By Riya Kumari, B.A. LL.B., United University, Prayagraj
What the Uniform Civil Code Actually Means
The Uniform Civil Code, commonly called the UCC, refers to a single secular civil code applicable to every citizen of India regardless of religion, governing matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession and adoption. A misconception that must be cleared at the very outset is that the UCC means bringing every community under Hindu personal law. This is factually incorrect. The UCC does not extend the law of one religion to all others; it proposes an entirely new, religion-neutral civil framework applicable equally to all citizens.
The constitutional basis of this debate rests on a few key provisions. Article 44, placed under the Directive Principles of State Policy, directs the State to endeavour to secure a Uniform Civil Code, though it is not enforceable in a court of law. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and forms the strongest constitutional argument in favour of the UCC, since differing personal laws produce differing legal outcomes for citizens in similar situations. Article 25 guarantees the freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion, and is the primary constitutional ground relied upon by opponents of a uniform code. The Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution additionally protect the customary laws of Scheduled Tribes, and any UCC that ignores these protections would run into direct constitutional conflict.
Where the Argument Begins: The Shah Bano Case
No abstract discussion of constitutional provisions carries the force of a lived example, and this is why the debate is best introduced through the case of Shah Bano Begum. In Mohd Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum [1985] AIR SC 945, a sixty-two-year-old woman who had been married for forty-three years was divorced by her husband through triple talaq and denied maintenance. She approached the courts under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that Section 125 is a secular provision applicable to citizens of every religion, and that she was entitled to maintenance. The Court went further and observed that the absence of a Uniform Civil Code was regrettable.
Parliament’s response is the part of this story that matters most for understanding why the UCC debate remains unresolved even today. The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986 was passed specifically to nullify the effect of the judgment. A woman who had succeeded before the highest court in the country was left with almost nothing, not because the law failed her, but because personal law politics overrode a constitutional court’s ruling. This is the tension that runs through the entire UCC debate: the judiciary repeatedly pointing towards reform, and the legislature repeatedly stepping back from it.
The Line of Judicial Pronouncements
Shah Bano was not an isolated observation. In Sarla Mudgal v Union of India [1995] AIR SC 1531, a Hindu man converted to Islam solely to contract a second marriage while his first marriage subsisted. The Supreme Court held this to be fraudulent and observed that having different personal laws for different religious communities results in unequal rights among citizens, which sits uneasily with Article 14. The Court once again called for a Uniform Civil Code.
In Shayara Bano v Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1, the practice of instant triple talaq was struck down as unconstitutional by a 3:2 majority on the ground that it was manifestly arbitrary. This judgment is significant for a different reason: it shows what courts can achieve through targeted intervention on a specific practice, while simultaneously showing the limits of judicial reform, since only the legislature can bring about a comprehensive restructuring of personal law through a UCC.
Finally, in Jose Paulo Coutinho v Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira (2019) 20 SCC 85, the Supreme Court commended the Goa Civil Code as a functioning example of a uniform code operating within a plural society, and went so far as to describe Article 44 as a dead letter. Read together, these four judgments spanning more than three decades reflect a consistent pattern of judicial frustration with legislative inaction rather than four disconnected remarks.
The Case in Favour of a Uniform Civil Code
Gender Justice under Articles 14 and 15
The strongest argument for the UCC is also the simplest one. Two women living in the same city, working in the same office and earning the same salary can find themselves with entirely different legal rights the moment their marriage breaks down, simply because they belong to different religious communities. Shayara Bano corrected one specific injustice, the practice of triple talaq, but the underlying structural problem was left untouched: different communities continue to be governed by different civil laws in matters of marriage, divorce, maintenance and inheritance. This is not cultural diversity being respected. It is unequal treatment being permitted to continue.
A Consistent Pattern of Judicial Endorsement
Shah Bano in 1985, Sarla Mudgal in 1995, Shayara Bano in 2017 and Jose Paulo Coutinho in 2019 span thirty-four years of the same institution pointing in the same direction. This consistency across different benches and different decades is itself evidence that the need for reform is not a passing political opinion but a recurring constitutional concern.
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India operates under one Constitution, one criminal code and one law of contract regardless of the religion of the parties involved. Two commercial contracts signed in Delhi are governed by the same law irrespective of who signed them, yet two marriages solemnised in the same city are not. This inconsistency, in a country that otherwise insists on legal uniformity in almost every other field, is difficult to justify on principle.
