The idea of Optional Uniform Civil Code

A couple in Belapur, one Hindu and one Christian, do not want either family's religious law to decide their marriage, their divorce or who inherits from them. They go to a Marriage Officer and choose a law that belongs to neither community. Nobody forced them and nobody else's law changed. That is the idea behind an optional uniform civil code: a common civil law that is open to everyone but binding only on those who choose it.

In two minutes

An optional uniform civil code would be a common civil law on marriage, divorce, maintenance, guardianship, adoption and succession that any citizen may opt into while others continue under their personal law; India already has partial models in the Special Marriage Act 1954 and, for adoption, the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, and the debate is whether such a code solves the problems a compulsory code raises or merely postpones them.

The rest of this chapter

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