The much touted and much glorified Uttarakhand Bill on Uniform Civil Code (UCC) has been passed in 2024. UCC promises to champion uniform laws governing different aspects of life of all faiths, including marriage, divorce and its registration, maintenance, alimony, inheritances and live-in relationships. But Uttarakhand’s UCC is neither uniform nor civil.
The absence of adoption, guardianship and surrogacy provisions, the exemptions to HUFs and tribal com-munities, the silence about the rights of queer and transgender persons within a family, retaining of gender discriminatory laws of primacy of agnacy i.e preference of male line in Hindu succession, are all evidence purporting towards a poorly drafted law. What is particularly concerning is the introduction of criminal provisions in a statute that claims to be a civil code.
Through Section 6, the Bill makes it mandatory for marriages to be registered failing which could result in a fine of twenty five thousand rupees. Section 15 of the Bill provides for inspection of marriage and divorce registers “by any other person”. These are only a few instances of encroachment of the state into consensual relations among individuals without considering the plight of poor and illiterate women in navigating through these administrative mechanisms. Similarly problematic are the provisions regulating live in relationships.
“What does the Centre have to do with registration of live-in relationships? What kind of hare-brained idea is this?” This was the observation of the Supreme Court while dismissing, with exemplary costs, a PIL seeking a direction to the Centre to frame rules for registration of live-in relationships in March 2023. This very ‘hare brained idea’ critiqued by Justice DY Chandrachud is now being given the sanction of a law in an attempt to encroach into the bedrooms of individuals and restrict their decisional autonomy in relationships.
As an instance of the antagonistic nature of the law, the code requires partners to notify the registrar within a month of entering into a live-in relationship and also while terminating it, which defeats the entire rationale behind live-in relationships rendering it on par with formal marriage. Couples applying for registration shall be subject to a summary enquiry conducted by a Registrar, who can call upon third parties to submit particulars and evidence as to the ‘nature of relation’. Such an application can be rejected by the Registrar on grounds of ‘suspicion’ and can report the same to the police. Non registration has been deemed a criminal offense with a fine of ten thousand rupees and imprisonment up to three months with no appeal mechanism against the decision of the Registrar.
The sinister outcome of such provisions is best expressed by Prof. Sarasu Esther Thomas “This exposes young adults’ sexual and marital choices to state, societal and parental control in complete violation of their constitutional rights to privacy, autonomy and personal liberty. This chilling effect will impact inter-caste and inter community marriages, and also many marriages which are outside the arranged marriage system”.
A popular opinion of the BJP legislators and the Godi media is that the UCC is the champion of women’s rights and registration of live-in relationships is a measure to mitigate crimes against women in such unregulated relations. However, the data on married women in India suggests otherwise. Over 30 per-cent of these crimes against women were recorded under cruelty by the husband or his relative, according to the 2021 report by National Crime Records Bureau. According to the National Family Health Survey (2021), in Uttarakhand 15% of all married women between the age of 18-49 have experienced some form of physical violence by their husband. With Uttarakhand recording the highest cases of domestic violence in the lockdown, it begs the question, how does the legislature seek to mitigate crimes against women by merely formalizing their relations? The constant reference to the Shreya Walker case of 2022 as an example for domineering personal relations shows that the underlying objective behind such provisions is to demonize interfaith and inter-community relations.
Another common trend is the con-formers of the UCC using the platform as an opportunity to demean the Muslim personal laws, specifically referencing the practice of polygamy while not incorporated the positive and progressive aspects of Muslim law such as the compulsory payment of mahr by the husband to the wife, nikahnama and restraint on willing away more than one-third of property. Polygamy is not merely a construct of Muslim community. According to NFHS-5, compared to the national average of 1.4 percent, the rate of polygamy was 2.4 among STs, 1.5 among SCs and 1.3 among OBCs. Interestingly, the practice of polyandrous and polygamous relations is pervasive in the Jaunsar-Bawar tribes of Uttarakhand and since they are a tribal community, UCC will not impact them. This raises significant concerns regarding the “uniformity” of the code with Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) and Tribal communities exempted under the UCC. The UCC requires a nuanced discussion. A common civil code on the pretext of gender justice is essential and the same was also recognised by the framers of the Constitution under Article 44. Dr.Ambedkar’s vision of a Uniform Civil Code for the progress, advancement and unity of all sections of the society, to achieve that however, the intention of the legislature matters. Many communities would want an end to their obsolete and discriminatory personal laws but it becomes very difficult for them to trust a government whose mainstream agenda is to build a majoritarian Hindutva State.
This is best conveyed by the words of SC Senior Advocate, Sanjay Ghose who expressed “If by the UCC we mean making laws more just and facilitating gender justice, I am all for it. However, if by it we mean artificially constructing a ‘majority’ community and obliterating diversity and nuances of India, history compels me to dissent”.
