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Ram
Puniyani
What
is called as Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is as such dealing with the personal
laws (marriage, divorce, maintenance, custody and inheritance). Our criminal
and civil laws are same for all the religious communities but our personal
laws have been related and linked to religion. So there are separate laws for
Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Ironically Jain, Buddhists and Sikhs are
included in Hindus. As such the prevalent laws and norms among diverse Hindu
communities are not same for all Hindus as there is large number of
variations among them. During the Constituent Assembly debates what finally
emerged was that the personal laws should continue as such. In the directive
principles of state policy article 44 it was stated that state shall try to
evolve uniform common laws for all the citizens of India, irrespective of
their religion. The aim was to bring these laws in consonance with concept of
justice.
At
the same time Nehru called upon B.R. Ambedkar, the law minister, to work for
Hindu Code Bill whereby the diverse Hindu communities can be brought under
the same umbrella. The idea was that since the Hindus are the largest
religious community, if reform process can be initiated among them, the same
process can be extended to other communities. Ambedkar formulated the Bill
with the understanding that the prevalent laws don’t give equal justice to
women. The draft Bill as it emerged was opposed by large section of Hindu
community as it was too radical for the prevalent patriarchal norms. Later
the Bill was diluted and implemented. The failure to carry through the bill
was a setback to the efforts of Ambedkar; he felt dejected and left the
Cabinet.
The
debate further came to the fore in the wake of Shah Bano Judgment. Here, Shah
Bano’s plea for the maintenance after divorce was upheld by the Court. The
conservative section of Muslim society stood up to oppose this judgment.
Buckling to the pressure Rajiv Gandhi Government passed a Muslim Women
(Protection of rights on Divorce) Bill, which bypassed the judgment. With
this the Hindu communal forces took up the issue and called for UCC. The main
point which was propagated was that Muslims are allowed to marry four times.
The unstated understanding behind this was that due to polygamy the
population of Muslims will overtake that of Hindus. In real sense neither is
the percentage of polygamy more among Muslims nor does polygamy lead to more
children as number of children is restricted by the number of women.
The
section of Muslims, Muslim leadership and organizations like Muslim Personal
law board made it as the issue of minority identity and strongly stood
against any demand for UCC. The practices like polygamy, Burqa, triple talaq
became the marker of Muslim community. From within the Muslim community many
a women’s groups came up which started campaigning for the gender justice and
abolition of these practices. As such the focus of reforms came totally on
the Muslim community and the need for reforms within Hindus took a back seat
in popular imagination. While the Communal forces talked of uniformity in law
they neither have any scheme of things nor any document in hand around which
they can put this demand. The dominant notion is that UCC will be an exercise
of picking up some laws from Hindus, some from Muslims and some from
Christians to make the picture complete. The central notion of gender justice
is missing in this discourse.
At
the same time progressive Women’s movement had also demanded the UCC, but
having realized that most of the personal laws which are prevalent in the
name of religion are unjust to the women, they retracted and started talking
about Gender just code through the process of reforms in the
community. So how will UCC come in? Will gender justice be the basis of
uniformity? There is a notion that somebody will prepare the laws and these
will be brought in, imposed on all the communities. This is ‘top down’
approach. Second is the ‘bottom up’ approach. Here the focus is on reform
process being encouraged in the society and the process being taken further
given the shape of law. The crucial point here is the process of reform
within the community, a process based on gender justice.
Among
other, the efforts of Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) in this direction
are noteworthy. BMMA has collected 50,000 signatures for abolition of triple
talaq. The idea here is to campaign and do the advocacy for such changes, get
the laws made on these lines which will strengthen the hands of Judiciary in
giving justice to Women in particular. It is campaigns like this which raise
the consciousness in the society and the possibility of the occurrence of
such things in society go down. In other words such campaigns make the ground
on which justice delivery becomes better and easier. The campaign for banning
triple talaq is an important step in the direction of reforms based on gender
justice.
It
is true that communal forces which make loud noise on the topic have no
interest in gender justice. Their central agenda is to frighten the Muslim
community. Here the crocodile tears of those posing to give justice to Muslim
women are more than obvious. Gripped in the patriarchal mind set men
dominated Muslim organizations also don’t support such campaigns.
As
such one should grant the point that an intimidated community gives secondary
importance to issues of gender justice. Their primary concern is security and
partly equity in social affairs. Men are the one’s leading the organizations
promoting communal politics. Also self proclaimed Law Boards are gripped by patriarchal
mind sets, surely it is the women who are struggling for gender parity and
one stands with such equality based ‘bottom up’ approach of social change.
The opposition to UCC comes mainly due to fear of intimidating communal
politics and the values of patriarchy which needs to be overcome.
There
is also an argument that the campaigns like abolition of triple talaq will
open the door for Hindutva forces to bring in Hindu laws as UCC. That’s a
tricky argument and does draw our attention to the dangers in demand for
reforming the laws. Still one hopes that in current scenario to bring back
the Hindu laws as UCC are unlikely as most of the Women’s groups have
realized that the existing Hindu laws are nowhere close to giving justice to
Hindu women, so it is unlikely that such an imposition can place in today’s
context. It is time that reforms in the community and gender justice become
the base of our thinking in this direction.
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