The statements made by the Prime Minister, the Union Ministers and communal forces as well as media debates and so-called surveys are giving the impression that only Muslims will be targeted by the Uniform Civil Code. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), in a statement on July 13, said it felt that this impression is being created to achieve electoral gains by dividing the society into Hindu-Muslim.
Dr. S.Q.R. Ilyas, the spokesperson of the Board, said that the statements of the Union Home Minister and UCC Drafting Committee Chairman, Mr Sushil Modi, state that the tribals and Christians of the Northeastern states might be exempted from UCC. The draft of the Uttarakhand state committee also indicates that UCC will only target Indian Muslims.
He further said that News-18, a major news channel, claimed through a sample survey that 67% of the Muslim women population support UCC on issues of marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption. Regardless of how authentic and genuine the survey is, the size and methodology of the sample survey exposes the reality of this hollow claim. The survey was conducted among 8035 women across 25 States and Union Territories of the country, including illiterate to graduates and women aged 18 to 65 years, according to the channel. That is, only 321 women from each state participated in it. Obviously, such a small number and the inclusion of all ages and qualifications is enough to make this ‘big’ announcement unreliable – the methodology used itself puts a question mark on the entire survey.
Dr. Ilyas further said that such channels should know that when the 21st Law Commission raised the issue of UCC more than four crore eighty-three lakh Muslims, in which the majority (more than 283,00,000) were women, submitted a memorandum to the Law Commission at the call of the All India Muslim Personal Board. Moreover, in almost every state and every big city of the country, millions of women demonstrated against it and declared that Muslims do not accept any kind of interference in the Islamic Shari’ah. By conducting such baseless, inauthentic and fictitious surveys, these channels are making a failed attempt to mislead the country’s citizens.
AIMPLBappeals to intellectuals, civil society movements and political parties of the country not to be influenced by such attempts. Indian Muslims will never accept any kind of interference in their Shari’ah. The Uniform Civil Code is not only against the country’s pluralism and diversity, but is also seriously detrimental to the unity, solidarity and integrity of the country.