The Lok Sabha Assembly’s first day marked a rather enthusiastic session. While it was an enthusiastic session with participation from most of the Members of the Parliament voicing their concerns regarding the Uniform Civil Code, it was apparent that the opposition was not able to provide convincing alternatives to UCC if not UCC, and continued vouching for the age-old discriminatory laws.
The session started with the Motion proposed by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, a UCC advocate, “framework and implementation of UCC”.
Towards the beginning of the session, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi backed up his previous statements by portraying strong approval towards implementing the Uniform Civil Code for all the citizens of India. He said, “India is a nation of peace and acceptance. people are arrogant to assume personal laws are superior.” He claimed that the “heavenly laws” made about 2000 years ago were discriminatory towards women and the less fortunate people of the society and UCC would ensure they are given rights.
On a rather interesting note, Asaduddin Owaisi explicitly said that the UCC would take away rights from women. He quoted that, “Hindu women have certain privileges that the UCC would in fact withdraw”. The panel of BJP MPs objected to this completely false statement. Owaisi seemed to have incorrectly learned and interpreted the UCC, as Anurag Thakur backed up, “UCC takes into consideration the current personal laws and does not take them away.“
Owaisi was further questioned by the right-leaning MPs when he mentioned, “Polygamy among Hindus was in fact more than the polygamy found in Muslims”. This statement not only baffled the panel of members of the parliament, but left the audience, press, and the speaker perplexed. Upon being questioned about his sources, he mentioned and we quote “1954 census reported this.” These laughable comments were visibly cross-examined by the audience as it left them confused.
MP Manoj Tiwari, remarkably convinced his point that the opposition has based their entire problems on the implementations of UCC and has not rather given a thought about the overall picture and how beneficial it could be. He conveyed his message by using quite an interesting “pizza” analogy. He reinstated that we are all Indian citizens above all and that existence of personal identity will not be harmed, which the opposition seemed to have forgotten.
Admittedly going against his own party’s stated position Tharoor, in fact, backed the idea proposed by BJP. He said, “this law has the capability of giving women and the people of the LGBTQ community rights.” He also received support and applause from the ruling party for stating, “One nation, One Law”.
During the second motion, “If not UCC, then what?” proposed by Scindia, it became apparent that the opposition had no clear idea about what they had in mind if not UCC. According to spokesperson Manoj Tiwari, “opposition’s policy is completely redundant and they should just go along with UCC. Implementation of UCC is also a matter of debate. Stating and wording UCC in a different way is not suggesting an alternative.”
Today’s session, although was only the first of the many to come, made the picture very clear. The ruling party had a sharp vision of the UCC and its framework, however, the opposition, confused, could not give good enough alternatives to UCC, nor could completely criticise UCC.