If all are equal before the law, the law, too, is expected to be equal for all. That such is not the case in India, where personal laws of different religions are allowed to govern marriage, divorce, alimony, property inheritance, adoption and so on, has long been a cause for concern as well as acrimonious debate. Theoretically, it should not have been difficult to introduce a uniform law in a secular country. Instead, 65 years after the writing of the Constitution, India still has its Supreme Court reportedly saying that it is necessary to stamp out religion from law. The source of the court's concern is the discrimination that results from separate laws. Early last month a property dispute under Hindu law and the Christian divorce law, which requires a two-year wait before divorce by mutual consent when the civil law requires one, prompted judges to ask for a uniform code of law. Later that month, a two-judge bench reportedly asked to convert to a public interest litigation the question whether Muslim women are not discriminated against when husbands marry a second time while being married to the first wife and in arbitrary divorces. Here a personal law is hurting the fundamental rights of women.

The court is strongly recommending a uniform civil law. But the All India Muslim Personal Law Board is already up in arms against 'interference'. Yet the court has, expectedly, always urged uniformity. The most famous example is the court's decision on the Shah Bano case in 1985, when it directed that Shah Bano should be paid maintenance by her husband under Section 125 of the criminal procedure code unless she remarried, as in the case of women of all communities. Afraid of losing votes, the Rajiv Gandhi government overturned this and formulated the misleadingly named The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, limiting maintenance to the iddat, usually of three months. The court reportedly wishes to revisit this law. But it is not resistance from minority communities on grounds of undue interference or fear of losing votes on the part of the political dispensation that alone pose hurdles to the formulation of a uniform law. There is a fear too that the majority community may push through a civil code that suits it most. While a uniform code of law is urgently needed, it must be formulated with the clear understanding that majoritarianism is not uniformity.