Imposition of Hegemonic Uniformity and the Question of Muslim Identity in India: A Post-Secular Critique of Uniform Civil Code

Vijay Kishor Tiwari

Surbhi Khyati

 

Abstract: The debate around the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) has myriad dimensions and is fraught with contestations in India. Not only is the plausibility but also the desirability of such a uniform code dictating the personal lives of people of different faiths need a critical inquiry. The UCC reflects an intense desire of the liberal and majoritarian nation-state to homogenise and universalise its legal framework of personal laws, aiming at the unencumbered self-interested individual, making them the primary unit of these laws. This is highly problematic when the individuals find themselves embedded in a religio-cultural community, deriving meaning, dignity, and security from their faith and community rather than from the secular state that either fails to, or struggles with, recognising community as the basic unit. This article approaches the profound discussion on UCC from a post-secular prism of religious identity. It interrogates the discourse between legal universalism and legal pluralism to problematise the hegemonic narrative of one-nation-one-law. By unpacking the colonial genealogy of the contemporary personal law framework in India and its impact on shaping the socio-cultural imaginations of the people of India and the postcolonial nation-state, this article argues that the teleological narrative of the modern-secular legal system of the UCC is non-neutral as it gives epistemic privileges to certain traditions as ‘norm’ while alienating others. The hegemonic urge to create ‘citizens’ in their own image, whether by liberal-secularist or Hindu nationalists, is a direct contravention of the very notion of a diverse and multicultural democracy where all stakeholders are allowed to be true to their values without being seen as the ‘other’ and a threat to the integrity of the state itself.