An Existing Secular Precedent: The Special Marriage Act
It is worth noting that India already possesses a working example of a religion-neutral civil law in the Special Marriage Act 1954, which allows any two citizens, irrespective of religion, to marry under a common secular framework. Its existence for over seven decades demonstrates that a uniform civil arrangement is not alien to Indian legal thought. The real question is not whether such a framework can exist, since it already does on an optional basis, but whether it should become the default rather than the exception.
The Objections, Taken Seriously
It would be intellectually dishonest to treat opposition to the UCC as mere political noise. Several of the objections raised carry genuine legal and social weight.
Article 25 and the Freedom of Religion
Article 25 guarantees the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion, including the right to manage religious affairs. For many communities, personal law is not experienced as a mere set of legal rules but as an inseparable part of religious identity. A uniform code imposed without meaningful consultation risks being read as an attack on that identity, a concern that is especially acute for minority communities who already feel constitutionally exposed.
This tension between Article 44 and Article 25 need not be treated as a straight contest that one provision must win, and the Supreme Court has in fact already addressed it directly, not merely by implication. In John Vallamattom v Union of India (2003) 6 SCC 611, the Court struck down Section 118 of the Indian Succession Act 1925, which placed discriminatory restrictions on Christians bequeathing property for religious or charitable purposes, and held in doing so that marriage, succession and similar matters of a secular character cannot be brought within the protection of Articles 25 and 26 at all. On this reasoning, Article 25 protects belief, worship and religious practice, but does not extend to civil consequences such as inheritance shares or maintenance obligations, which the Court treated as inherently secular regardless of which community’s law currently governs them. Read together with Sarla Mudgal and Shayara Bano, Vallamattom gives the pro-UCC argument its most direct judicial authority: a code confined to civil consequences, marriage registration, maintenance, inheritance, without touching ritual or belief, is not merely a policy compromise but is squarely what the Court has already said Article 25 permits.
A separate objection sometimes raised, particularly against the Uttarakhand and Gujarat legislations, is whether a State even has the power to enact a UCC at all, given that Article 44 is addressed to the State in the general sense used throughout the Directive Principles. This is answered by ordinary federal distribution of powers rather than by Article 44 itself. Entry 5 of the Concurrent List in the Seventh Schedule places marriage, divorce, adoption, wills, intestacy and succession squarely within the joint legislative competence of Parliament and the State Legislatures. Since personal law already falls within this Entry, a State Legislature enacting a civil code covering these subjects is acting well within its ordinary legislative competence under Article 246, and does not need Article 44 to supply that power. Article 44 supplies the constitutional aspiration; Entry 5 supplies the constitutional authority to act on it.
The Twenty-First Law Commission’s Position
The Law Commission of India, in its 2018 Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law under the twenty-first Commission, concluded that a Uniform Civil Code was neither necessary nor desirable at that stage. This is the considered opinion of a statutory expert body and cannot be brushed aside. The Commission instead recommended reforming discriminatory provisions within existing personal laws and favoured a staged, consultative approach over a single comprehensive code.
It is worth adding, since the debate did not stop there, that the twenty-second Law Commission, under Justice Rituraj Awasthi, reopened the question in 2022 and invited fresh public and stakeholder opinions on the UCC. This should not be overstated into a claim that the Commission has issued a new final recommendation, since no such report has been published; what it does show is that the question was formally reconsidered by a fresh Commission rather than left where the 2018 paper left it, and that the debate continues to evolve within official channels.
Tribal Communities and the Fifth and Sixth Schedules
The Fifth and Sixth Schedules protect the customary laws of tribal communities, and three examples illustrate why a blanket UCC without carve-outs would be constitutionally untenable. Under Article 371A, no Act of Parliament touching Naga customary law and procedure applies to Nagaland unless the State Legislative Assembly resolves to adopt it, and Naga customary law on marriage, inheritance and land is entirely non-court-based. In Meghalaya, the Khasi and Garo tribes follow a matrilineal system under which property passes from mother to daughter rather than to sons, a tradition that a standard UCC inheritance model would displace entirely. In Mizoram, the Sixth Schedule empowers Autonomous District Councils to legislate on customary practice, and Mizo marriage and divorce law is administered through these Councils. A UCC without explicit statutory exceptions for these communities would almost certainly face, and likely fail, constitutional challenge.
