Impediments to the formulation of the Uniform Civil Code

Everyone in the canteen at your law college has an opinion on the Uniform Civil Code, and almost nobody can say why it has not happened in seventy-five years. It is not because the Constitution forbids it. It is because several real obstacles, legal, social and political, stand between the wording of Article 44 and a statute that Parliament can pass and the courts can apply. This topic names those obstacles and says, for each, what the law actually provides.

In two minutes

The main impediments to a uniform civil code are constitutional (freedom of religion and minority rights in Arts 25–26 and 29–30, and special protections such as Arts 371A and 371G), structural (Art 44 is non-justiciable and gives no model), social (diversity of custom within and between communities) and political (lack of consensus and fear of imposition); each can be managed but none can be wished away.

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