The True Character Of The Uniform Civil Code Of
Editorial
The Uttarakhand Government has introduced the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the state from January , 2025. Almost immediately, the chief ministers of the BJP Governments in Assam and Madhya Pradesh cried out in unison that, they too will follow soon. This is only expected because, along with the Ram Mandir, abrogation of Article 370 from Kashmir etc., the UCC has been one of the most important agenda of the BJP for long.
It is alright that there should be uniform laws for everybody in acountry. People engaged in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariatfor an exploitation-free, democratic society would definitely stand forit. Democracy defines equal rights for everyone irrespective of theircreed, nationality, gender or caste. But, who will believe that theRSS-BJP, who intend to impose their virulent Hindutva ideology on thewhole society, who advocate for the all retrograde practices of casteismand gender discrimination, who are constantly perpetrating attacks onthe Muslim people, who are hell bent on dividing the working people oncommunal lines, will forward a truly uniform civil code for the country?UCC is actually another conspiracy hatched by them which is evident fromthe Uttarakhand UCC.
What is inside the Uttarakhand UCC?
No. 1: The legislations regarding live-inrelations
If a couple decides to live-in, they will have to register theirrelationship with a Government registrar. How queer! Why should oneregister a relationship that is not even intended to culminate inmarriage? What will be the difference between a marriage and a live-inrelation then? But, there is more. The Government registrar mayundertake an enquiry about the couple. The official may talk to theirguardians, the landlord and any other person of his/her choice. And,after all these, the couple may be denied registration, unless they areeligible for marrying each other according to conventional matrimonialideas in the society. Further, the information about the couple will beshared with the local police station. Why? So that they can be harassedat any time! If a couple thinks that they would live-in withoutregistration, they are doomed. Because living-in without registration ispunishable with fines and even detention. (Even marriages have to bemandatorily registered otherwise there will be fines.)
How strange that, even after the highest court of the country haverecognised live-in relations as legal, a state of the Union imposes somany restrictions upon it. Most importantly, what has the State, or evenone?s family has to say if two adults consent to live together withoutgoing into the social formalities of marriage? Why should the Statecommand them and keep their relationship under surveillance? Is this notagainst the freedom of the individual? The whole thing smacks offeudalism where the family and the society?s chieftains decide who canloves whom and who are prohibited.
But the Uttarakhand UCC is not only about live-ins. It includes othersectarian and anti-people laws which will have far-reaching effects. Oneexpects that a Uniform Civil Code will ensure equal rights for everyoneirrespective of creed, caste, nationality and gender. But we see justthe opposite in this act.
For example, this act prohibits some relations in marriage. If acouple have any of those relationships and they intend to live-in ormarry, they have to fetch approval from the priests or religiousorganisation of their respective community that they are eligible tomarry as per some special custom or usage permitted in that community.Previously, as per law the states itself notified special customs ofvarious communities permitted for marital relationships, and since theonus of authorization was not on them, the spouses were saved theharassment. The Uttarakhand UCC changed it.
What is more, who decided that such and such relations are bannedfrom marriage? Strangely, the dictum followed from conventional andmainstream Hindu practices. Yet, diverse rituals of marriage are fullypermitted not only in other religious communities like Muslims or theAdivasis, but even in many Hindu communities. A forbiddenrelationship in Hindu community in North India is fully sanctioned inthe South. So why is the list of prohibited relations prepared accordingto a specific community?s particular conventions? Why the onus ofproving the other customs have been imposed on the couples? Is this notcalled partiality in favour of a specific kind of Hindu practice?
Uttarakhand UCC further dictates that the live-in partners mustpresent a priest to certify the religious sanctity of their pairing.This is to compel a couple to go through the same kind of paraphernaliathey obviously intend to avoid by not marrying and to chain them withina specified Hindu religious custom or community tradition or any specialcustom approved by a priest.
