• Rajiv Sharma

Modi’s regime will be contemptuously remembered by the future generations for a plethora of dubious achievements and anti-people policy decisions. Among his colossal failures, the policies which led to widening of economic inequalities and creating divisions among the people at all levels, will perhaps invite the maximum ire of the posterity. The truism is that the BJP’s eerie knack of identifying the issues which generates strife, insecurity and instability among the peace-loving masses has helped them to reap rich political dividends out of the miseries of the people.

A recent salvo has been fired by the Prime Minister himself by way of a call for implementing Uniform Civil Code (UCC) at a BJP workers’ meet. Although this was in BJP’s manifesto of 2019, but the manner and the timing of raking up the issue has once again raised doubts over the hidden intentions of the BJP. Notwithstanding the fact that the BJP has tried to camouflage its real agenda by invoking their desire to fulfill the mandate of part IV of the Constitution, the people can see through their divisive ploys.

The part IV of the Constitution consists of directive principles mentioned in15 Article from Article 37 to 51, which are not enforceable in any court of law, but a duty has been caste upon the state to keep them in mind, while making laws. The Parliament also possesses the power to enact these principles into law but one overriding factor while doing so is that the voluntary acceptance of all the concerned communities and stake holders ought to be ensured.

The scheme of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) finds mention as Article 44 of the Directive Principles, which was conceived by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and vigorously pursued by him along with Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. However, during the debates on the UCC in the Constituent assembly, it was realized there were huge gaps in the opinion of different communities. Consequently, an overwhelming number of members from all religions and communities aggressively argued against it in the interest of unity and integrity of the country. Further, the India’s glorious ethos of ‘Unity in Diversity”, which had acquired indomitable strength during the freedom struggle was not in complete harmony with the idea of the UCC. Hence, the Nehru’s idea had to be dropped in 1951. As stated above, the BJP’s penchant for picking up divisive issues, which are not in exact consonance with the spirit of India’s Constitution, allowed the current Prime Minister to cherry pick the principle of the UCC, at the fag end of his second tenure for raising the controversial issue. After having wasted 9 years without attempting to initiate any debate on the UCC, the Prime Minister suddenly chose a gathering of hardcore BJP workers to initiate a debate on it, without mentioning its contours or ambit, even vaguely. Many political pundits feel that by doing so, the PM wants to achieve a two-fold objective. The first is to cheer up his cadre by promising something, which is still in the realm of imagination and the second is to create chaos and strife among a vast section of people by raising false fears among them to brighten the BJP’s electoral prospects. It would be difficult to say here as to whether aforesaid assessment about the motives of the PM is right or wrong, but what stands out clearly is that the democracy suffers, when a major political party begins to pit one community against the other(s) in bid to perpetuate its hold on the polity.

As stated above, the Part IV of the Constitution possesses 15 Articles, which constitute the Directive Principles of the state policy. The Prime Minister is clamoring solely over Article 44. The rest of the 14 articles seem to fascinate neither him nor the BJP. A brief look at the directive principles and the approach of the BJP government thereto shall establish that the BJP is interested in creating division in the society by raking up the UCC to meet its narrow political goals.

Article 37 provides for a general clause which states that any of the provisions mentioned in Directive Principles of State Policy including Article 44 dealing with the UCC cannot be enforced by any court of law in India.

Article 38 deals with welfare and equality. Clause 1 states that the State shall strive to promote welfare of the people by securing a just and equitable social order. Clause 2 provides that the State shall strive to minimize inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities among individuals as well as among different groups. Article 39 wants the government to bring about equality in opportunities of means of livelihood, equal distribution of the resources and to ensure child, women and youth welfare. It is known to all by now that Modi government is not doing much work in these areas. The Social order is under stress and the government has been making policies to facilitate transfer of money from the pockets of middle and economically weak sections to a few rich corporate, thereby increasing income inequalities, crime against women is on the rise, both the employment opportunities and wages are shrinking and budgetary allocation on education, sports and welfare schemes is constantly going down.

