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Politics and uniformity aren’t made for each other. Politics divides. Uniformity may not enforce the unity of ideas and ideals, but it ensures equality for all. Over the past few decades, however, the word ‘uniform’ has fallen victim to bad PR. Liberals interpret it as the loss of freedom for a particular community. Others see it as the means to bring all Indians under the Constitution’s ambit. Ironically, a word that finds place in the Constitution has become the most convenient excuse to justify selective implementation of its provisions.

Last week, when Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda referred implementing a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) to the Law Commission, all hell broke loose. He was only following a Supreme Court suggestion to the government to consider legislation on the UCC. Non-BJP secular parties perceived the move as an attempt to polarise voters with an eye on the UP elections. Sure, the BJP stands to gain by encouraging the debate, but the code is not just another item in its electoral manifesto.

India’s existing civil code is aimed at protecting her women, irrespective of caste or community, from uncivilised conduct. Even though Muslim countries like Pakistan, Syria, Morocco and Tunisia have reformed their personal laws to minimise atrocities on womenfolk, at least in theory, Indian politicians continue to protect barbaric gender practices. They are dismissive about the growing protest by Muslim women against their own laws, because the majority of them are trapped in the toxic embrace of  fundamentalist clergy and orthodoxy. The compulsions of vote bank politics have thwarted various political and social attempts to formulate the UCC. Surprisingly, none of its secular detractors have opposed it in principle. They, however, accuse the Sangh Parivar of reviving the issue for electoral gain.

The Congress has always tried to create smokescreens to retain its majority vote banks by appointing commissions and committees to formulate policy. But no action has been forthcoming. On the contrary, it reversed judicial verdicts favouring Muslim women. Even a modernist PM like Rajiv Gandhi was forced by his party’s minority-obsessed satraps to push for legislation to prevent the implementation of the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case in 1985. The 62-year-old mother of five from Indore in Madhya Pradesh was given talaq by her husband in 1978. She had filed a criminal suit in the apex court and won alimony. Since then, neither the Congress nor its allies have supported or sponsored any legislative move to provide the same rights and privileges to Muslim women that are enjoyed by women of other religions. True, the BJP has politicised UCC and Article 370. But its adversary has been reluctant to carry forward the Directive Principles of the Constitution, which was written by its own Independence-era leaders. Article 44 of the Constitution, which includes Directive Principles of State Policy, says, “The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.”

The selective focus of the Congress and like-minded parties has been on liberating Hindu women from discriminatory social practices. The Grand Old Party, led by Nehru in the 1950s, used Parliament to enact legislations to provide them greater protection. For example, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 gave them legislative power with rights they had been denied for centuries.

Anti-Congress opinion makers thought Nehru played an important role in denying Muslims legislative reforms. For example, a book titled Six Thousand Days: Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister by Amiya Rao and B G Rao contains a section on his philosophy on the UCC. The authors felt he sponsored the Hindu Code Bills because the personal laws of the majority community had to be modified to bring them in line with modern thought; Nehru had vowed to free “our people, more especially our womenfolk, from the outworn customs and shackles which have bound them.” Though his liberal admirers claim now that he was always in favour of UCC, the Congress never attempted to fiddle with Muslim personal laws. The book quotes Nehru: “We have passed one or two laws recently and we are considering one… in regard to Hindu marriage and divorce… These are personal ingrained in custom, habit and religion… Now we do not dare to touch the Muslims because they are a minority and we do not want the Hindu majority to do it. These are personal laws and so will remain for the Muslims until they want to change them… We do not wish to create the impression that we are forcing any particular thing in regard to Muslims’ personal laws.”

Perhaps, after India’s first PM made clear his philosophical reservations on UCC, no government dared to implement Article 44. In spite of ‘uniform’ being in the statute, it has devolved into a mummified metaphor with none of our liberals possessing the guts or wisdom to define it. Surprisingly, despite crimes against women growing across caste and communities, India’s ruling elite feels that the time is still not ripe to bring the country under one civil code. Even those who have been championing same-sex marriages, dance bars, rights of transgenders, and abolition of anti-women laws, are finding it socially and politically incorrect to support women whose lives are trapped in the dark mazes of narrow religious practices. More surprising is the absence and total silence of the Muslim elite and liberal minority leadership. They don’t find the abominable plight of over 70 million Muslim women a glamorous enough subject of debate and dialogue, let alone to ride shotgun for their cause. The ultimate tragedy is that even ‘secularists’ are fighting the ‘communalists’ to retain their hold over the politics of divisiveness. They believe uniformity threatens not just the unity but also the identity of faith.