Why the Uniform Civil Code May Not Be the Answer to Gender Injustice
India’s political climate is not open to a sincere debate on the rights of Muslim women, whose voices have been lost in all the noise.
The clamour surrounding the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), a proposal for a blanket law that will replace areas governed by Personal Laws — those concerning the practice of religion, pertaining to marriage, inheritance, property etc — has placed a considerable amount of weight upon the welfare of Muslim women. The discourse has largely focused on the issues of “arbitrary divorce” or triple talaq, and polygamy, which the UCC seeks to ban. However, will the imposition of a uniform law necessarily aid the quest for gender equality in India? The debate, driven by the NDA government, which targets Islam, is failing to recognise the demands of Muslim women themselves, and in doing so, evades the idea of gender equality.
The resurgence of the debate, which was first discussed as early as 1947, follows the sensationalised case of Shayara Banu, who was divorced through triple talaq and subject to several rights violations by her husband. The regressive nature of the triple talaq has become one of the most prominent legs upon which the UCC’s pitch for gender equality stands, and has put other Islamic practices under the scrutiny of the government. A survey sent out by the Law Commission of India which aims to “address discrimination against vulnerable groups and harmonise the cultural practices”, by consulting public opinion on the UCC, questions Islamic practices more than it does Hindu, Parsi or Christian Personal Laws. According to women’s rights lawyer Flavia Agnes, it “is targeting Muslims and this has resulted in a backlash among the Muslims and caused polarisation of communities”.
Further, gender inequality has only been observed within the ambit of Muslim Personal Law. The lack of rigorous inquiry into gender-unjust laws of other religions — as the survey displays — fails to understand the nuances of how gender inequality plays out across several religions. Aspects of Muslim Personal Law that benefit women or give them equity have been ignored, while several gender-unjust Hindu Personal Laws have been overlooked.
Polygamy, formally outlawed by Hindu Personal Law, but permissible by Islam spells two different fates for women. Since polygamous relationships aren’t recognised by the Hindu law, neither are the rights of women who are linked to polygamous men. These women have no rights to plead for maintenance, since they are not visible to the Personal Law that governs them. In Islam, however, a man who takes another wife is obliged to provide her with as much as he does for the first wife, and if he doesn’t, she is well within her rights to demand them of him. In light of this, which laws will the Code universalise? How will a blanket law that doesn’t account for these nuances help vulnerable women?
Despite the fact that it has been banned, Hindus are, ironically, among the highest practitioners of bigamy according to statistics. A ban on polygamy doesn’t guarantee that the practice will end and instead runs the risk of disempowering more women in that they won’t be able to demand their rights as before. In the case of triple talaq, it’s invalidation as a method of divorce — established in 2002 — should have solved the problem. Clearly these bans and the imposition of the UCC are part of another agenda that don’t place women’s equality at its heart.
When the General Secretary of the RSS says “In the present era there should not be any kind of gender-based discrimination”, it comes off, at best, as patronising, and seems like a red-herring for what the UCC might really be about. The UCC’s aggressive endorsement by the BJP is not only a tool to secure a vote bank given the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections, but also could be used to further marginalise Muslims in the country. As of now, the Code is still an abstraction, and though the Constitution mentions the instillation of a Uniform Civil Code, it doesn’t detail how it should be made. The government and media have managed to orchestrate this debate and highlight its urgency without stating what the code will constitute or how it will be approached. If the Law Commission’s survey is the first step, it has already faltered as an unbiased and objective source.
Naturally, the proposal of the UCC has been opposed by Muslims, notably by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) who feel they are being targeted. The Code could very seriously violate the secular rights to profess, practice and propagate religion. As Alok Prasanna Kumar in his article in Scroll writes: “The Uniform Civil Code could be one that removes all traces of religion and custom in personal laws and holds them to a neutral standard (the maximal proposal). On the other hand, it could simply redefine the word “Hindu” in the Hindu Code to include all other major religions, thereby simply extending Hindu law to all communities and making it the uniform norm (the minimum proposal)”. This contradiction in the Constitution needs to be thought through more clearly before jumping onto the UCC bandwagon.
Apart from the AIMPLB, an organisation that has been accused of being patriarchal and orthodox, there are several other organisations of Muslim women who are opposing the Code and also want practices like triple talaq to be outlawed, but not through the UCC. These women, who are cognizant of what the Quran says, want reform through a codification of the Muslim Personal Law. Like Agnes who says, “The aim should be uniformity of rights, not a uniform law”, they too, believe that the UCC is not a solution to their problems, and believe that it actually puts their faith at a greater risk. Organisations like the Bharatya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) argue that interpretations of the Quran have been overwhelmingly male-dominant, and argue that practices like triple talaq are in fact un-Islamic.
There are numerous organisations like the BMMA that want a codified Muslim Personal Law, such as The All India Tanzeem Ulema-a-Islam (AITUI) and the Women India Movement to name a few. The voices of these women ought to be considered in the debate of the UCC, especially since they will be among the most adversely affected by a law that claims to save them.
