Uniform Civil Code: What Does It Stand For?
Shrikant G. Talageri
A comment by film-maker Javed Akhtar is doing
the rounds: "People are jealous of
Muslims because they have the right to have four wives at a time…. Is
this the only reason for implementing the Uniform Civil Code? If you are also
given this right, then there will be no problem…. According to
statistics there are more Hindus who marry twice."
At the
same time, we have Amit Shah of the BJP declaring, at the CNN-News18's Rising
Bharat Summit 2024, the "commitment" of the party to implement the
Uniform Civil Code:
https://www.news18.com/india/rising-bharat-2024-ucc-not-bjp-agenda-but-promise-to-india-that-religions-will-be-ruled-by-one-law-amit-shah-8822354.html
"The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is the BJP government’s
promise to India that all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists
and Parsis should be ruled under one law, stressed Union home minister Amit
Shah at the CNN-News18’s Rising Bharat Summit 2024 in New Delhi on Wednesday.
There will be no interference in religion and
religious practices of these sects, but a common law will govern them, as had
been decided by the makers of the Constitution, Shah pointed out. “This (UCC)
has been the issue for the BJP (Jan Sangh) since 1950s. We truly believe there
should be one law for all in a secular country like India,” Shah said.
The Union home minister explained that the BJP
accepted the UCC as the “guiding principle”, which BR Ambedkar, Sardar Patel,
Jawahar Lal Nehru and Rajendra Prasad too believed in. They decided that the
UCC should be implemented in the country during the right time, and the BJP
government in Uttarakhand did it.
Shah said the Uttarakhand government under Pushkar
Singh Dhami has brought out the UCC, which will undergo political, judicial and
social scrutiny.
“We believe that in a diversified country like India,
there should be one rule of law,” he said.
When News18 told Shah that the DMK, which is part of
the INDIA alliance, has said it will repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)
and UCC when it will come to power, Shah quipped that “won’t happen”."
What is the truth about the
matter:
Is there any kind of
relationship between the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and the UCC (Uniform
Civil Code)?
Is the Uniform Civil Code
necessary?
And is it an issue which has
anything to do with Hindus at all (let aside Hindus who are "jealous of
Muslims because they have the right to have four wives at a time ")?
I. CAA vis-Ã -vis UCC?
II. Is the Uniform Civil Code
necessary?
III. Is it a Hindu Issue?
I.
CAA vis-Ã -vis UCC?
No sane, honest and civilized
person can honestly deny that a uniform Civil Code for followers of all
religions is necessary in any country. But, if anti-Hindu opinion is to
be believed, it is necessary everywhere else in the world, but
not in India!
Strangely, those who oppose or
criticize the demand for a Uniform Civil Code in India for
Indian citizens, on the ground that it constitutes discrimination
against followers of different religions within India, are the same
people who oppose the CAA (Citizen's Amendment Act) and claim that there should
be a Uniform Citizen Policy in India for non-Indians to acquire Indian
citizenship, on the ground that the CAA constitutes discrimination
against people of different religions outside India!
To put it in different terms: as
per anti-Hindu logic, Religion-based Separate Civil Codes which have different
rules for Muslim citizens and non-Muslim citizens within
India are non-discriminatory, and wanting a Common Civil Code for
all religious groups within India is discriminatory. At the same
time, different Indian-citizenship-acquirement rules for Muslim non-citizens
and non-Muslim non-citizens from other countries
are discriminatory − and discriminatory
against Indian Muslims!!
I have already written an
article on the CAA before (April 25, 2020):
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/04/hinduism-vs-hindutva-oxism-vs-oxatva.html
It is a lame-duck half-baked
Act which, even today, applies only to persecuted Hindus (which naturally
includes Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, but the Act includes even Christians) from certain
other countries who have already been in India since 2014: i.e. already
since ten years! Hindus (and others) who are facing discrimination,
persecution and violent attacks in those demarcated countries after 2014
do not get any benefits from this Act.
I will repeat the following
relevant portions from that article for readers who "came in late":
The recent issue of the C.A.A.