The Risk of Political Misuse
When the UCC is reduced to an election promise rather than treated as a genuine policy question, it collapses into a Hindu-Muslim binary and stops functioning as legal reform altogether. If the UCC is to succeed, it needs to be reclaimed as a constitutional and policy matter rather than remain a campaign talking point.
From One Model to a Pattern: Goa, Uttarakhand, and the States That Followed
The Goa Civil Code
Goa’s Portuguese-era civil code has applied the same family law to Hindus, Muslims and Christians for decades, and the state’s pluralistic social fabric has remained intact throughout. This is not a theoretical possibility being discussed for the first time; it is a functioning reality within India that proves a uniform code can operate in a genuinely plural society.
The Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code Act, 2024
Uttarakhand became the first Indian state to enact a UCC through legislation, and its provisions deserve close examination since this was the first live test of how such a code operates in practice.
Mandatory Registration of Live-in Relationships
Under Part 3 of the Act, couples in a live-in relationship must submit a statement to the Registrar. The penalty structure here is tiered and needs to be stated precisely rather than as a single figure. A person who simply fails to register within the prescribed period faces imprisonment of up to three months, a fine of up to Rs 10,000, or both. If a person fails to submit the statement even after being served a formal notice under Section 386, the penalty rises to imprisonment of up to six months, a fine of up to Rs 25,000, or both. Supplying false information in the statement is separately punishable with imprisonment of up to three months and a fine of up to Rs 25,000. The stated purpose of this provision is to extend rights of maintenance, property and child custody to live-in partners, particularly women.
This provision has not gone unopposed, and the most serious objection concerns Section 386 itself, which permits any third party, not merely the partners or the State, to file a complaint alleging that a live-in relationship has not been registered. Critics, including a former Supreme Court judge, have pointed out that this opens the door to harassment by disapproving relatives or neighbours and effectively invites moral policing into what is otherwise a private, consensual arrangement between adults. This sits in some tension with the right to privacy recognised in K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1.
That tension deserves to be examined rather than merely flagged. Puttaswamy held that any State action restricting privacy must satisfy a four-part proportionality standard: it must pursue a legitimate State aim, bear a rational connection to that aim, be necessary in the sense that no less restrictive alternative would achieve it, and be proportionate in its overall impact. The registration requirement itself can plausibly satisfy this test, since extending maintenance and inheritance protection to live-in partners is a legitimate aim rationally served by a registration record. Section 386, however, is harder to defend on the same test. Allowing an unrelated third party to trigger a criminal notice against a private couple is not obviously necessary to achieve the protective purpose of the provision, since the same protective purpose could be served by allowing only the partners themselves, or a designated authority acting on credible information, to initiate the process. A provision that is broader than necessary to achieve its stated aim is precisely what the proportionality standard is designed to catch, and this is the strongest constitutional weakness in the Uttarakhand model.
The Scheduled Tribe Exception
Section 2(2) of the Act explicitly excludes Scheduled Tribes from its application, preserving the Fifth Schedule protections discussed earlier. This exception is what makes the Uttarakhand model replicable at the national level: it demonstrates that a UCC can coexist with tribal customary law through an explicit statutory carve-out rather than through silence or ambiguity.
Uniform Marriage, Divorce, and Succession
The Act sets a common minimum age of marriage, eighteen years for women and twenty-one for men, across all religions, and standardises the grounds for divorce, cruelty, desertion and adultery among them, without community-specific exceptions. On succession, sons and daughters are entitled to equal shares in property across all religions, which directly advances gender justice given that several existing personal law systems award daughters a lesser or different share than sons.
The Model Has Since Spread: Gujarat and Assam
What could still be described as an isolated experiment at the time the Uttarakhand Act came into force on 27 February 2025 can no longer be described that way. On 24 March 2026, the Gujarat Legislative Assembly passed the Gujarat Uniform Civil Code Bill, 2026, making Gujarat the second State to adopt a UCC, again with an exemption for Scheduled Tribes, and with a notably stricter penalty framework for non-registration than the Uttarakhand model. On 28 May 2026, the Assam Legislative Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code, Assam, 2026, becoming the third State to do so and the first in North-East India, with a tribal exemption drafted even more broadly than Uttarakhand’s, covering both hill and plain-area tribal populations under the Sixth Schedule as well as customary religious practice generally.
