NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday he wanted to press ahead with a national common civil code of law, a proposal bitterly opposed by Muslim activists as an attack on their faith.

India’s 1.4 billion people are subject to a common criminal law but rules vary on personal matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. The proposed civil code would standardise laws across all religious communities but has been bitterly opposed by Muslim activists and liberals as an attack on the largest religious minority.

However, the Hindu nationalist leader said during an annual Independence Day address that the different laws divided the nation.

“Those laws that divide the country on the basis of religion, that become reason for inequality, should have no place in a modern society,” Modi said.

“That is why I say: the times demand that there is a secular civil code in the country.” Modi won a third successive term in office in June but was forced into a coalition government after a shock election setback for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) left him without an outright majority for the first time in a decade.

The BJP’s Hindu nationalist rhetoric has left India’s Muslim population of more than 220 million increasingly anxious about their future. “The civil code, under which we live, is actually a kind of communal civil code, a code of discrimination,” Modi said, calling for debate on the issue.

“Everyone should come out with their opinion”, he told the thousands of students, soldiers and foreign dignitaries in the audience. Modi spoke at New Delhi’s imposing 17th-century Red Fort to mark India’s independence from Britain.

Modi also called for calm in neighbouring Bangladesh after the ouster of his former ally Sheikh Hasina, who quit as prime minister last week following a student-led uprising and fled to India.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2024