Decoding the Codes: Why Does India Have More Than One Civil Code?

As parliamentary elections in India get underway, one of the debates to resurface is the controversy surrounding the Uniform Civil Code. The critics of the BJP, in turn, say that the ruling party is playing up the idea of a Uniform Civil Code to garner Hindu votes, rather than to genuinely help Muslim women. Beyond Tradition and Modernity.” As the author pointed out, the British authorities arbitrarily decided that two 12th century commentaries on law – Mitakshara and Dayabhaga – were to be understood as the basis for two Hindu civil codes in India. However, Nehru’s Congress government shied away from taking the next step and condensing all of the remaining community civil codes into one uniform code. One can only hope that the final result of the current dispute over the Uniform Civil Code – beyond the political divide in which it takes place – will not be the ruling party scoring a political goal against a religious minority, but the betterment of legal conditions of Indian women: in this case, Indian Muslim women.