The Times of India
A failure of secular vision
Feb 10, 2011, 12.00am IST
The failure of every administration since Independence to address one of Indian society's glaring shortcomings - the lack of a uniform civil code - has come in for criticism again. And just like every time, the ruling dispensation will brush it off with specious arguments. But the fact of the matter is that leaving minority communities out of the ambit of reform of personal laws that has - rightly - been implemented for the Hindu community is not a show of secularism. It is, as the Supreme Court has pointed out in this instance, precisely the opposite, undermining the basic concept of the rule of law applying equally to every citizen in a democracy.
This is an issue that has come up of late elsewhere as well, such as in British Prime Minister David Cameron's speech in which he attacked a particular brand of multiculturalism in Britain. The same kind of multiculturalism - one that has less to do with the positive aspects of tolerance and inclusiveness and more with the creation of insular religious or cultural ghettos for political purposes - is the problem when it comes to personal laws in India. It strikes at the root of liberal values, giving primacy to the community rather than to the individual and his rights as enshrined in the Constitution.
When the decision was first made by Jawaharlal Nehru's government to put aside the reform of the minority communities' personal laws, it may have been understandable even if divisive, given the horrors of Partition. But in the decades since, successive administrations have displayed both breathtaking cynicism and an utter lack of will, as in the Shah Bano case - despite repeated prodding by the Supreme Court. It is time to make this reform something more than an idealistic irrelevance languishing as a directive principle of state policy.
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