No. 2: The ?restitution? of conjugal rights ? another exampleof imposition of Hindu edicts
Currently, if a husband or a wife files a divorce suit, the otherside can pray for ?restitution of conjugal rights?. It is seen that inmost of the cases, when wives want to opt out from marriage due to somemismatch or quarrel, their husbands use this section to force them toconcede to their conjugal rights. This is in completecompliance to the Hindu idea that matrimony is a sacred bond and itssanctity may not be trespassed against even if the couple is unhappy. Wemay note that, in 1983, the Andhra Pradesh High Court repealed thissection of the Hindu Marriage Act terming it unconstitutional. It alsostated that it is an extreme example of State intervention on theindividual?s choice in an intimate relationship and that the law,influenced by the Hindu idea of the sanctity of marriage, here coercewomen into unwanted sex and pregnancy. However, this criticised sectionstays put in the instant law.
A different mission
However, The BJP-RSS has a greater plan regarding the UCC. Let usnote the focus of the campaign in favour of the UCC ? the inhumane anddiscriminatory practices against women in Muslim community, likepolygamy, Teen Talaq, Nikah-Halala etc. must be stopped. The governmentnow claims to just have done that. But does this law eradicate polygamyamong Hindus? Facts deny it. The National Family Health Survey, 2019-21shows that the rate of polygamy among Hindus and Christians are 1.3% and2.1%, respectively. 70 years has passed since polygamy was banned forthese communities in 1955. And, though the Muslims were allowedpolygamous life, their rate stands only at 1.9%. This is not to say thatpolygamy is not a misogynist practice, but only to highlight that suchthings do not change by enacting laws. Even though inter-caste marriageis fully legal, more than often it is hindered, especially by highercaste men, and honour killing for such marriages are common. What aboutstopping these? Can one stop the dominance and strictures of theKhap Panchayats over personal lives and customs to be followedby people? Does the Uttarakhand UCC dictated by the BJP-RSS proposeanything in this area? No. They insist that all such ill customs arerestricted only within the Muslim society and they can only beeradicated by simply enacting a strict law. Their studied silence overthe curses of Hinduism, like casteism, diktats of the Khaps,polygamy, infanticide/ foeticide of the girl child, child-matrimony etc.which ruin the lives of many a Hindu women, shows their realintention.
What is the true objective of the State surveillance and interventionon marriages and live-in relations advocated in this UCC? To thwartinter-community (read Hindu-Muslim) pairing of men and women. Thespecial Marriage Act was primarily enacted to protect inter-community orinter-caste marriages from the atrocities (extending to even murder)perpetrated by the powerful heads of the communal societies and thefamily. But the provision of the 30-day advance public notice period hasallowed precisely these so-called heads of society to frustrate theproposed marriages in thousands of cases by creating ruckus around them.Some decades ago, the Central Government?s Law Commission recommendedrepeal of the provision of advance notice in this Act, but it is notreformed yet. The Uttarakhand UCC includes this prerequisite.
This present UCC law further enables the State and theHindutva forces to foil inter-caste/ inter-community marriagesand live-in relations by coercion. Since the rise of the Hindu communaloutfits, they had been obstructing such pairings by bullying, and evenphysically assaulting couples on the pretext of ?Love Jihad?. The BJPgovernments, in the eight states where they are in power, have onlyfacilitated these actions by enacting the most undemocratic andstringent anti-conversion laws. The terms of advance notice in theseconversion laws also equip the State to arrest the aspiring couples andtheir family members accusing misuse of conversion for forcefulmarriages or love-jihad and putting the couple or their families behindbars under non-bailable sections and thus wrecking the marriages.
This is precisely what the UUCC aim for by extending the provisionsfor surveillance and control. Just after it came into effect inUttarakhand this January 2025, an incident proved this beyond doubt. Sixcouples applied for live-ins in the state , out of which only one gotclearance, and promptly, a Bajrang Dal leader blurted out that they arecollecting information about the live-in couples and are especiallyvigilant about the ?dangerous? Hindu-Muslim partners. This is not only averbal threat. In the past, BJP Governments had repeatedly leakedinformation from the advance notices under the Special Marriage Act tothe vigilant groups so that they can conveniently thwart inter-communitymarriages. So there is nothing new that the new UCC will be put to gooduse by the Sangh auxiliaries shouting ?Hindu khatre menhai ? slogans to save the Hindu girls and their families from ?LoveJihad? . This is only expected from a government which has alreadyopened the way to communal hatred and persecution by putting the Muslimson the firing line alleging ?Jihad?s of myriad types : ?Land Jihad?against any Muslim proprietor of land, ?Vyapar Jihad? againstany Muslim trader in ?Devbhumi?, etc.
