By T N Ashok
The march toward a nationwide Uniform Civil Code, once considered politically radioactive in India, is no longer theoretical. It is steadily becoming legislative reality. This week, Assam became the latest battleground in one of the country’s most polarizing constitutional and cultural debates after the government of Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tabled the Uniform Civil Code Assam Bill, 2026, in the state assembly. The proposed law bans polygamy, mandates the registration of live-in relationships, standardizes marriage and divorce procedures, and replaces religion-based personal laws with a common civil framework.
To supporters in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the legislation represents the gradual fulfilment of a decades-old ideological promise: one nation governed by one civil law. To critics, however, it signals something far more profound—a slow dismantling of the constitutional compact that allowed India’s religious minorities to preserve distinct legal traditions after independence. The conflict over the Uniform Civil Code, or UCC, has now evolved beyond legal reform. It has become a defining struggle over the identity of the Indian republic itself.
Assam is now the fourth jurisdiction in India to embrace the idea in some form after Goa, whose Portuguese-era civil code long predated independence, and BJP-ruled states such as Uttarakhand and Gujarat, which enacted their own versions in 2024 and 2026 respectively. Yet the larger map of India reveals hesitation, resistance and political paralysis.
Several BJP-governed states—including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—have discussed UCC implementation but stopped short of introducing legislation. Opposition-ruled states such as Tamil Nadu, West Bengal (now TMC is replaced by BJP) , Kerala and Karnataka have either openly opposed the measure or entered what political analysts describe as “suspended animation”: refusing endorsement while carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the BJP’s national narrative. That caution reflects the explosive emotional and constitutional terrain the UCC occupies.
India’s personal law system has, since independence, permitted different religious communities to regulate marriage, divorce, inheritance and family relations according to their own traditions. Muslims followed Muslim Personal Law; Christians, Parsis and others retained separate legal arrangements; Hindus themselves underwent sweeping codification and reform in the 1950s under Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar.
The framers of the Constitution inserted the idea of a Uniform Civil Code into Article 44 under the Directive Principles of State Policy, envisioning it as a long-term aspiration rather than an immediate mandate. The provision was deliberately non-binding because India’s founders understood the immense sensitivities surrounding religion in a newly partitioned nation still scarred by communal violence. For decades, successive governments treated the issue with caution. That changed under Modi.
The BJP’s modern UCC push cannot be separated from the larger ideological transformation of the Indian state under Hindu nationalism. Beginning with the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019—which removed the Muslim-majority region’s semi-autonomous constitutional status—the Modi government has steadily pursued policies long central to the BJP and the broader Sangh Parivar movement. The criminalization of instant triple talaq marked one of the first major breakthroughs.
For years, Muslim women’s rights activists had challenged the practice whereby a Muslim husband could divorce his wife by uttering “talaq” three times, often without due process or financial protection for women. The BJP framed its abolition as a landmark step toward gender justice, arguing that constitutional equality could not coexist with practices seen as discriminatory or misogynistic.
That campaign allowed the BJP to reposition itself strategically—not merely as a Hindu nationalist party but as a defender of Muslim women against conservative religious clerics. The Assam legislation builds directly on that framework. The bill outlaws polygamy, imposes standardized legal marriage ages, mandates registration of marriages and live-in relationships, and establishes common inheritance and divorce procedures irrespective of religion.
Couples in live-in relationships would be required to register within 30 days. Failure to comply could invite fines or imprisonment. Children born outside marriage would receive legal legitimacy, and deserted partners could seek maintenance through courts.
The legislation also repeals older laws governing Muslim marriage registration in Assam, signalling a deliberate move away from community-specific civil structures. Yet the bill simultaneously reveals the political balancing required to advance such reforms in a deeply plural society. Scheduled Tribes have been exempted from the law to preserve constitutional protections for indigenous customs and practices.
That selective exemption immediately raises one of the central criticisms of the UCC project: if the objective is absolute legal uniformity, why are politically sensitive groups excluded? Opposition parties argue that the answer lies in electoral arithmetic rather than constitutional principle.
Critics within the Congress party and regional formations accuse the BJP of selectively targeting Muslim identity while avoiding confrontation with tribal customs or dominant caste traditions that might provoke political backlash. They view the UCC not as neutral modernization but as part of a broader ideological attempt to reshape India into a de facto Hindu majoritarian state.
The phrase “Hindu Rashtra” now hovers constantly over the debate. For many liberals and minority groups, the fear is not simply about marriage laws but about the erosion of the secular architecture envisioned by the Constitution’s founders. They argue that India’s model of secularism was never based on strict separation of religion and state, as in France, but rather on coexistence and negotiated pluralism.
Under that arrangement, different communities retained distinct cultural and religious identities while participating equally within a democratic framework. Supporters of the UCC counter that this system institutionalized inequality and perpetuated communal segregation.
BJP leaders frequently argue that independent India effectively created two parallel standards: a reformed and codified Hindu legal framework alongside more flexible religious systems for minorities. They insist that equal citizenship requires equal civil obligations.
“Why should there be one law for one citizen and another for someone else?” has become one of the BJP’s most potent political refrains. The argument resonates strongly among sections of India’s expanding urban middle class, particularly younger voters who increasingly view personal laws through the lens of gender equality and constitutional uniformity rather than religious autonomy.
At the same time, civil liberties advocates warn that the expanding scope of state oversight—especially mandatory registration of live-in relationships—raises serious privacy concerns. In Assam’s proposed law, couples who fail to register a live-in relationship within one month could face penalties. Critics say such provisions allow the state to intrude into intimate personal arrangements in ways unprecedented in modern Indian democracy.
The political geography of the UCC debate now mirrors India’s broader ideological divide. Northern and western BJP strongholds are gradually warming to implementation. Southern and eastern opposition-led states remain resistant. Regional parties, particularly those dependent on minority coalitions, see the issue as electorally toxic.
Even within the BJP ecosystem, there is caution. A nationwide UCC imposed abruptly by Parliament could provoke legal challenges, social unrest and accusations of constitutional overreach. The current strategy appears incremental: allow BJP-governed states to normalize the concept first, creating a patchwork of precedents before any eventual national framework emerges. That gradualism may ultimately prove politically effective. The question now is no longer whether the UCC debate will reshape India. It already has.
The larger question is what kind of republic emerges at the end of the process: a more legally uniform nation emphasizing individual citizenship over communal identity, or a more centralized state where minority protections steadily narrow under the force of majoritarian politics.
For supporters, the Uniform Civil Code represents the unfinished promise of equality before law. For opponents, it represents the quiet rewriting of the constitutional understanding on which modern India was built. (IPA Service)
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