New Delhi: Days after Uttarakhand became the first state in India to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), the Gujarat government announced that it was forming a high-level committee to discuss and draft a UCC for the state.
Retired Supreme Court justice Ranjana Desai, who shepherded Uttarakhand’s UCC legislation, will head the five-member committee. The committee has been given 45 days to submit its report, which will be considered for drafting the Bill.
The announcement about the formation of the UCC committee earlier this month was made by Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel, stating that the move was ‘part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s broader national vision’.
While the Patel government sprung at the chance to call for the formation of a UCC committee, social activists and community leaders in Gujarat feel differently towards the idea of standardising individual beliefs and practices.
Regulating Religion
Several social activists, locals and thinkers from the state feel that the UCC could spark religious clashes in the communally tense state.
Socio-cultural activist Hiren Gandhi feels that UCC will tear apart the democratic nature of the country, where government institutions and their authority are already being questioned by the citizens every day.
“In my view, Gujarat has now completely turned into a fascist’s laboratory. Having witnessed riots since the 1980s, Gujarat saw its own Partition of sorts. And after 2002 [riots], Muslims were reduced to second class citizens. UCC has also gained ground in Gujarat since the 1980s itself and is very much a part of the BJP’s agenda since then. UCC is the antithesis of democracy,” Gandhi said.
Though several right-wing organisations in Gujarat are on-board with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s push for UCC, minority groups feel that it is a means to erode their religious identity and regulate their religious rights.
Mujahid Nafees, convener of the Minority Coordination Committee in Gujarat said that this is not a Uniform Civil Code. Instead, he sees this as a ‘targeted civil code’.
“This (UCC) excludes 14.75% Schedule Tribe population of Gujarat. How can we call it ‘uniform’? This is a targeted civil code which interferes in internal affairs like religion. The diversity of Indian culture should be appreciated, but, in the process, a specific group or weaker sections of society should not be deprived. The resolution of this conflict does not mean the elimination of all differences.”
Necessity or Narrative?
Two weeks into the implementation of the UCC, the Uttarakhand government was already facing challenges. The government assured citizens that all personal information submitted during the registration process under the UCC will remain confidential and unavailable to third parties.
In Gujarat, however, the worries wander beyond what is accessible in the public sphere.
Prasad Chacko, social activist and a member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) believes that the UCC is another attempt by the BJP regime to weaponise laws and persecute the Muslim community.
Speaking to The Wire, Chacko said, “Today, laws are being crafted in a way that they aid in reducing Muslims to lesser citizens, dispossessing and disenfranchising them. They indulge in hate speeches to stereotype the community, more so after 2002, when they even called camps for displaced Muslims as ‘baby-making factories’. Look at the kind of Islamophobic hate speeches that keep happening in the run up to the elections”.
“It is a regime that uses legislation to further its hate and uses social media to legitimise their narratives. The same happened with Love Jihad laws. Is there any tangible data that warrants the enactment of such laws? Is there any data that proves the necessity of UCC at this point of time?” Chacko asked.
“Even if UCC has to be brought in, it has to be through widespread consultation with every stakeholder, delving into cultural practices and assessing them on the touchstones of constitutional morality and justice. This cannot be done by a five-member committee appointed by the government. Even the constitution of such a committee has to be in consultation with the various communities who represent a wide range of religious and theological persuasion. The way in which the UCC has been enacted in Uttarakhand, and now in Gujarat, only exposes the hideous intention of the Sangh-BJP to persecute and humiliate the minorities,” Chacko added.
In his address in the Rajya Sabha on February 6, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised that while batting for the UCC, his party-led governments are only treading the path shown by the framers of the Constitution. On several occasions in the past, Modi has also claimed that the UCC is beneficial to women.
Dr Jyotsna Yagnik, former principal judge at Civil and Sessions Court, Ahmedabad, said that it remains to be seen whether the UCC would indeed be able to prevent discrimination against women.
“The success of the UCC will be highly dependent on how the provisions are framed. What remains to be seen is whether we are able to maintain our secular character with its implementation. If it is really meant to empower women and lessen discrimination, it needs to adhere to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),” Yagnik said.
The CEDAW is an international treaty on women’s rights that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979.
In May, 2024, at a poll rally in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi, Modi advocated for the implementation of the UCC. However, his support to the code was marked by stacking two of his nemeses together – the Congress and Islamic law. “The Congress party is opposing the Uniform Civil Code. Congress supports Sharia law under the guise of Muslim Personal Law” Modi had said.