(Citizenship Amendment Act 2020)―which was the headlines-hogging topic before
the coronavirus tsunami swept everything else out of the picture―has brought
out once more (for the umpteenth time) the true agenda of the powerful
Hindu-hating forces.
To understand what exactly the
opposition to the C.A.A. represents, and what is the real aim of these C.A.A.
protesters, we must understand the situation in India in various stages of its
history (and of its proposed future) in respect of religious
identity:
1. The first stage: pre-C.E.:
AREA
|
IDENTITY
|
1. UNITED
INDIA
|
HINDU
|
2. The second stage: 600 C.E. (a
gradual process) till 1946:
AREA
|
IDENTITY
|
1. UNITED
INDIA
|
HINDU +
MUSLIM + CHRISTIAN
|
3. The third stage: post-1947:
AREA
|
IDENTITY
|
1. INDIA
|
HINDU +
MUSLIM + CHRISTIAN
|
2.
PAKISTAN+BANGLADESH
|
MUSLIM
|
It looks as if the division of United
India into two accounts was done with Muslims getting one single account
only for themselves, with the second account being a joint account of
Muslims with Hindus and Christians!
However, this picture, unjust to Hindus
though it should seem to any impartial observer (but strangely no-one seems to
think so!), was made even more so in the fourth stage with the application of
article 370.
4. The fourth stage: post-1954
(article 370):
AREA
|
IDENTITY
|
1a. KASHMIR
1b. THE REST
OF INDIA
|
MUSLIM
HINDU +
MUSLIM + CHRISTIAN
|
2.
PAKISTAN+BANGLADESH
|
MUSLIM
|
As per this dispensation, a Kashmiri
Muslim could buy and own land in Kashmir as well as in the rest of India, while
a non-Kashmiri person could buy and own land only in the rest of India but not
in Kashmir!
The abrogation of article 370 only
removed this greater injustice to Hindus, and merely changed the third
stage back from 4 to 3, which was only slightly less unjust to Hindus.
But this incensed the Hindu-haters to
such an extent that they have taken the pretext of the C.A.A. to demand the fifth
stage!
Let us see how this is so: the third
stage was actually as follows:
AREA
|
IDENTITY
|
1. INDIA
|
HINDU + INDIAN-MUSLIM
+ CHRISTIAN
|
2.
PAKISTAN+BANGLADESH
|
PAKISTANI-BANGLADESHI
MUSLIM
|
When United India was divided in 1947,
it was not on the demand of any section of Hindus: it was on the demand
of all sections of Muslims. The Muslim League, with its Pakistan demand,
won the Muslim vote in all parts of United India, including both the
present-day Pakistan-Bangladesh as well as (and in fact more so) the
present-day India.
But when the division was done, what
actually happened (due to the half-baked attitude of both the Congress as well
as the RSS-Hindu-Mahasabha―it was only Ambedkar who sounded the warning
bells)―was that while most Hindus (who had never asked for the
division) were driven out of Pakistan (immediately) and Bangladesh (gradually),
the majority of Muslims in the Indian areas (who had asked for the
division) remained put in India.
Meanwhile, not all Hindus in
Pakistan-Bangladesh were able to escape to India. Many remained there, perhaps
still in hope that things would improve or simply because it was impossible and
impractical and even unthinkable to leave all their ancestral properties and
belongings and escape empty-handed to some unknown and unfamiliar area in the
rest of India.
Their plight was known to all the
politicians in India, and all the Prime Ministers of India―from Jawaharlal
Nehru to Manmohan Singh―are on record stating and promising that the persecuted
(mainly Hindu) minorities in Pakistan-Bangladesh should feel freely entitled to
escape to India and acquire Indian citizenship as and when it became necessary.
The C.A.A. (Citizenship Amendment Act
2020) has only fulfilled that promise, which was never kept before―and even the
C.A.A. fulfils it in an unjustly partial manner: only those
Pakistani-Bangladeshi non-Muslims who are in India from before 2014 are to be
given citizenship!
