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:
"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-à-vis UCC?
II. Is the Uniform Civil Code necessary?
III. Is it a Hindu Issue?
I. CAA vis-à-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.
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:
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:
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.
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