Uniform Civil Code in India: Constitutional Promise or Threat to Legal Pluralism?

I. Introduction

In January 2025, Uttarakhand became the first State in independent India to enact and bring into force a Uniform Civil Code, translating a seventy-five-year-old constitutional aspiration into operative law for its resident population.¹ The move revived a debate that has simmered since the framing of the Constitution: should India speak with one voice in matters of marriage, divorce, succession and inheritance, or does its constitutional design instead protect the many voices of its religious and customary communities?

Article 44 of the Constitution directs the State to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code for all citizens, but successive governments left the directive unimplemented at the national level for over seven decades amid persistent concern that a single code would compromise minority religious autonomy.² Personal laws governing family relations continue to vary according to a citizen’s religion, so that entitlements on marriage, divorce, guardianship, adoption and inheritance differ sharply depending on the community into which a person is born.

This article argues that a Uniform Civil Code is constitutionally permissible, and in significant respects overdue as an instrument of gender justice, but that its legitimacy depends on a process that genuinely safeguards religious and cultural pluralism under Articles 25 and 26, rather than one that imposes majoritarian norms under the label of uniformity. The article proceeds as follows. Section II sets out the existing constitutional and statutory framework. Section III analyses the pattern of judicial engagement with Article 44. Section IV critically evaluates the competing claims of gender justice and legal pluralism, before Section V examines the Goa and Uttarakhand experiments alongside comparative models from Kenya and the Philippines. Section VI concludes with proposals for a calibrated path to reform.

II. The Existing Legal Framework

A. Constitutional Foundations

Article 44 sits within Part IV of the Constitution as a Directive Principle of State Policy; it is not enforceable by any court, yet it operates as a guiding standard against which legislative inertia is regularly measured.³ That directive exists in tension with Article 25(1), which guarantees every person freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion.⁴

Critically, however, Article 25(2)(b) permits the State to make laws providing for social welfare and reform, or throwing open Hindu religious institutions to all classes of Hindus, notwithstanding the general freedom of religion clause. This provision is the constitutional hinge on which any uniform code must turn: it distinguishes the secular, civil incidents of family life, which the State may regulate, from matters of religious doctrine proper, which Article 26 further protects by guaranteeing religious denominations the right to manage their own affairs in matters of religion.⁵

Read together, these provisions do not compel uniformity, nor do they place personal law beyond legislative reach. They instead require that any reform be defensible as regulation of secular civil incidents rather than as an intrusion into religious belief itself. Having mapped the constitutional terrain, it is necessary to survey the statutory landscape that any uniform code would reorganise.

B. The Statutory Patchwork

India’s family law is presently governed by a mosaic of religion-specific statutes. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains are governed by the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and the Hindu Succession Act 1956, the latter substantially reformed in 2005 to grant daughters coparcenary rights equal to those of sons.⁶ Muslims are governed by uncodified personal law applied through the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937.⁷ Christians and Parsis are governed by their own marriage statutes and, subject to community-specific variation, by the Indian Succession Act 1925.⁸ Sitting alongside these religion-specific regimes is the Special Marriage Act 1954, a secular and optional civil marriage law available to any citizen regardless of religion, which functions as India’s existing, if underused, model of voluntary uniformity.⁹

Goa presents a striking outlier. Under the Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act 1962, the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 continues to apply to all residents of Goa irrespective of religion, providing for a common regime of marriage, a default community-of-property matrimonial regime, and largely uniform succession rules.¹⁰ It is frequently invoked, on both sides of the debate, as proof either that a uniform code can work in India or that the code’s success in Goa owes more to colonial legal continuity than to any transplantable national consensus.

III. Judicial Engagement with Article 44

The judiciary, not the legislature, has been the principal site of pressure for uniform civil law reform, though its interventions have consistently stopped short of directing Parliament to enact an omnibus code.

In Mohd Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum, the Supreme Court awarded maintenance to a divorced Muslim woman under the general provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure and expressed regret that Article 44 remained a dead letter.¹¹ The ensuing political controversy led Parliament to enact the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986, which was widely read as a legislative override curbing the judgment’s practical effect.¹² A decade later, in Sarla Mudgal v Union of India, the Court held that a Hindu husband who converted to Islam to contract a second marriage without dissolving the first remained guilty of bigamy, and again lamented the absence of a uniform code.¹³ In John Vallamattom v Union of India, the Court struck down section 118 of the Indian Succession Act 1925, which restricted Christians’ testamentary freedom to bequeath property for religious or charitable purposes, as an arbitrary violation of Article 14, once more invoking Article 44 in its reasoning.¹⁴

