Of the three big issues that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) deployed as differentiators along its path to political dominance, two saw big victories for it soon after it was re-elected to power in 2019. The Centre suspended Article 370 on Kashmir’s autonomy and the Supreme Court cleared the way for a Ram temple in Ayodhya where a mosque once stood.
The irony of the third, a Uniform Civil Code, is that the Hindu nationalist ideology which drove those campaigns made it harder to achieve a minimally representative consensus on gender-agnostic family laws for all. The BJP faces a choice. Its UCC campaign could turn on a Hindu-Muslim axis, as in the past. Or, with its rightist vote base secure, it could plainly promote justice under its “sakba saath” slogan. For a start, any Indian couple above age who wish to marry should legally be able to.
Right now, hetero-norms on gender prevail in law. Inclusivity in family formation should precede a debate on what’s unjust within families. Rather than merely looking into LGBTQIA+ concerns, the government must reverse its stance on same-sex marriage, grant approval, and let first principles guide our approach to a UCC.
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Updated: 09 Jul 2023, 10:56 PM IST
