In stark contrast to yesterday today’s session saw a plethora of developments during the committee’s discussion on UCC.
Two prominent CMs, Jagan Reddy of Telangana and MK Stalin of Tamil Nadu finally showed up to the committee, wanting to make an impact on the proceedings (spoiler alert – they didn’t)
The session began with the committee continuing the discussion which took place yesterday: on the implementation of the UCC. However, unlike yesterday, the pro-UCC bloc actually had a proper plan this time. The Prime Minister and other pro-UCC bloc members talked about creating a committee with proportionate representation from the Lok Sabha, and equal representation from all religions and minorities on top of that. The BJP would not comment, however, on the proportions of the representation.
A 3-year trial period was also planned for implementation of UCC in BJP-ruled states, after which it would be implemented in other states (based on the success of the trial period).
The anti-UCC bloc pointed out that the proposed committee representation would still end up being biased towards Hindus, with Akhilesh Yadav in particular calling out how “minorities will be under-represented”. The decision of only trialling the system in BJP-ruled states was also heavily criticized.
It seemed that MK Stalin was blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the issue at hand, as he was seen giggling and laughing for little reason throughout the session. Even during his speech, he chose to be in support of the UCC if “Badruddin Ajmal’s interpretation is followed”. Remember, this was the leader who previously claimed that UCC was “an attempt to divert attention by the Union government”. When called out on this deviation by the other MPs, his only defence was that his party was a “flexible party which wants to listen to the needs of the people”. Though, it seems unclear why Stalin is suddenly pandering to Hindus.
Some MPs such as Abbas Naqvi were still innocent enough to believe in ideal-world scenarios. He claimed that “respected individuals from one community will not cause harm to other communities”, and that “intellect doe not have a religion”. When issues of instigated communal riots were brought up, Naqvi was unable to provide a response, apart from an attempt at deflecting the blame back at Rahul by noting how there were riots in his constituency as well. It was unclear how this was related to Rahul’s question and how Naqvi thought it would strengthen his point.
Farooq Abdullah’s history of eye-raising comments continued as he called women’s rights a “subjective matter”. When pressed on this point, he claimed that BJP “does not have the right to decide what women’s rights are”.
The committee then broke for a small informal session where both blocs tried to strengthen their battle plan. But while this was happening, it was observed that Badruddin Ajmal was going around to every person with “something” in his hand and asking for their opinion and support on the matter. Upon a minor investigation, it was revealed that Ajmal had already created a bill toward the implementation of the UCC, and was trying to get support for it. He would eventually announce it in public later on, and sure enough, he also ended up changing blocs after the break.
However, that wasn’t remotely the biggest development during the break. BJP were so confident in their numeric advantage, that they released a statement noting their confidence on UCC being implemented in the next 3 years. The proposed committee would consist of people whom the Lok Sabha deemed “relevant stakeholders”. BJP also drastically altered the pilot states for the trial, choosing to test the UCC in Kerala, West Bengal, Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. And as if that was not enough, the RSS President publicly expressed his “excitement” to join the UCC draft committee.
Needless to say, the anti-UCC bloc was completely outraged. Their view was that the states selected were not “random”, and was a deliberate ploy to suppress the people in these states. Kerala’s CM Pinarayi Vijayan strongly believed that if anything went wrong during the process, his people would be labelled anti-nationalists. Multiple members insinuated that the BJP would even declare an Emergency.
BJP’s response? They were merely doing what the house told them to do – make the list of trial states as diverse as possible. PM Modi retorted by pointing out the hypocrisy of the complaining anti-UCC bloc by noting that “these were the same people who complained when BJP-ruled states were picked”. But they were unable to provide other suitable responses for this decision.
The developments also resulted in multiple MPs “flexibly” changing their stance on the matter. MPs like Farooq Abdullah now were “begging” the BJP to trial the UCC only in BJP-ruled states, something which they had vehemently opposed prior to the recent developments.
Another issue of major contention was the supposed inclusion of the RSS President in the UCC draft committee. Many members of the house brought up his colourful history – Owaisi mentioned him “calling for open murder of Muslims” – and were incensed that a right-wing Hindu nationalist was given a spot in committee. Owaisi wondered if the RSS President got a spot in the committee, why did he – a member of AIMPLB – not get a spot on the committee yet?
The BJP MPs seemed to provide different responses for these questions. Nirmala Sitharaman was of the opinion that the RSS president has the sympathy of a lot of Hindu people in the country, making him a relevant stakeholder – basically confirming his inclusion into the committee. But Nupur Sharma and Narendra Modi said otherwise, arguing that the RSS President was only under consideration and was talked to regarding the committee. They attempted to deflect the issue by mentioning that they had no control over what the RSS President says in public. It was clear that there were some cracks in the BJP’s story.
Later on, a press conference took place where the MPs were grilled by reporters from the various press bodies. Throughout the course of this conference, multiple leaders suffered from “severe amnesia”, and those who didn’t, made several accusations of “fake news”.
It was during this press conference when PM Modi dropped the biggest bombshell of the night – he openly voiced his support for Nupur Sharma. His view was that her comments were a result of her freedom of speech, which should be respected. Wonder how he would have reacted if the deity being defamed was a Hindu one: would he still be rambling about “freedom of speech”?