Article 40 of the Constitution states, “The state shall take steps to organize and strengthen village panchayats. We all know that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi did path-breaking work in strengthening panchayati raj institutions in order to decentralize decision making process. On the contrary, Modi Government has been undermining Article 40 by concentrating power in a few hands. Such an approach of this government has weakened second and third-tier democratic institutions.

Article 41 directs the government to work for granting Right to Work, Right to Education and to public assistance in case of deserving persons. Narender Modi as Gujarat CM was opposed to Congress’ flagship Employment programme MNREGA. He is a bitter critic of Congress’ ‘Right based regime’ wherein the ‘Right to Education’ and the ‘Right to Food’ were made fundamental rights. Besides this, Modi government is not much interested in welfare measures, which is evident from high rate of taxes, decrease in subsidies, wasteful expenditure on PM’s personal luxuries and resultant inflation.

Article 42 directs the state to work to secure humane work conditions and maternity relief, while Article 43 mandates that the state shall endeavour to ensure reasonable living wages, condition of work, to promote cottage industry, co-operative societies and to secure participation of workers in the managements. We do not need to be a rocket scientist to learn that the policies of Modi government are contrarian to these two Articles. The small and middle scale industries are being systematically destroyed to benefit a few rich businessmen. The real wages of the workers are declining and the co-operative societies are being selectively targeted. The hounding of ‘Nandini’ in Karnataka is a recent example of disdain of the BJP for co-operative movement. Similarly, the government is also acting against the spirit of Article 45 to 51. For example Article 50 which states that the state shall take every step to separate Judiciary from Executive, is being continuously flouted.

From the aforementioned discussion, it is clear that the current BJP government is not much interested in promoting the mandate of 14 out of the 15 Directive Principles of State Policy. As stated above, it is fiddling with Article 44 only for the reasons well known.

The brief two line Article 44 on UCC states that the state shall endeavour to secure for its citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. There are a few judgments of the Apex Court, which have observed that if the UCC is enacted in one go, it could prove counter-productive to the unity of the nation. There are a few case laws, which state that the Consensus among various communities needs to be arrived at before enacting UCC. Some other judgments also say that only those personal laws which are not related to religion can be codified. Even the 21st Law commission headed by a former Supreme Court judge Balbir Singh Chauhan came to a conclusion that the enactment of the UCC is neither desirable nor necessary at this stage. In a report submitted in August 2018 in a 185-page consultation paper on “Reforms of Family Law”, the Commission said, “Cultural diversity cannot be compromised to the extent that our urge for uniformity itself becomes a reason for threat to the territorial integrity of the nation.”It was emphatically stated by the commission that a unified nation does not necessarily need to have “uniformity” and that “efforts have to be made to reconcile our diversity with universal and indisputable arguments on human rights”. The report further said that the differences do not always imply discrimination in a robust democracy.

Even though the implementation of the UCC is by the 21st law commission in strong words, Modi government has mischievously referred the same question to the 22nd law commission in June 2023. This seems to be a calculated attempt to create chaos and confrontation in the society, which is something a responsible government, cannot do.

Today, India is among the youngest nations in the world and has a potential to leapfrog into the comity of developed nations of the world, provided the government is able to maintain peace and sense of security among all and provide required skills, education and employment opportunities to the young minds on an urgent basis. Unfortunately, these are not the priority areas for the BJP. As a result, the country is facing huge shortfall in skilled and employable work force, despite having a young population. The resurrection of debate on UCC initiated by the Prime Minister is also a ploy to divert the attention of the people from the unpardonable mismanagement of the country by his government. The people of India now understand all these diversionary tactics of the government and are poised to teach it a befitting lesson at the hustings.

The Author is a Delegate and spokesperson of Chandigarh Territorial Congress Committee.