A CODE NEITHER CONSIDERATE NOR REFORMIST

Gender justice is often the foundation on which arguments for a uniform civil code are mounted. But the recent Uttarakhand law actually hinders it

- SAUMYA SAXENA

THE Uttarakhand state's draft of a uniform civil code gained presidential ascent and became a law recently. While the Act significantly resembles the Hindu Marriage Act, its few new additions raise serious concerns. More than gender equality, the Act addresses the popular and damaging sentiment that 'at least something is done'. The idea that something is better than nothing promotes carelessness and hides negligent drafting. In a bid to 'get things done', we end up with a law that embodies the discrimination it was ostensibly meant to address.

Here, I limit my critique to three brief points. One, the dealing of Muslim personal law. Second, its understanding of live-in relationships, and, relatedly, its contribution to gender equality.

The Act places undue emphasis on the supposed disabilities created by Muslim personal law. In some sense, Muslim personal law is offered as bait to prompt state intervention, and significant media attention is deployed to highlight its obscurantism. Practices like nikah halala, which were neither common nor legal, often end up in petitions before courts. Often dismissed and rarely made by the victims, they serve the purpose of stirring up a conversation about Muslim personal law rather than looking at the specificities of the case, where there is usually an individual criminal operating without religious sanction. A reasonable comparison would be to blame Hindu personal law for an individual case of sati a practice already banned, criminalised and, in popular imagination, no longer associated with the Hindu way of life. Bigamy becomes another argument over which Muslim personal law is brought to focus, although any conversation over polyamorous practices in other religions are treated as occurring rarely but illegal.