India’s Uttarakhand State Legislature Passes Uniform Civil Code Bill

On February 7, the legislative assembly of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand passed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill. The bill will go to the president for her assent, after which it will become law.

Uttarakhand, which is ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is the first Indian state since independence to pass the UCC. Two other BJP-ruled states – Gujarat and Assam – have announced plans to enact the UCC and other states, including Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, are expected to follow.

In India, personal laws – laws applying to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption – draw on religious texts, customs, and traditions and are thus different for different religious groups. Laws on who and how many people a person can marry, and how to end a marriage differ by religion. Indians can either follow their religious group-specific laws or opt for a secular code.

A uniform civil code envisages replacing these separate codes with a single set of laws that apply to all citizens irrespective of their religion.

So, what does the Uttarakhand UCC Bill say? It proposes a common law on marriage, divorce, inheritance of property, and live-in relationships for all citizens in the state, irrespective of their religion. However, tribal communities, who comprise 2.9 percent of the state’s total population, have been exempted from its ambit.

The bill prohibits polygamy, retains the legal minimum age for marriage at 18 years for women and 21 years for men, and abolishes the concept of “illegitimate children.” It provides for equal rights for women and men in marriage, divorce, and inheritance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, adopted, or born through surrogacy, will be on equal footing. It makes registration of marriages mandatory. Indeed, registration of live-in relationships has been made mandatory too.

When India’s constitution was being written in the late 1940s, the question of a uniform civil code was among the most contentious issues. Religious conservatives opposed it, as they feared a UCC would reduce the role of religion and of clerics in the community. Others believed that it would undermine the distinct identities of different religious groups. A UCC was not suitable for a country with staggering diversity like India, some argued, while others said it would be an assault on a citizen’s right to freedom of religion.

However, proponents argued that a UCC held out the possibility of rationalizing and modernizing archaic laws and replacing them with a progressive civil law that would promote gender equality, among other things.

In the end, the Constituent Assembly merely said that the Indian state “shall endeavor to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.”

In the decades thereafter, the implementation of a UCC has triggered mixed feelings and polarized debate. While the left, feminists, and liberals have argued in favor of a UCC because it can be a tool for modernizing laws and ensuring gender equality, these sections are also apprehensive that a uniform code across religious groups, especially in the hands of a regime that is anti-minority, would end up erasing minority identities.

Interestingly, the Hindu right wing, which once fiercely opposed the UCC, has become its strongest champion. Indeed, implementing the UCC is an important item on the BJP’s political agenda and has figured several times in its election manifestos, including those in the 2014 and 2019 general elections as well as in several state assembly elections like the 2022 Uttarakhand assembly election.

While the BJP justifies its plans to bring in a UCC on the grounds of gender equality and justice – its 2019 election manifesto said that the party “believes that there cannot be gender equality till such time India adopts a Uniform Civil Code, which protects the rights of all women” – its primary motivation rests elsewhere.

It is evident that the BJP and its fraternal organizations see the UCC as an opportunity to homogenize India to fit into its vision of a Hindu state, and to erode the distinct ways of life of India’s religious communities, especially Muslims.

Muslim community leaders and politicians have criticized the Uttarakhand UCC’s banning of Islamic practices like halala, iddat, and triple talaq. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has slammed the bill as “inappropriate, unnecessary and against diversity.”

Critics have labeled the Uttarakhand bill discriminatory. If tribals have been exempted from the purview of the UCC because of their distinct customs and objections, why not the Muslims too? Why does the UCC ban only practices that are allowed under Muslim personal law, like polygamy and halala, on the grounds that they are “defective” and “regressive”?

On the other hand, why does the UCC not incorporate progressive aspects of Muslim law, such as the compulsory payment of mehr by the husband to the wife, which provides her with financial security? Women’s rights groups have rightly pointed out that if the objective of the Uttarakhand UCC was to ensure gender justice, practices like payment of mehr would have been extended to all religious groups, rather than eliminated.

A particularly disturbing and dangerous provision in the Uttarakhand UCC bill is one requiring registration of live-in relationships. Critics have argued that it is an invasion of privacy, a violation of an adult individual’s freedom to enter into a relationship and an unwarranted meddling by the state in matters that are not the state’s business. As opposition Trinamool Congress parliamentarian Saket Gokhale pointed out in a post on X, formerly Twitter, the “BJP has now stepped into people’s bedrooms.”

Failure to register a live-in relationship or even a month’s delay in registration can attract punishment, including imprisonment. Worryingly, under the UCC, consenting adults in a live-in relationship will have to inform their parents. There are concerns that the Uttarakhand UCC would encourage moral policing and vigilantism.

The Uttarakhand UCC bill is not unconstitutional. Indeed, a uniform civil code is desirable, especially to modernize outdated laws. However, some specific provisions in the Uttarakhand Bill are regressive and discriminatory.

As Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan pointed out to The Hindu, “The current UCC is an instrument of harassment given to the state police to harass citizens, particularly Muslims. A UCC that is liberal and consistent with public policy is desirable.”

In the coming weeks and months, more BJP-ruled states will announce plans for their own UCC bills. With general elections around the corner, the BJP can be expected to trumpet this as an achievement. However, laws that are discriminatory and dangerous are no achievement.