might interfere with the ‘freedom of religion’ guaranteed under part
3rd of the Indian Constitution and thereby may compromise the
secular principle enshrined therein denting the entire edifice of this nascent
nation. Though Supreme Court in its recent observations has made it clear a UCC
does not impinge upon the ‘right to religion’, its opponents would immediately
pounce to counter any such separation of the two. It was this ‘right to
religion’ argument, which saw a Muslim woman named Shah Bano losing a legal
battle to those religiously clinging to the sanctity of the Muslim personal law.
The government legislation that
followed very clearly denied a fundamental right to a section of its citizenry
by discriminating between Muslim woman and those from other communities. So,
what is now available to all the women just by dint of being an Indian citizen
is barred to a Muslim woman. Such a discrimination, point out critics, not only
undermine our secular structure by showing the state to be siding with a
particular religious community but also chipped at the basic human rights
available to Muslim women.
The supporters, who for the moment are
mostly from the people on the right side of the political spectrum, however,
think otherwise. They argue that if the state is really secular then it should
have treated all the religious communities equally. After all, that is what
secularism is all about. But by favouring a particular community over the
other, the state has dented the secular structure of the state. If that is not
so, they say, why did the state interfere with only the Hindu personal law leaving
the rest to be administered by their own personal laws. Such state actions not
only deprive a section of the citizenry their basic human rights, but also
chips away at the unity and integrity of the country.
Matters such as marriage, succession,
inheritance, etc., are secular matters as the Supreme Court also opined i its
recent observations and deal more with the mundane than the religious aspects
of life. By yielding on such matters, the state has inadvertently been
encouraging the obscurantist and orthodox section of the Muslim community
rather than listening to the more progressive and liberal section from the
same. In fact, many aspects of the civil rights are already codified under the
Civil Procedure Code, the Evidence Act, and the Transfer of Property Act and
all the sections of the Indian citizenry are administered under these laws
without exception.
So, when the Koranic laws relating to
crimes and evidence have been supplanted by the secular Indian Penal Code and
the Indian Evidence Act, why should the other spheres of secular existence be
immune to change? A minority of people should not be allowed to pick and choose
the laws they want to be administered under. After all, change has been the law
of nature. The tenets of Islam were formulated in a specific spatio-temporal
context and should not stand still in a changed time and context. What
perplexes the votaries of a UCC is the fact that when Muslim personal laws have
been changing in the Islamic and predominantly Muslim countries including Indonesia,
Pakistan, Malaysia and Turkey, why should they not be changed in a secular
India? After all, in Goa, a UCC has been in force from the day of the
Portuguese rule and is equally applicable to the entire population there
including Muslims. If Goan Muslims can live under a UCC without any hitch or
hiccup, what keeps the Muslims from the rest of India from accepting such a
UCC, they argue.
It has been pointed out that the
Article 25, clause 2 very lucidly says that the state will have the right to
regulate any secular activity related with religious practices. And when the
state has done so with the Hindu community, it should not flinch from doing the
same with other communities. After all, there is no guarantee in the
Constitution of India to protect the personal laws as such and when the Muslims
joined the Union of India, there was no agreement between the Muslims and the
Government that the personal laws would not be tinkered with, more so to the
detriment of the very principles which make the foundation of the Indian state.
But the opponents of the UCC argue that such a guarantee or agreement is
implied in the very secular principles which predicate the Indian state and it
is this implied commitment to religious freedom and secularism that prompted Muslims
to stay on in a secular and democratic country.
The discourse on a UCC has proceeded
along the above dialectical lines for long and we are yet to find out as to
what might be desirable and worthwhile in the prevailing circumstances. While
almost all argue that a UCC is definitely desirable and would go a long way in
strengthening and consolidating the Indian nationhood, they differ on its
timing and the way it should be realised. In fact, much of the muck raked in
the intellectual and political circles emanate more because of a prejudiced and
partisan mindset as well as the constraints of a competitive party politics
where the number game force reason out of sight making it difficult to remove
the chaff from the grain. Any forcible imposition of a UCC would not only be
against the same democratic and secular ethos to strengthen which they demand a
UCC but would mar the entire gains we have made so far as a nation-state. It
would very negatively jeopardise the nation-building process.
So, a thing as controversial as a UCC
should wait for an opportune time to come and in the meantime, the leadership,
both intellectual and political, should try to evolve a consensus on the issue.
It would be better if the initiative comes from within the Muslim community.
One only hopes that a broad consensus would be arrived sooner than later and
when we have achieved that we would have achieved yet another milestone on our
way to transformation from a state-nation to a nation-state.
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