July 25, 2003	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 24, 1424

NEW DELHI, July 24: India’s supreme court has controversially backed a uniform civil code in religiously diverse India, saying all citizens should be bound by the same marriage, divorce and property laws, officials said Thursday.

The Indian constitution allows the country’s billion-plus citizens to be governed by their own religious laws. Any move to give teeth to a uniform civil code in India would have to be initiated and approved by parliament.

The ruling BJP welcomed the court’s finding, party spokesman V.K. Malhotra said.

“We welcome the observation made by the Supreme Court. We hope our allies and the opposition will support the Supreme Court’s sane advice,” he said.

“There is a need for progressive laws and all communities should come together.”

In a judgment delivered on Monday but only reported by India’s media on Thursday, Chief Justice V.N. Khare observed that in the interests of national integration there was “no necessary connection between religion and personal law”.

A common civil code would help the “cause of national integration by removing the contradictions based on ideologies,” the chief justice, who was part of a three-judge bench, told the court.

The statement was in response to a writ petition relating to property that was filed by a Christian priest, John Vallamattom. Under current law Christians are forbidden from donating inherited property for charitable purposes.

The court pointed out there was already a legal provision for a uniform civil code in India but said it was “a matter of deep regret” that it had not been enacted.

The issue of a common civil code for all Indians is deeply sensitive and controversial and has always divided the population along religious lines in the secular state, where Hindus form the majority.

Minorities such as Muslims and Christians are strongly opposed to a uniform civil code saying such a common law would interfere with their codes of conduct.

It would affect, for instance, the right of an Indian Muslim man to have more than one wife.

A change in the law would also force an Indian Muslim man to pay his wife alimony while getting a divorce.

“The suggestion is unacceptable,” Maulana Nadvi of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) told AFP emphatically.

“It cannot be imposed in a country where there is religious diversity.”

The BJP has been pushing for a uniform civil code to meet the constitutional goal of a common law for all religions but has faced opposition from its coalition allies.

Malhotra said India’s ruling coalition — the National Democratic Alliance, which is made up of some 14 regional parties led by the BJP — would meet soon to discuss the matter.

“We are willing to back this crucial legislation and try to convince our government partners,” he said.

In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled against the marital code for Muslims in a landmark judgement when it said a Muslim woman, Shah Bano, was entitled to alimony in a divorce case.

But India’s then prime minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi, faced with stiff opposition from Muslim groups, used parliamentary procedures to block the court judgement. —AFP