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BJP and the UCC

While the debates on inclusion of Art. 35 of the Draft Constitution were to pro­vide for gradual extrication of family laws from religion and march towards the goal of gender justice, the Hindu nationalists advocated UCC in order to use it as a weapon to scare the minorities of impending majoritarian hegemony and to invoke their opposition.

This could then be useful to demonstrate the separat­ist mentality of the minorities. The BJP has been demanding UCC to promote national integration. Union Law Minister D V Sadanand Gowda, for example, said that UCC was necessary for national integration (Express News Service, 2015). This is not withstanding the fact that BJP’s Election Manifesto 2014 prom­ises UCC on the ground of gender justice, “drawing upon the best traditions and harmonizing them with the modern times.”4 However the moot question is, given the mind boggling diversity of traditions within all the religious communi­ties, how painful will be the negotiations to draft such a uniform code? And, will the UCC be in consonance with the diversity? Which of the diverse traditions will form the basis of the UCC?

IV.

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Source: Ahmed Hilal, Mishra R.K.. Rethinking Muslim Personal Law: Issues, Debates and Reforms. Routledge India,2022. — 187 p.. 2022
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