Polygamy Is the Root of All Social Problems That Government Wants to Solve Under the Garb of Uniform Civil Code

By New Age Islam Staff Writer 19 July 2023 Instead of Imposing UCC, The Government Should Ban Polygamy Main Points: 1. Polygamy creates problems of inheritance. 2. Parental rights are violated because of polygamy. 3. UCC will also affect Hindu United Family. ----- The government had expressed its intent to bring the Uniform Civil Code bill in the Monsoon Session which will start from 20th July and last till the 11th of August. The Law Commission meanwhile invited suggestions from Indian citizens and organisations on the UCC. The last date for sending suggestions is July 28. Till now, fifty lakh suggestions have been received by the Law Commission and an estimated 75 lakh suggestions will be received by the deadline. The Law Commission will study all the 75 lakh or so suggestions and then present a recommendation or draft to the government. All this does not seem possible by the 10th of August the entire exercise will take at least 6 months, may be longer, for the government. This means the government has backed off from presenting the bill in the forthcoming monsoon session because of the large-scale opposition from the North-East and from.the tribal communities in other states including West Bengal apart from the Muslims. Dipankar Gupta's argument is that the government's aim behind pushing the UCC is actually banning polygamy which is said to be rampant among the Muslims. For this single goal, it has raked up the issue of the UCC. The real aim is to ban polygamy, particularly among the Muslims. The facts, however, indicate that only 1.9 per cent of Muslims practise polygamy while 1.3 percent of Hindus practise it. The difference is not much given the difference in the population of Hindus and Muslims. So the author argues that instead of implementing the UCC and stirring the hornet's nest, the government should only ban polygamy because it is the polygamy which gives way to other problems of inheritance, parentage etc. By bringing in the UCC the government will invite more trouble than to solve problems. Since only the Muslims had been protesting and expressing their fears and reservations on the UCC, the government had got the wrong perception that all the other stake-holders were happy and will not protest. But as the days came closer, tribals started expressing their reservations. If the UCC is implemented, the people of North East states will rise in opposition and another round of unrest will follow. Seeing this opposition some leaders of the ruling party have suggested some exceptions to some communities. This will kill the basic idea of the UCC. It will make clear that the UCC was really meant to target the Muslims. The UCC if implemented will abolish many Acts that were made to protect different vulnerable sections of the society and to ensure that economically and financially backward communities get equal opportunity to advance and prosper with other developed communities. Laws to protect women, Dalits and other weaker sections give them privileges under the Constitution. Under the UCC, these communities will be stripped off these privileges leaving them vulnerable to powerful and educationally and economically developed communities of the country. Even after 75 years of independence, the successive governments have not been able to ensure uniform development of all the communities. Dalits, Muslims and tribals are still persecuted by upper caste communities and communal forces. Women are still persecuted and harassed by the male chauvinists therefore, in this social and economic condition, bringing the UCC will leave the vulnerable sections subject to persecution, injustice and deprivation without the protective cover that the Constitution has provided them. Therefore, Dipankar Gupta advises the government that instead of trying to implement the UCC, the government should abolish all polygamy. This will solve the basic problems in the long run. ------ First, Make All Polygamy Illegal By Dipankar Gupta Jul 16, 2023 The discussions on Uniform Civil Code (UCC) are going sideways because of the reluctance in stating that the real aim is to ban polygamy, which allows a man to have more than one wife. The rest of UCC is really background noise. That the call for UCC only appears in the Constitution as one of the non-justiciable Directive Principles, makes it appear like a promise akin to jam yesterday, jam tomorrow but never today. Alice in Wonderland, once more. This positioning of UCC in the Constitution took away its urgency though it bobbed up, from time to time, in lazy, hazy conversations before it was patted back to bed. Its relevance gradually faded away, allowing polygamy to reset the alarm and go back to sleep. It was in the 1980s that it was rudely woken up when the Shah Bano case made polygamy among Muslims a national scandal; even so it did not really stir the entire UCC package. In recent years polygamy has come back with tons of newsfeed on UCC, some of it imagined, which paints a rather large target on the back of the Muslim community. It would seem, judging from media chats, that Muslims are wantonly polygamous while the truth is that less than 1.9% practise it. Polygamy is not entirely absent amongst Hindus either for 1.3% are said to be in a polygamous relationship. In parenthesis, polygamy exists largely among the poor. Unfortunately, this practice lurks among Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) as well. In this connection, we need to remember that the Hindu Marriage Act made an exception for STs and kept them out of its purview. Also, our Constitution made room for the traditional Muslim Personal Law to continue in the belief that some communities were not ready for full-fledged democracy. If it wasn’t time for them then, it is clearly overtime now. In simple terms, polygamy is a feature that needs to be stamped out vigorously regardless of which community is in question. Hence, rather than beat the drum about UCC, why not just make polygamy illegal across the board and place it unerringly in the crosshairs of social reform. Other issues like inheritance laws can wait till polygamy loses its death grip for without a clear victory over it, other reforms get pushed back to another day. Once polygamy goes, gender injustice on matters such as inheritance, gets easier to address. This is exactly what happened with the Hindu Succession Act. It came a year after the Hindu Marriage Act, which disallowed polygamy. Without outlawing polygamy, inheritance matters can never be straight lined. Even so, it took almost another 50 years for the 2005 Amendment to be enacted, which finally granted Hindu women equal right to inheritance. A four-square attack against polygamy may seem like an overkill as only a tiny fraction practises it. That is not a good reason to play defence because it is always a few who fall prey to murderers, thieves and cheats. The law fails if exceptions are made forcing such victims to endure endless, frustrating, legalese as if they were drying out their clothes in pouring rain. Those scarred by polygamy may be small in number, but they still deserve justice. In this, wisdom clearly lies in pacing oneself and not insisting in placing every single duck in a row at once. Polygamy should be drawn out of the UCC package and dealt with first. As long as that exists, all other reforms, such as on maintenance, alimony etc will escape attention. The adoption of the Hindu Marriage Act before the Hindu Succession Act is not just a historic quirk but, in hindsight, a near perfect timetable of how reforms should be sequenced. A full-fledged uniform civil code would be messy and a waste of time and would even delay an easy no-contest win against polygamy. To be fixated on the entire UCC package is not good advice but needless homework, like pounding sand. Polygamy is an outright affront to democracy and women’s dignity, which if clothed in UCC becomes difficult to reject. Some innocent multiculturalists might also view it as an affable and colourful eccentricity. This allows polygamy to be clubbed with extraneous issues like matrilineal descent, or the rule of ultimogeniture as amongst some STs where the youngest sibling is the main inheritor. But matriliny is in no way undemocratic and ultimogeniture is also dying out naturally. Older siblings have together mounted an assault against it and there is public sympathy too for one does not know where the buck stops as long as the parents are reproductively able. In addition, where land is held by a lineage, such as among many STs, a uniform inheritance law would be tricky. Adopting a full-fledged UCC would also mean a shakeup of the Hindu Undivided Family as a tax category. Are millions of Hindus ready for this? This is why it is best to zero in on polygamy and, for the time being, let the rest of UCC hide in the tall grass. Without polygamy as a cover, they will soon be flushed out in the open. That is when they can be picked out, one at a time, clearly and precisely and not all at once where everything gets garbled. As the adage goes: ‘Never talk when your mouth is full.’ ------ Dipankar Gupta is a sociologist Source First, Make All Polygamy Illegal URL https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/polygamy-social-evils-garb-uniform-civil-code/d/130248 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism