Muslim Personal Law (MPL) is one of the most controversial issues of our public life.

It is often presented to us as an antithesis of the core essential Indian values and practices: its legality is described as a serious challenge to the secular sprit of the Indian Constitution, while its existence as a religious code of conduct for Muslims is seen as a symbol of political separatism.

The dichotomy between MPL and UCC, broadly speaking, is based on three dominant views. First, it is strongly believed that Muslims of India constitute a single, closed, homogeneous community, which is inevitably male-dominated. This Islamic homogeneity is seen as a fundamental source of active Muslim reli­giosity that makes them committed, practicing believers. The second assumption is about the operative aspects of the MPL. It is argued that the male-dominated homogeneous, deeply religious Muslim community is actually governed by a few established Islamic laws. These Islamic laws are anti-women and intrinsi­cally patriarchal in nature. It is claimed that the other religious groups, especially Hindus, do not have their own personal laws. They are governed by secular laws or the UCC. Hence, the Muslim community in India is the only privileged reli­gious group that has its own separate civil laws. The third assumption revolves around the idea of representation. It is claimed that the Islamic clergy functions as the true representative of the Muslim community. For this reason, the ulema class has an ultimate right to interpret religious texts and, at the same time, speak on behalf of all Muslims.

This volume makes a modest attempt to unpack the notion of MPL. It high­lights the unsettling nature of MPL as a sociological phenomenon and tries to trace the historical origin of this legal mechanism and its subsequent political manifestations in colonial and postcolonial India. It is argued that that although MPL is inextricably linked to Sharia — the Islamic jurisprudence — it does not determine the everyday life of Muslim communities in India. The Islamic prin­ciples amalgamate with context-specific social norms and cultural values in a variety of ways and produce highly localised Muslim customs and practices. This leads to an interesting social process — localisation of Islam and Islamisation of local Muslim society. The debates on MPL do not capture these everyday expressions of lived Islam.

This is also true about the legal status of MPL. We must remember that the constitutional status of MPL, like other personal laws, is a legally unsettled issue. At the same, there is no consensus on a well-defined UCC. In such a scenario, the possibility to have rational, egalitarian and reformed personal laws might be explored to realise what is often called legal pluralism. This is exactly what the Law Commission of India says:

Whether or not personal laws are laws under Article 13 of the Constitution of India or if indeed they are protected under Articles 25-28, has been disputed in a range of cases...In the absence of any consensus on a uniform civil code...the best way forward may be to preserve the diversity of per­sonal laws but at the same time ensure that personal laws do not contradict fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India.¹

This profound legal observation takes us to the highly debatable idea of Islamic reforms.

To offer a thematic coherence to these varied explorations, we have tried to explore three broad areas in this volume: Muslim sociological diversity and the debates on MPL/UCC, politics of MPL and the UCC and the gender justice and forms of Islamic reforms.