Historical Perspective to Uniform Civil Code

Why didn’t the BJP introduce legislation on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) all this while? After all, they have been in power for almost a decade now, with an absolute majority. If they could remove Article 370, why no traction on the UCC? And as some ask, why is there no draft of the UCC bill yet?

 

This long, informative but often unfocussed, article has hints on the answers to those questions. The story starts with Nehru’s attempt at driving social changes via the Hindu Code Bill soon after independence.

“It was about to turn society inside out and make it stare at an uncomfortable question: What kind of modern nation did India want to be?”

But even if that was Nehru’s intention, the bill (as its name, Hindu Code Bill, suggests), was limited to reforming only Hindu society.

“(It) granted women the right to property and divorce, amended inheritance laws, and introduced provisions on inter-caste marriage.”

 

As you might have expected, the opposition then did come from the Hindu right:

“They argued that the government had no right to interfere with Hindu laws, which were based on the “dharma shastras”.

 

But wait, it wasn’t only the Hindu right who opposed the bill. A sampling of others included President Rajendra Prasad (“He argued that his wife would never support the divorce clause and it was only “over-educated” women who favoured the Bill.”). Many male Hindus feared other aspects of the bill, like equal inheritance rights to sons and daughters. And of course, inter-caste marriage was a no-no for a huge number of Hindus.

“Opposing the Bill, Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra claimed that only a “few ultra-modern persons, who are vocal, but have no real support in the country” were interested in it.”

 

Plus, there was the inevitable question: why was Nehru only interested in reforming Hindu society? Why wouldn’t he touch the Muslims, asked the Hindu right – didn’t that make it a “communal legislation”?

 

Or was it a case of pragmatism trumping idealism, as some have argued?

“Some historians argue that the decision to exclude Muslims from certain reforms was crucial in preserving communal and political stability in newly independent India, particularly considering the bitter taste left by Partition.”

BR Ambedkar, then the Law Minister, agreed with that reason:

“He said that any Indian government would be “mad” to risk “provoking Muslims” by introducing a uniform civil code.”

But that stance just gave the Hindu right the target to start hammering on:

“They suggested reform in Muslim personal law.”

 

 

This point – excluding the Muslims from reform – would sow the seed for the perception that continues till present day, that Muslims are exempt from UCC.

 

All of the above would certainly answer all the questions at the top of this blog. The narrative that works to the BJP’s political advantage is “a grudge about why they (Muslims) should enjoy exclusive privileges like polygamy”, why the UCC has never been willing to touch Muslim society, why the double standards of insisting any Muslim reform should come from “within” while it was OK to impose reform on Hindus via government channels? It would also answer the question as to why there is no UCC draft:

“(Because Hindu) inheritance, property rights, divorce, death are no concerns.”

In fact, any attempt to change the status quo on those topics will almost certainly trigger a backlash. Which leads to Dilip Mandal to muse about UCC:

“The politics will work, even if the draft doesn’t.”

If that is true, then one needn’t worry that the UCC will ever see light of day. On the other hand, the optics and politics of UCC will almost certainly work to the BJP’s advantage…