This sequence matters for the argument this article is making, because it changes Uttarakhand from a single data point into the first instance of a pattern. Three States, governed by the same party at the State level but drawing on the same constitutional authority available to any State under Entry 5 of the Concurrent List, have now independently concluded that a UCC is workable provided tribal communities are carved out. At the same time, the variation between the three models, Gujarat’s stricter penalties, Assam’s broader tribal exemption, is itself useful evidence for the audit this article recommends: a national UCC does not have one ready-made template to copy, but three years of actual, comparable State-level experience to draw on before Parliament need legislate for the country as a whole.
Lessons from Abroad
The UCC debate is sometimes treated as though India would be attempting something unprecedented. Comparative experience suggests otherwise. Turkey replaced Ottoman religious law with a Swiss-inspired secular civil code in 1926, abolishing polygamy, granting women equal inheritance rights and requiring divorce to proceed through the courts. The significant detail here is that Turkey was a Muslim-majority country at the time, which undercuts the assumption that a uniform code cannot function in a society with a large Muslim population; social acceptance took time, but the legal direction was set.
Tunisia became the first Arab-Muslim majority nation to abolish polygamy outright through its 1956 Personal Status Code, granting women equal rights to divorce through the courts and outlawing unilateral talaq without judicial process; women’s literacy and workforce participation improved measurably in the following decades. The relevant lesson for India is that targeted, specific reform, on the model of Shayara Bano, is a credible strategy even ahead of a comprehensive UCC.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, enacted a unified marriage law in 1974 applicable across religious communities, covering minimum age, court-based divorce and mandatory registration. It fell short of a complete uniform code, but it was a significant and effective step, showing that sustained political commitment and genuine community engagement, rather than confrontation, is what makes such reform achievable even in the largest Muslim-majority democracy in the world.
A Responsible Path Forward
Four practical steps emerge from the discussion above. First, a permanent National Consultative Commission should engage religious communities, tribal representatives, women’s organisations and legal experts in structured dialogue, since reform without consultation risks being experienced as imposition, a concern the twenty-first Law Commission itself pointed towards. Second, a detailed audit of the Goa, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam models is essential before any national framework is drafted, studying not only what worked but also where provisions such as Section 386 went too far. Third, explicit constitutional protections for tribal communities must be built into any national code, following the template Section 2(2) of the Uttarakhand Act already provides. Fourth, targeted personal law reforms, on the Shayara Bano model, should continue alongside the long-term pursuit of a comprehensive UCC rather than waiting for one before addressing specific injustices.
Conclusion
India does need a Uniform Civil Code, because the present system produces real injustice for real people, most of them women. But how the country gets there matters as much as arriving there. The Goa code evolved gradually and was accepted over time; Uttarakhand, followed within two years by Gujarat and Assam, shows that political will now exists at the State level and is no longer confined to a single State, while the Section 386 controversy in Uttarakhand shows just as clearly what happens when a reform outruns careful drafting. Constitutional carve-outs for tribal communities are not a political concession to be negotiated away; they are a constitutional obligation, and it is telling that every State to legislate a UCC so far, without exception, has recognised this by writing in a tribal exemption of its own. A Uniform Civil Code built on consensus will endure. One built on confrontation will only deepen the divisions it was meant to heal.
Article 44 has been part of the Constitution since 1950, and it has been waiting long enough. The way India finally gets there, however, will decide whether the Code unites the country it was meant to serve, or simply adds one more fracture to it.
Table of Authorities
Cases: Mohd Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum [1985] AIR SC 945; Sarla Mudgal v Union of India [1995] AIR SC 1531; John Vallamattom v Union of India (2003) 6 SCC 611; Shayara Bano v Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1; Jose Paulo Coutinho v Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira (2019) 20 SCC 85; K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1.
Constitution: Constitution of India, arts 14, 25, 44, 246, 371A; Seventh Schedule, List III, Entry 5; Fifth and Sixth Schedules.
Legislation: Indian Succession Act 1925, s 118; Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986; Hindu Marriage Act 1955; Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937; Special Marriage Act 1954; Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code Act 2024; Gujarat Uniform Civil Code Bill 2026; Uniform Civil Code, Assam, 2026.
Reports: Law Commission of India, Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law (21st Law Commission, 2018); Law Commission of India, public consultation on the Uniform Civil Code (22nd Law Commission, 2022).
Comparative Law: Turkish Civil Code 1926; Tunisia Personal Status Code 1956; Indonesia Marriage Law No. 1/1974.
