UNIFORM CIVIL CODE IS NOT ABOUT HINDU DOMINANCE

Screen shot from the website of The Hindu. 

Mukesh Devrari

In the morning I came across a column written against uniform civil code in the editorial page of ‘The Hindu’. The essay was written by Nivedita Menon. She is a professor at JNU, New Delhi and describes herself as a feminist scholar.

In her column titled ‘It isn’t about the woman’, she gave reasons to support the continuation of Sharia based Muslim personal law in India and argued against prohibiting polygamy and triple talaq. She described the Uniform Civil Code as a Hindu agenda to impose Hindu laws on Muslims.

I could resist myself and scribbled a few lines to critique her arguments. It is important to critically examine her grotesque narrative on the issue. She is denying democratic space available to Muslim women in secular democracies like India. According to her even in secular democracies if Muslims women need any right, they should find it within the Islamic faith. 

Recently a Muslim woman Shayara Bano received talaq by post. Her lawyer, Nivedita Menon grudges, instead of using any of the other recourses available in the protection of distressed women decided to file public interest litigation (PIL) in Supreme Court of India.

Why should not a hapless woman use all possible methods to get justice? Why she should seek rights and justice within limits drawn by Islam? India is not a Taliban. It is a secular republic. This country needs a uniform civil code for all its citizens. It is not fair to create different laws for different religions. 

These separate personnel laws must not be allowed to exist in India. They are based on religion and deny gender equality and refuse to accept the common sense of the 21^st century. Uniform civil code should not become Hindu vs. Muslim debate. Laws regulating the lives of citizens should be based on enlightened modern values ensuring justice, equality and liberty.

Professor Nivedita Menon writes, “Polygamy is not exclusive to Muslims. Hindu men are polygamous too except that because polygamy is legally banned in Hindu law, subsequent wives have no legal standing and no protection under the law.”

In a strange twist of logic she is describing how Sharia laws are bringing the positive changes in the lives of women. Basically, she is suggesting that men are going to have multiple wives in India irrespective of what law says on the issue. It is better to have Sharia law than a universal secular law to help and support multiple wives.  

She does not stop here, after this she throws a bigger stone on the common sense of people reading her article. Under the Sharia law, on the contrary, subsequent wives have rights and husbands have the obligation.” Allowing men to have four fives is not allowed even in moderate Muslims nations. It would be considered highly regressive to even indirectly support such social evils.   

Prof. Menon also adopts diversionary tactics. She tried to argue that it is not even an issue. We should rather talk about how to protect wives in the patriarchal institution of marriage. At another instance, she also dismissed the possibility of creating a uniform civil code by borrowing all good principles from all the personnel laws.  

I don’t have time and energy to underline the big holes in all her arguments in every second paragraph of her essay. She was desperate to somehow prove that demand for uniform civil code in India is the agenda of Hindu fundamentalists. She converted the out of context question posed by a reporter in some television channel into the symbol of Hindu designs against Islam and Muslims.

A reporter asked Shayaro Bano, whose lawyer filed the PIL in Supreme Court, what she thinks about ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jay’ slogan controversy. Mrs Bano replied, “I feel all Muslims should say it”.

Prof. Menon says this alone should alert us to what the demand for the uniform civil code is all about. Perhaps she was suggesting that Mrs Bano’s remark about the slogan should be interpreted as her acceptance of the dominance of the Hindu community over Muslims.

This style of argumentation is highly problematic. Indirectly she is empowering the Muslim fundamentalists who will prefer to implement the religious laws which are out of sync with the realities of the contemporary social values. Even though the title of her essay 'it is not about women', she is suggesting that if you are supporting uniform civil code you are having motives other than achieving gender equality.    

This the debate is not about Hindu, Muslim and Christians. This is all about making India a better place and attempt to run away from absurd, irrational and cruel customary practices.

It is difficult to support the continuation of personals laws because it has religious sanction in democratic societies. That’s why Islamic scholars are trying to hide behind dense legal language and trying to create a discourse, where any demand for Uniform Civil Code is being projected as Hindu design against Muslims.

For progress religion must be kept as a personal affair. It cannot be the basis of any laws.  

end.