[The irony of the politics involved in
this whole "debate" must be noted: the CAA was opposed by the
Congress, including the Punjab Congress dominated by Sikhs, and in fact even by
the BJP ally, the Akali Dal, the party of Sikhs.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/afghan-sikhs-demand-probe-into-is-attack-say-tired-of-living-in-afghanistan/articleshow/74844486.cms
Now, one single attack on Sikhs in
Afghanistan has led to the Punjab Chief Minister asking for the Sikhs in
Afghanistan to be given refuge in India:
https://www.opindia.com/2020/03/punjab-cm-amarinder-singh-anti-caa-request-mea-rescue-sikhs-afghanistan-kabul-gurudwara-attack/
In short, when convenient, the
Secularists condemn giving citizenship to Indian-religion minorities in the
concerned countries who have already been in India since before 2014―which
is all that the lame C.A.A. does. The same people, when convenient, ask for
giving refuge (and surely later citizenship) to Indian-religion minorities who
are even now in the concerned countries!]
Amazingly, the opponents of the C.A.A.
(not including the protesters from the northeast, who have totally
different objections) object on the incredible ground that this
discriminates between Pakistani-Bangladeshi Muslims and Pakistani-Bangladeshi
non-Muslims! According to them the C.A.A. should provide similar
citizenship to sections of Pakistani-Bangladeshi Muslims as well!
With the abrogation of article 370 for
Kashmir, and the reversion to the third stage, these opponents of the C.A.A.
are actually demanding that the C.A.A. should be a kind of article 370 covering
Pakistan and Bangladesh.
5. The fifth stage: demanded by
the C.A.A. opponents
AREA
|
IDENTITY=CITIZENSHIP
RIGHTS
|
1. INDIA
|
HINDU + INDIAN-MUSLIM
+ CHRISTIAN
+ PAKISTANI-BANGLADESHI
MUSLIM
|
2. PAKISTAN+BANGLADESH
|
PAKISTANI-BANGLADESHI
MUSLIM
|
That is: while India's people have a
direct right only to Indian citizenship, the Muslims of Pakistan-Bangladesh
should be given a right to Indian citizenship as well if the non-Muslims
of Pakistan-Bangladesh are to be given such a right! In short, the entire
present population of Pakistan-Bangladesh should have a joint account in
India, while only Pakistani-Bangladeshi Muslims have the right to a single
account in Pakistan-Bangladesh! The abrogation of article 370 avenged!
One Muslim friend had the following
argument to make: in 1947, lakhs (or millions) of Muslims migrated to Pakistan.
Today they are ill-treated and harassed as "Mohajirs" in Pakistan. If
Hindus (etc.) being ill-treated in Pakistan are given a right to Indian
citizenship, why should these Indian-area Muslims in Pakistan not be
given a similar right?
This argument, with the typical
double-standard logic of Islamist-Secularist discourse in India, ignores the
distinction between (a) Pakistan(-Bangladesh)-area Hindus in
Pakistan-Bangladesh and (b) Indian-area Muslims in Pakistan-Bangladesh:
(a) The Pakistan(-Bangladesh)-area
Hindus in Pakistan had not asked for the partition of India: they were its
victims―the trapped victims of a pact between Indian and
Pakistani(-Bangladeshi) politicians, and they deserve a permanent right of
migration to India and the acquirement of Indian citizenship to escape
persecution.
(b) But the Indian-area Muslims
in Pakistan are people who agitated, rioted and voted for the partition of
India in pre-1947 elections and then migrated to their desired land. Saying
they have a right to return to India and get Indian citizenship is like
saying that if a man who fights for a division of his father's property into
two parts between himself and his brother later decides to give up his
part to someone else, then he has a right to come back and get a share
in his brother's part of the property!
[All this, apart from the fact that:
1. The truncated C.A.A. bill, in any
case, does not really give all the Pakistan(-Bangladesh)-area
Hindus in Pakistan-Bangladesh the right to acquire Indian citizenship: only
those who are already in India since before 2014, and the procedure is only
speeded up.
Further, even individual
Pakistani-Bangladeshi Muslims (not even necessarily Indian-area ones)
can acquire Indian citizenship through normal procedures.
2. India is not in any case a
dharamshala for anyone and everyone: no country in the world is a dharamshala,
and no-one has the right to dictate that India should be one.]
