Uniform Civil Code for India Revisited: Evaluating the Contemporary Debate and Process of Legal Change

Shimon Shetreet

Hiram E. Chodosh

 

Abstract: India continues to debate the unrealised constitutional aspiration of a Uniform Civil Code for personal and family law. Drawing on comparative and global experience in constitutional law and religion and the value of mediation, this article evaluates the substance and process of that national discourse in India. The authors examine the Law Commission’s rigorous efforts to mediate this long-standing controversy, its solicitation of diverse views on each topical area, and advancement toward a legislative (over judicial) outcome that is well-suited to the Indian context. This article argues that the Law Commission is mediating these weighty competing concerns effectively in the pursuit of free exercise of parallel, community-based, plural religious laws of the diverse religious communities and the simultaneous development and application of uniform, national, basic protections in family and personal law.