- Sunday, April 20, 2025
The code puts an end to religious interpretation of laws that govern marriage, divorce, maintenance, inheritance, adoption and succession.
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE northern Indian state of Uttarakhand on Wednesday (7) took a historic step by approving a landmark legislation to unify personal laws across the aisle of religions, a move that faced resistance from many Muslims who form the country’s largest minority.
The approval by Uttarakhand, a state bordering the Himalayas which is ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), made it the first in the country after gaining independence from British rule to implement a Uniform Civil Code, a contentious decades-old promise made by the BJP, months before the general elections.
The move banning polygamy and other practices followed by the Muslim community is expected to embolden other BJP-ruled states to follow suit, angry opposition from leaders of the minority community notwithstanding.
“The Uniform Civil Code will give the right to equality to everyone without any discrimination… We must make history by clearing it,” Pushkar Singh Dhami, the chief minister of Uttarakhand, said before BJP lawmakers and some others in the state voted in favour of the bill in the state legislature.
One of Dhami’s political aides said the bill was passed through voice vote. The BJP faced no problem in clearing the legislation since it enjoys a majority in the state’s legislative assembly.
The code, which is rooted in the framework of the Indian Constitution, ends religious interpretation of laws that guide marriage, divorce, maintenance, inheritance, adoption and succession.
Various communities in India, today, including majority Hindus and minorities such as Muslims, Christians and other groups presently follow their respective personal laws and customs or an optional secular code for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance.
The Uniform Civil Code remains the last of the three core promises that the BJP has made over the years — the other two being removing Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that gave special treatment to the Muslim-majority former state of Jammu and Kashmir and the building of the Ram temple in the place of a centuries-old mosque that Hindu radical demolished in 1992.
