India's founders took a nuanced view on UCC

Uniformity represented modernity, solidarity, and tyranny of the majority for different members of the Constituent Assembly. These debates serve as an important reminder that the desirability of a uniform civil code was always in question

- Saumya Saxena

The years of the Constituent Assembly (CA) discussions (1946-49) witnessed the transfer of power, Partition, and the making of a nation-State. The visions of secularism in CA were informed by the events and processes of Partition and Independence. Hindu-Muslim riots in major cities of the then United Province compounded the sense of suspicion generated around Muslim personal law, and also reflected the insecurities that Partition generated. It was against this backdrop that the debate on uniform civil code (UCC) unfolded.

Many sought the recognition of difference in personal law as a secular nation's acceptance of diversity. For some, a unified code was a means of creating conditions for national integration. Others saw uniformity as universality of indigenous values, imbued with Hindu symbolism. This meant that the neutrality of a code was not necessarily guaranteed, which explains the historical opposition to uniformity by religious minorities.

In substantial extracts of CA debates, repeated invocation of Hinduism as liberal, sensible and secular, remained notoriously consistent. The debate on cow slaughter effectively criminalised the cultural and dietary preferences of many Dalits and Muslims.

Raghu Vira, who later joined the Jana Sangh, compared cow slaughter to the killing of a learned man, a Brahmin. Another Congress member, Seth Govind Das, expressed disappointment over fundamental rights being applicable only to human beings and not animals, since cow slaughter indicated the "collapse of dharma". Lokenath Misra of the Swatantra party misleadingly stated that India would be "perfectly secular" without the presence of Islam. The minority commission's report also did little to assuage Muslim vulnerability, as it abolished reservation and separate electorates for Muslims, even as it did not seek to relinquish personal law.