This fifth stage is a clear forward
movement towards:
6. The sixth stage: the unstated
agenda for the future:
AREA
|
IDENTITY
|
1. UNITED
INDIA
|
MUSLIM
|
A terrifying prospect indeed.
The future of the whole world, in any
case, is bleak and terrifying at the moment. Let us not compound the future
problems for India by confusing two different issues. The leftists are clear in
their mind. While they cannot, at the moment, openly endorse the acts of China
(though they can defend or condone them on the old familiar grounds of
non-discrimination―as even the "minor" rapist of Nirbhaya was militantly defended by them),
they are busy trying to keep both agendas alive. See the following article by
one of the most poisonously India-hating and Hindu-hating journalists of the
day, Vidya Krishnan, which, even as it condemns the Indian government for
whatever it is trying to do to mitigate the coronavirus menace, keeps the
Hindu-hating agenda in sharp focus:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/india-coronavirus-covid19-narendra-modi/608896/
Note the very second paragraph:
"Throughout, another set of
events were occurring here in India. Late last year, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government introduced and passed a
controversial new law, ostensibly in support of minorities
in neighboring countries, that in fact openly discriminated against Muslims and
undermined India’s secular foundations. Then, early this year, protests over
that new law snowballed into a
pogrom in which dozens of people—mostly Muslims—have been killed."
Indians should wake up before it is too late!
[Incidentally, if the DMK is serious about repealing
the CAA, it should announce that it will repeal it in Tamilnadu, and that
Muslims coming from the nations specifically demarcated in the CAA will be
resettled (with or without acquiring Indian citizenship) within the borders of Tamilnadu.
Will it dare to make such an announcement, and, later, to implement it?]
II.
Is the Uniform Civil Code necessary?
As I wrote earlier above: no
sane, honest and civilized person can honestly deny that a Uniform Civil Code
for followers of all religions is necessary in any country.
And it is not a BJP issue. As
supporters of a Common Civil Code have correctly pointed out: Part IV, Article 44 of the Constitution
states that “The State shall endeavour to secure the citizen a Uniform Civil
Code throughout the territory of India”.
So the
question is not why the BJP is implementing the UCC (or claiming to be wanting
to implement it), but why everyone else is not only totally uninterested in
implementing it but actively opposing its implementation.
One
also wonders about the credentials of people like Javed Akhtar, who claim to be
"liberal" but feel it necessary to comment against the UCC. And the
credentials of his second wife (Shabana Azmi), who, right from her extremely
wokeist fulminations against being called an "actress" rather than an
"actor" (referred to by me earlier in my article on "Woke-Leftist
Terrorism in matters of "Politically Correct" Word-Usage"),
likewise positions herself as a "liberal".
But a
Uniform Civil Code is, by definition, little likely to be "discriminatory"
(although like all human endeavors, it can sometimes possibly represent
biases and prejudices and wrong attitudes): what is "good" for one section
of Indian citizenry, in civil matters, must naturally be "good" for
the other sections of Indian citizenry. And likewise, what is "bad"
for one section of Indian citizenry, in civil matters, must naturally be "bad"
for the other sections of Indian citizenry. Each provision of any proposed Uniform
Civil Code must be carefully discussed threadbare before being accepted into
the Code, to decide whether it is "good" or "bad", or to
decide how its "good" aspects can be retained while rejecting the
"bad" aspects.
Just
as Javed Akhtar raises the question of Muslims having "the right to have four
wives at a time", one leftist friend of
mine long ago had said that Hindus also enjoy a civil "benefit"
denied to Muslims: certain tax benefits applicable only to Hindu United Families
(HUFs). I just looked this up: according to Google, "being a separate
entity, the HUF enjoys a basic tax exemption of Rs 2.5 lakh. So, imagine that
you create an HUF consisting of you, your spouse and two children. In addition
to income tax benefits you enjoy individually, you can also avail of an additional
basic income tax exemption of Rs 2.5 lakh each year."
