EDITORIAL: As India gears up for April-May general elections Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hard Hindutva pitch is fuelling tensions with the country’s largest minority community: Muslims.
A couple of weeks after presiding over an ostentatious consecration ceremony of Ram Temple where a mosque stood for centuries, his party BJP’s ruled state of Uttarakhand has introduced a highly factious legislation to create a common law civil code, widely seen as a message for the party base that returned to power Modi would fulfil his earlier promise to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) all over the country.
The state chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, said as much claiming that his party was close to achieving an “historic’ win to implement Modi’s vision [of turning India into a Hindu Rashtra, where minority communities can live only as second class citizens]. And signaling what lies in store in the likely event of BJP victory, the party’s national spokesperson, Nalin Khohi, averred “the systematic process to get Uniform Civil Code in several states has [already] begun”.
Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim voice and member of Indian Parliament from Hyderabad, called the move a “trial balloon” ahead of the elections, adding that Hindu nationalists profess to like non-uniformity, except when it comes to Muslims.
The UCC, however, has been debated of and on, usually broached by right wing politicians and lawyers. So far it has failed to gain traction since it does not square with the very argument advanced in its favour, i.e., constitutional idea of secularism that separates religion from the state. It is worth noting that in democratic Western societies UCC is debated only in matters related to principles of constitutional law, probably, because until recently they all followed the same faith, with some denominational variations. India, on the other hand, for long has been a multi-cultural society.
That is why the British colonial rulers implemented a common criminal code — still prevalent in India and Pakistan — but left personal/family matters, such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance to be governed by an individual’s faith, which vary depending on a community’s customs and religious beliefs. Muslims rightly regard UCC as an infringement on their religious beliefs, dilution of rights as citizens, and an assault on cultural indemnity.
Notably, there is no consensus in that country how to deal with the sensitive poetical and constitutional issues arising out of the UCC. After months long deliberations the 22nd Law Commission of India released its report in February of last year, saying a UCC was “neither necessary nor desirable at this stage.” But shortly afterwards, Modi speaking at his party workers’ convention termed it not only desirable but necessary, sparking a fresh debate and encouraging governments in BJP-administered states to act accordingly. Clearly, those betting on it are out to rob Muslims of their right to follow Islamic practices — a universally accepted human right — and in so doing cause grievous harm to India’s much touted secularism.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024