India adopted a Constitution on 26th January 1950 and every one of our politicians swear their allegiance to it. However, the same politicians for the last 66 years have abused the Constitution by every means by introducing amendments that are not in conformity with the basic principle of “Equality For All”.
In order to manage the transformation of the society the Constitution did envisage some temporary measures which were to be removed after a period of adjustment. Unfortunately, the Vote-Bank politics in the country did not allow the politicians to remove the aberrations that were meant to be temporary and actually increased the aberrations over time.
The term “Equality” for all has been long forgotten with “Preference for the Under Privileged” and “Minorities”. Unfortunately definition of who is “under privileged” and who is a “minority” has remained a point of debate and event he Supreme Court has not been bold enough to step in an correct the inequalities that has crept in because of “Religion”, “Caste”, “Gender” etc. Even the status of “Jammu and Kashmir” under Article 370 fall into this category.
I strongly believe that such discrimination in law have lost their utility and actually increase the differences and create disharmony in the society.
Now for the first time in the country there is a discussion on the need for “Uniform Civil Code” for all religions for people who are Indian Citizens. The trigger for this is the controversy on the validity of “Triple Talaq” in the light of women’s rights activists taking up the issue.
The Government has set up a Law Commission (See here) to formulate its views which has rightly placed a questionnaire before the public to elicit public opinion.
From the TV debates we are aware that a section of the Muslim population which wants to keep muslims glued to the past traditions and not modernize in their thoughts, oppose any change to the Muslim Personal Law. Hence there will be a strong opposition from that part of our population to the proposal. However the progressive elements in the Muslim community as well as the entire Hindu and other communities in the population should support the Uniform Civil Code as a principle which is beneficial to the entire country in the long run.
We also have a hypothesis that the Hindu population in India must be more net-savvy than the Muslim population.
Hence the natural expectation is that there should be an overwhelming response from the public for the questionnaire supporting the Uniform Civil Code in India.
But we know that Hindus are lethargic and not committed to expressing their opinion forcefully unless they are pushed. Even the progressive Muslims have so far failed to force essential change in their community and it is their failure that has provided fuel to the growth of Terrorism in the Muslim community.
The “Good Muslims” out number the “Bad Muslims”. But in terms of vocal opposition to Terrorism, “Good Muslims” are as lethargic as the traditional Hindus. Like the proverbial “Hindu Rate of Growth”, the “Hindu attitude of apathy” has been adopted even by these Muslims who have progressed in life through better education and open societal experience who have let the Muslim community as a whole to be tainted with the terrorist image.
Time has come for such lethargic persons to come out and express their views towards a “Uniform Civil Code” in India. This is a time for the “Good Muslims” to liberate themselves from the shackles of false religious loyalty and enter the new world where religion is accepted as a personal choice and will be practiced only without hurting those who follow a different faith.
I strongly advocate the Uniform Civil Code, because, such things remove the pin pricks that prevent harmonization of the society. In due course all discrimination based on caste, religion, gender, region etc must be removed if we want one “Strong Bharath/India” that extends from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari or Kutch to Mizoram (plus the island parts in Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal).
I therefore urge all to send their responses to the Law Commission.
A Copy of the questionnaire can be found here both in PDF and Word form.
I have created a word format of the PDF version distributed by the Law Commission so that you can easily download and complete it.
The completed form is to be sent by e-mail to : loc-dla@nic.in
Kindly send your views if any by commenting on this article.
Please ensure a wide distribution of this message to the public so that there is a large participation of the population in this exercise.
Naavi
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