But
what these resorters to whataboutery fail (or pretend to fail) to understand is
that all these points are irrelevant. The question is not which benefits (if
marrying four wives is understood as a "benefit" for Muslim men,
whatever it may be for Muslim women) are given to which community by the
present separate Religion-based Civil Codes. The question is which benefits or
provisions are "good" and which are "bad": it must be
remembered that in a Uniform Civil Code, the followers of all religions will
get the same "benefits". It is for the framers of the Uniform Civil
Code to decide whether "the right to have four wives at a time"
is "good" or "bad", and, separately, whether the tax
benefits applicable to a United Family (whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian)
are "good" or "bad", and then decide, in each individual
case, whether or not to include it in the Uniform Civil Code applicable to everyone.
Arguments and debates can be about whether each provision, separately, is
"good" or "bad": they cannot be to the effect that they are
"good" for followers of one religion but "bad" for the
followers of another one. It must be remembered that the Uniform Civil Code
will only apply in civil matters, not religious ones.
Another
funny thing about the opposition to the Uniform Civil Code is the contention
that Shariah Law is incumbent upon all Muslims and a government
of a Secular State has no right to impinge upon this right. This is funny
because supporters of a Uniform Civil Code have always been pointing out
the two glaring flaws in this argument:
1.
Various civil Shariah Laws, like "the right to have four
wives at a time" and "the right to give
triple-talaq" are totally disallowed to Muslims
not only in every single other Secular country, but even in the vast majority
of self-declared Muslim and even Islamist countries:
"The right to have four
wives at a time" is completely banned in Muslim
countries like Turkey and Tunisia, and severely controlled by law in Egypt,
Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
"The right to give
triple-talaq", and especially in one
sitting, is likewise banned or controlled by law (and can only take place with
the consent of both parties in a civil court) in all the above countries, as
also others like Algeria, UAE, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia.
2. Shariah
Law does not encompass only Civil issues like "the right to have four
wives at a time" and "the right to give
triple-talaq". There are also Criminal
issues, where Shariah Law has its say: thieves, as per Shariah
Law, are punished by amputating their hands, and adulterers are punished
by stoning to death. The ISIS and Taliban have also given practical demonstrations
of the violent punishments for "crimes" like listening to music, (ladies)
walking on the road without a veil or without a male chaperone, etc. Do the
advocates of Shariah Law, whether Muslims or their Leftist and
Secularist supporters, insist on the implementation of these Shariah Laws
as well?
So,
yes, there must be a uniform Civil Code. A proper and justice-based one.
III.
Is it a Hindu Issue?
Finally, we come to the crux
of the matter, ignored by both the advocates and opponents of a Uniform Civil
Code, both of whom are united in creating a hue and cry about it being a
manifestation of the alleged Hindutva ideology of the BJP (which strangely
fails to manifest throughout the five-year term and only manifests just before
the next round of Lok Sabha elections)! Both the sides, even when one castigates it and the other
hails it, treat it as a Hindu issue.
But in
exactly what sense is it a Hindu issue? It can only be a Hindu issue if the
Hindus clamoring for the UCC want, as claimed by Javed Akhtar,
"benefits" "enjoyed" by Muslims, like "the right to have four
wives at a time" and "the right to give
triple-talaq", to be given to them as
well. However, except perhaps the most lumpen individuals among "Hindu"
elements, in private (and most probably inebriated) conversations or
monologues, no Hindu can seriously make such a ridiculous demand. These
are not Hindu issues but Muslim-women issues. These are not issues
which pertain to Hindus, Hinduism or Hindutva ideology − the framers of the Indian
Constitution were not hindu ideologists − but to ordinary, normal and sane Secular
ideology.
The
fact that such issues can be raised, debated and fought out on Hindu-Muslim
grounds, and in the context of impending elections and electoral polarization,
is the biggest tragedy of India.
What
exactly are the issues which pertain to Hindus? I have already given the answer
in my two articles: "A Short Review of Anand
Ranganathan's "Hindus in Hindu Rashtra − Eighth-Class Citizens and victims
of State-Sanctioned Apartheid""
and ""What
More and What Else Do You Expect The BJP To Do For Hindus?" Here is the Answer!":
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2023/09/a-short-review-of-anand-ranganathans.html
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2023/09/what-more-and-what-else-do-you-expect.html
I am
not going to repeat the whole thing here. it is covered in these two articles. Or,
better still, read the book by Anand Ranganathan.