Column | A Country Of Over 1.3 Billion People Cannot Be Forced Into Sameness: Asaduddin Owaisi on UCC

West Bengal is set to table a Uniform Civil Code Bill, following Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh. Every time a new state joins this list, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) repeats the same three words—equality, uniformity, gender justice—as though repetition alone can make them true. It cannot. Look closely at the states that have already legislated a UCC, and the claim collapses.

Start with Uttarakhand, the first state to enact one. It has the worst sex ratio in the country—844 women to 1,000 men. There can be no gender justice in a state that cannot even guarantee that girls are allowed to be born. The same government that speaks of uniform rights has a law that requires state permission before a person can change their faith and effectively criminalises interfaith relationships. Meat, egg and fish are banned in Haridwar and Rishikesh. The state has a law that bars ‘outsiders’ from purchasing agricultural and horticultural land. So much for the fundamental right of Indian citizens to move and settle in any part of the country.

Gujarat is no better. The child sex ratio is 890, worse than the national average, in the home state of the prime minister and the home minister. Female literacy stands at 69.7 per cent, compared to 87.95 per cent in Muslim-majority Lakshadweep. Under the 2020 amendment to the Disturbed Areas Act, selling property from a Muslim-owned area to a non-Muslim, or vice versa, is a criminal offence carrying five years in prison. Scholar Christophe Jaffrelot has documented Ahmedabad as the most segregated city in India, with over 40 per cent of it falling under this Act. Muslims in ghettoised localities like Juhapura have had to move court simply to get a water connection.

The Disturbed Areas Act was originally intended to prevent distress sales of property in riot-affected areas, where Muslim victims of communal violence were often forced to sell their homes under duress. Over time, it has evolved into a tool that entrenches Hindu-Muslim residential segregation. Amendments that took effect in 2020 significantly strengthened the law by expanding the Collector’s powers to scrutinise property transfers for “improper clustering” or “polarisation” of communities and by widening the scope of transactions requiring official approval. A government that discriminates against citizens in the provision of public services cannot lay claim to equality as its guiding principle.

In Assam, roughly 12 per cent of the population—the tribal communities—has been kept outside the UCC’s reach entirely, because their “distinct culture” is worth protecting. The tribal exemption also exists in Gujarat and Uttarakhand. Muslims, whose right to culture is equally guaranteed under Article 29, get no such protection.

The BJP’s state governments have consistently expanded discriminatory laws and targeted Muslims. After all, the Assam chief minister’s stated goal is to harass the state’s Muslims. Moreover, the record of these states on gender justice is abysmal.

Exit For One Community

The constitutional vision of a UCC was never what the BJP claims it is. Article 44 speaks of a “uniform” civil code, not a “common” one. Moreover, it does not mention a “compulsory” code. In the Constituent Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar specifically said that the provision would not mean that “the State shall enforce it upon all citizens merely because they are citizens”. Rather, it would be a voluntary civil code. That voluntary, secular framework already exists —the Special Marriage Act (SMA), the Indian Succession Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the Domestic Violence Act already apply to all. Anyone who does not wish to be governed by their personal law can already opt out. No one is forced into religious law. What is being forced, through these state Bills, is an exit from it—for one community only.

And even the “secular” SMA is not as uniform as advertised. Section 21A provides that if two Hindus marry under the SMA, they continue to be governed by Hindu succession law. Two Muslims marrying under the same Act are pushed into the Indian Succession Act instead. There is already a Hindu exception written into the supposedly neutral law. Ask any BJP proponent of the UCC whether Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) tax benefits will be abolished, whether Mitāksarā and Dāyabhāga will end, whether sa-gotra and cousin-marriage restrictions under Hindu law will be scrapped, and the silence is instructive. Even as the 21st Law Commission said that a UCC was “neither necessary nor desirable”, it recommended scrapping HUFs’ tax status. In 2022-23, 8,75,948 HUFs claimed deductions of Rs 3,802.86 crore. It has not been touched.

Uniformity, it turns out, is only demanded of Muslims.

The government insists the UCC only touches “substantive” law, not ritual—that a nikah or seven pheras can continue undisturbed. This is false. A nikah is not a ritual; it is a legally binding contract. The bride and groom are allowed to add any conditions to the contract that they desire. Under Hindu law, wives who refuse to live with their in-laws or decline to serve them tea have been found to be inflicting “cruelty”. It is on this ground that courts have granted divorce against them. Under Muslim law, a woman has the right to a separate household and cannot be compelled to serve her husband’s family. Which of these becomes “the law” under UCC?

Under the Hindu Marriage Act and the SMA, couples must live separately for a year before a mutual-consent divorce; under Muslim law, no such waiting period exists, and a woman can also seek dissolution through khula or the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act. Why should Muslim women be made to surrender a right that already protects them, in the name of a uniformity that offers them nothing better?

Under Muslim law, it is not permissible to bequeath more than one-third of your property. In effect, parents cannot disinherit their children. Under the UCC now, Muslims are permitted to bequeath all of their property to their “preferred” child. Thus permitting discriminatory wills. Previously, daughters were entitled to a guaranteed share under Islamic law. Is the UCC an improvement? Not really. In fact, empirical studies show that despite the law recognising a Hindu woman’s right to inheritance, very few women actually inherit or own any property at all.

If gender justice were truly the goal, the government would be investing in girls’ education, women’s employment and financial independence—the actual drivers of equality, as data consistently shows. Instead, India’s female labour force participation is among the lowest, and falling, in the world.

The idea that uniformity and equality are the same is an outdated one. In fact, “uniformity” has often meant the imposition of the dominant community’s cultural attitudes on minorities. Equality in India cannot mean the destruction of our pluralism.

Pluralism is not the Constitution’s inconvenience—it is its architecture. Articles 25, 26 and 29 protect freedom of conscience, religion and culture as fundamental rights, and the Supreme Court has held pluralism to be part of the basic structure of our Constitution. A country of over 1.3 billion people, with utterly different conceptions of marriage, family and inheritance, cannot be forced into sameness.

(Views expressed are personal)

Asaduddin Owaisi Member of Lok Sabha

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)