The 57 Muslim countries making up the OIC protect their unique and common identity against all foreign intrusions, a freedom which they think shouldn’t behove a country like India with its diversity and patchwork of different religious communities and different sets of religious and social laws.

India cannot aspire for a Uniform Civil Code, much less implement, which is the preserve of an exclusive cabal of Muslim countries with the Sharia as the binding thread. The Portuguese gave a common civil code to Goa and Goa after liberation is doing fine with the UCC still in place.

No one is complaining – neither the Hindu, nor the Muslim, or the Christian. If a government wants something done nothing can stop it, not even a bulldozer! And Uttarakhand has become the first Indian state to have a Uniform Civil Code. Goa was a Portuguese colony, but Uttarakhand has made history. And not out of thin air!

The UCC is an unfinished agenda – one of the Directive Principles in the Constitution of India. Foreign entities should keep a hands-off approach in matters concerning laws governing India. Indian states have every right to replace a myriad of religious and social laws with a common civil code. Even if, perchance, this “will likely trigger unease among India’s Muslim minority.”

The Government of India will deal with the fallout, however contentious. Uttarakhand's UCC is India’s business. There is no need for any foreign entity to butt in. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said UCC will bring about “equality”. Those hurt by it have avenues for redressal.

Why should foreign entities object if Indians have to, by law, “register a live-in relationship?” India’s laws, codified and implemented in the best traditions of India, are India's laws. Foreign entities, especially moribund foreign media, should refrain from asking questions like “Why is an Indian state punishing live-in relationships?”

Registering live-in relationships doesn't tantamount to punishing live-in relations. It helps protect women and girls in live-in relationships. There are plenty of examples of women and girls killed by their live-in partners when the relationship went sour. One as recently as on January 27, 2025, in Delhi's Ghazipur. The murdered woman's body was stuffed in a suitcase and the suitcase set on fire!

As for the question, “Will Uniform Civil Code kill ‘Indian secularism’?", it can only strengthen secularism. People who wouldn’t accept secularism if it fell in their laps shouldn't bother themselves. If “India replaces colonial era laws with new laws”, it should elicit a sigh of relief, a “finally!”

India has every right to rid evil and discriminatory social and religious practices. ‘Sati’ was done away with. The fight against child marriage is still on. If the UCC targets polygamy, bigamy, ‘halala’ and ‘child marriage’, it is to reform and cleanse. A way had to be found and the call to find a way goes back to the “founding fathers" of India’s Constitution.

It’s never too late. Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a golden chance. She inserted “Secular” and “Socialism” into the statute book. One more, the “UCC”, wouldn’t have made any difference to her Emergency-scarred record. Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to take the credit by rechristening Uniform Civil Code as ‘Secular Civil Code’.

The UCC is not the baby of any single political party. It is the aspiration of a nation, even if a large number of people have reservations. The 'Modi-Godi media' is pushing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Secular Civil Code', but certain Gulf-based media have earmarked Uttarakhand’s UCC as “totally biased against Muslims”.

Almost as if having a uniform set of rules for marriage, divorce and inheritance in multicultural and multi-religious India is a crime against humanity! Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah insisted that Muslims were a separate nation. Why give credence to the notion with two sets of laws, one for the Hindus, and another for Muslims?

Partition ought to have solved the jigsaw, but it didn't. Also, the UCC is not a “Hindu code" in disguise. No single religious community should be granted the liberty of having its own rules for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance. The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind can take the UCC to court, even call it an “assault on citizens’ religious freedom”, but it will have to prove that “this law is … based entirely on discrimination and bias.”

The Uttarakhand High Court and the Supreme Court of India are the forums. Till then, refrain from calling the UCC “an attack on our identity.” The only identity is "Indian" and the UCC is all about a common identity. Lastly, don't call the UCC a “manifestation of Islamophobia.” (IPA Service)