The UUCC contains another section which further arms theadministration and the Hindutva groups. There is a vague andundefined condition for registration of marriages and live-ins: It ?mustnot be unreasonable or against the public policy and morality.? Who willdecide what is public policy, or how is morality defined? Obviously, theState, which has hitherto given indulgence to the communalism of themajority community and which now serves the planned HinduRashtra project, will only have its say. Its moral standing isamply clear by now as it enacts autocratic laws on the basis of bogusconcepts like Love Jihad.
The Uttarakhand UCC also plays a social role: it aggravates theanimosity between the Hindu and Muslim communities. The extensivecommunally biased campaign over the years has created such a stronghatred against the Muslims among the Hindu masses, that they havepresumed that the UCC is just the law to stop the abusive, harmfulpractices like Teen Talaq or polygamy among the Muslims. In a backwardsociety like India, where an inter-community marriage routinely facesobjection and, the very concept of live-in is hated with distrust andconsidered as avoidance of marriage, it is more than natural that thisact will further heighten this backward, regressive thinking among themasses.
Uniformity in Civil Code? A revolutionary goal
It is obvious from the above, that the UCC is not a uniform civilcode for all. Its aim is to stop all conjugal relations between men andwomen of the Hindu and Muslim communities as also of those fromdifferent castes within the Hindu community, and, will only boost theimpunity with which communal hooligans further divide and strikeinnocent Muslim people. That the target is mainly the Muslims is madeclear by the fact that the scheduled tribes have been kept out of thepurview of this act. If it is a uniform code, how come, the STs areexempted?
This is not to say that the conscious proletariat will advocate theinclusion of the STs under this Act. The proletariat fully standsagainst this Act. Because the root cause behind all the harmful customsand practices prevalent among all the communities - like polygamy, childmarriage, foeticide and infanticide of the girl child, Teen Talaq, theNikah-halala, the dominance of the family over the individual?slove-life, etc. - is the persistence of the remnants of thepre-capitalist production system in the society. Definitely, there havebeen changes in this production system, but they have been implementedthrough reforms from above. True that, they have expanded the aspirationfor individual freedom, for democracy, which in turn brought morereforms and more changes in the system. But the old feudal ideologiesand undemocratic conventional social customs still prevail on thesuperstructure. The big bourgeoisie, who has come to power by makingcompromise with the old feudal lords, has allowed many a feudaltradition to remain woven into the legal framework of the country. Thereflection effected on the laws by the weak democratic forces broughtabout by the partial and slow capitalist development since independenceis largely insufficient, given the need for a holistic change. It isobvious that this is not possible by promulgating laws. We have alreadydiscussed how all the disgraceful customs have stayed put in spite ofseveral laws against them. Therefore, a uniform civil code is notgenerally feasible in this society. For that, one needs to eradicate allthe remnants of the old production relations and establish a trulydemocratic society, and, that is not going to happen without arevolutionary movement. Even after the proletariat captures politicalpower, it would take an effort, to build up a movement from deep withinthe society against such old values and practices. The UCC would only beachievable then.
We know that, the RSS-BJP cannot be further away from such a goal.How can one eliminate old undemocratic traditions from the society, whenin the name of Hindutva they militantly champion and aggravate the samekind of undemocratic, reactionary customs and values in Hinduism? TheUttarakhand UCC is only another legal tool in their hands to communallysensitise and divide the society and frustrate any union between twodifferent communities and castes. Hence the conscious proletariat has noother way than to oppose and fight it with all its might.
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