It is your life, and the law will change it — so watch this de­bate. India is pass­ing through a pe­riod of great uni­son in every sphere; so ex­actly when the BJP-led gov­ern­ment is all out to bring in a Uni­form Civil Code, the Supreme Court of In­dia also starts ques­tion­ing the gov­ern­ment about the UCC and won­ders about vary­ing stan­dards.

Sud­denly, the same apex court that once was never tired of re­mind­ing us about the di­ver­sity of In­dia now uses eu­phemisms like “same yard­sticks in mat­ters of law,” and asks: “There is to­tal con­fu­sion… we should work on the Uni­form Civil Code. What hap­pened to it? Why don’t you frame and im­ple­ment it?

A bench of Jus­tices Vikramjit Sen and Shiva Kirti Singh re­cently vir­tu­ally re­minded us all about the times when a strong leader de­manded com­mit­ted a ju­di­ciary. We seem to have reached that point.

Now, the ju­di­ciary and the ex­ec­u­tive are join­ing hands to tell us that they will de­cide how we should marry, di­vorce, de­cide upon cus­tody of kids, in­herit or be­stow wealth, and many other ques­tions. And they have a huge hill to hide be­hind: The Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia, and more specif­i­cally its Di­rec­tive Prin­ci­ples.

First, it was the cow that jumped at us from this Chap­ter IV of the Con­sti­tu­tion and now the UCC is the new holy cow.

The Mus­lims will rush to see it as an anti-mi­nor­ity de­sign, and they could be right; while the Sikhs will start wor­ry­ing about Anand Mar­riage Act. The Goans will won­der what will hap­pen to their ap­par­ently more mod­ern laws gov­ern­ing per­sonal lives, and some mi­nori­ties will start wor­ry­ing about cer­tain spe­cific/​spe­cial pro­tec­tions they en­joyed.

But that is not even the de­bate. The sub­stan­tial parts are much more se­ri­ous. And we need to talk about it.

Is there a “to­tal con­fu­sion” ow­ing to per­sonal laws gov­ern­ing re­li­gious prac­tices, as the Supreme Court said re­cently? Yes, there is some, as is nat­ural in a coun­try of In­di­a’s di­ver­sity. The SC’s worry was trig­gered by a case wherein Chris­t­ian cou­ples have to wait for at least two years for di­vorce, whereas this pe­riod of sep­a­ra­tion is one year for other re­li­gions. One won­ders why it never got con­fused at the fact that peo­ple be­long­ing to one re­li­gion can file a dif­fer­ent tax re­turn in an un­di­vided fam­ily, or Sikhs have to marry un­der a statute called the Hindu Mar­riage Act.

One way to fix an aber­ra­tion is to fix it:  Amend Sec­tion 10A (1) of the Di­vorce Act which states that a pe­ti­tion for dis­so­lu­tion of mar­riage by mu­tual con­sent can be pre­sented be­fore a court only af­ter a ju­di­cial sep­a­ra­tion of two years.

The other is to echo what the BJP wants as its next poll plank: the Uni­form Civil Code.

The Sangh Pari­var has al­ways been fas­ci­nated by the three-pronged agenda — Ram Mandir in Ay­o­d­hya, the scrap­ping of Art 370 and the UCC. Hav­ing done the first two, it is on to the third. The UCC is be­ing tested in polls in Hi­machal Pradesh and Gu­jarat as an is­sue, af­ter a sim­i­lar tac­tic in Ut­tarak­hand. Some other states will also do it, and then by 2024 big dan­gal, it will be turned into a clam­our for one In­dia, one per­sonal law.

Note the SC’s lan­guage: “What hap­pened? Why this can­not be done? You should tell us if you want to do it.” The SC has now asked the So­lic­i­tor Gen­eral to seek the gov­ern­men­t’s views on the Uni­form Civil Code.

In uni­son, the Gu­jarat Home Min­is­ter Harsh Sang­havi on Oc­to­ber 29 had an­nounced the for­ma­tion of a com­mit­tee to im­ple­ment the UCC, months af­ter Ut­tarak­hand formed a com­mit­tee led by re­tired Supreme Court judge Jus­tice Ran­jana De­sai to carry out a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise. As­sam is also on the same track.

The Sangh Pari­var has al­ways been fas­ci­nated by the three-pronged agenda — Ram Mandir in Ay­o­d­hya, the scrap­ping of Art 370 and the UCC. Hav­ing done the first two, it is on to the third. The UCC is be­ing tested in polls in Hi­machal Pradesh and Gu­jarat as an is­sue, af­ter a sim­i­lar tac­tic in Ut­tarak­hand. Some other states will also do it, and then by 2024 big dan­gal, it will be turned into a clam­our for one In­dia, one per­sonal law.

So, one per­sonal law for the en­tire coun­try is ap­plic­a­ble to all re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties in their per­sonal mat­ters such as mar­riage, di­vorce, in­her­i­tance, adop­tion, etc.

Ar­ti­cle 44 of the In­dian con­sti­tu­tion says, “The state shall en­deav­our to se­cure a Uni­form Civil Code for the cit­i­zens through­out the ter­ri­tory of In­dia.”

We talk about the is­sue in this de­bate with Jag­mo­han Singh, Ed­i­tor of The World Sikh News, and Ar­jun She­o­ran, an ad­vo­cate of re­pute, a long-time civil lib­er­ties ac­tivist and do­main ex­pert. Both the par­tic­i­pants have been track­ing the sub­ject for decades now. They are in con­ver­sa­tion with se­nior jour­nal­ist SP Singh.

En­gaged read­ers are fur­ther di­rected to the land­mark Min­erva Mills judg­ment (1980) in which the Supreme Court held that the “In­dian Con­sti­tu­tion is founded on the bedrock of the bal­ance be­tween Parts III (Fun­da­men­tal Rights) and IV (Di­rec­tive Prin­ci­ples), ask them­selves about the polemic about there be­ing no ‘uni­for­mi­ty’ in per­sonal law, and note that most In­dian laws are al­ready uni­form in most civil mat­ters — for ex­am­ple, The In­dian Con­tract Act, Civil Pro­ce­dure Code, Sale of Goods Act, Trans­fer of Prop­erty Act, Part­ner­ship Act, Ev­i­dence Act, etc.

Also, not all Hin­dus are gov­erned by one law, nor are all Mus­lims or all Chris­tians.

When the State comes to at­tend your mar­riage or walk you through your di­vorce or help di­vide your prop­erty, pay very close at­ten­tion. This is about votes and power for them. It is ac­tu­ally about you.