More recently, in Shayara Bano v Union of India, a five-judge bench declared the practice of instantaneous triple talaq unconstitutional by a three-to-two majority.¹⁵ Parliament responded by criminalising the practice through the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019.¹⁶ In Jose Paulo Coutinho v Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira, the Court described the Goa Civil Code as a shining example of an existing uniform code and, yet again, urged the Union to give effect to Article 44.¹⁷

The pattern that emerges is instructive. The judiciary has repeatedly signalled that Article 44 ought to be implemented, yet in practice it has advanced reform through narrow, doctrine-specific constitutional review of individual discriminatory provisions, leaving the design of any comprehensive code to the legislature. This restraint reflects an implicit judicial preference for incrementalism over an omnibus enactment imposed by judicial fiat.

IV. Gender Justice Against Legal Pluralism: A Critical Evaluation

Judicial exhortation, however, leaves the central normative question unresolved: whether, and on what terms, the ideal of a common code should be pursued.

The case for a uniform code rests principally on gender justice and equal citizenship. Personal laws across religious traditions have historically embedded discriminatory rules: unilateral and extrajudicial modes of divorce, unequal inheritance shares, and differing minimum ages and consent requirements for marriage. That a citizen’s entitlement to maintenance, matrimonial property or inheritance should depend on the religion into which she was born sits uneasily with the equal-citizenship promise of Article 14. A common code, on this view, would also reduce the conflict-of-laws difficulties that arise in interfaith marriages and in an increasingly mobile, urbanising population.

The case against an undifferentiated uniform code is equally serious, and it is not merely a communal objection dressed in constitutional language. First, personal laws for many communities are bound up with religious identity and community self-governance in ways that Articles 25 and 26 were designed to protect; a code that strays from secular civil incidents into matters of religious doctrine risks precisely the constitutional violation those articles anticipate. Second, India’s legal pluralism is not solely interreligious. Hindu law itself is internally diverse: the matrilineal Marumakkathayam system historically recognised in parts of Kerala, and customary inheritance and marriage practices among Scheduled Tribes across the north-eastern States, sit uneasily within a single Hindu-law template, let alone a national one. A code that merely extends majoritarian norms to all communities is not neutral uniformity; it is assimilation by another name. Third, the manner of implementation matters. Uttarakhand’s own code excludes Scheduled Tribes from its application in deference to constitutional protections for tribal custom, an exclusion that itself concedes that pluralism cannot be wholly erased even by the first State willing to legislate.¹⁸

These competing claims are reconcilable if the inquiry is reframed. The relevant constitutional question is not whether uniformity is desirable in the abstract, but which specific incidents of family law are properly secular and susceptible to a common, gender-just minimum standard, and which are genuinely religious and therefore protected. Minimum marriageable age, free consent, monogamy, maintenance obligations, registration requirements and non-discriminatory inheritance shares are plausibly secular civil incidents amenable to uniform regulation under Article 25(2)(b). Modes of solemnisation, ritual practice and doctrinal content are not. A code built on this distinction would advance gender justice without collapsing the pluralism that Articles 25 and 26 exist to protect.

V. Sub-National Experiments and Comparative Models

Normative argument is best tested against legislative practice, and India now has two sub-national experiences, together with foreign models, from which to draw.

A. The Goa and Uttarakhand Experience

Goa’s code has functioned for over six decades within the Indian Union, but its durability is frequently attributed to the fact that it predates independence and was inherited as a feature of Portuguese colonial administration rather than imposed as post-independence legislative reform; it was never experienced by Goans as an assertion of majoritarian will over a minority community.¹⁹

Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code Act 2024, which entered into force on 27 January 2025, is a different kind of experiment: the first instance of a post-independence Indian legislature enacting a comprehensive civil code by ordinary majority.²⁰ Its principal features include compulsory registration of marriages and, controversially, of live-in relationships with penal consequences for non-registration, a uniform minimum marriageable age, a prohibition on polygamy and polyandry, and equal inheritance rights for sons and daughters.²¹ Early commentary has raised concerns about the privacy implications of mandatory live-in registration, the code’s silence on adoption and guardianship, and continuing unease among religious minorities about the drafting process. Precisely because it is the first such experiment, Uttarakhand’s implementation offers an evaluable pilot from which the design of any future State or national code can learn before further extension.

B. Lessons from Kenya and the Philippines

India is not alone in seeking to reconcile a plural society with a shared legal framework for the family. Kenya’s Marriage Act 2014 consolidated what had previously been six separate marriage statutes, covering civil, customary, Christian, Hindu and Islamic marriages, into a single statute that standardises core civil incidents, such as registration, minimum age and matrimonial property, while continuing to recognise community-specific modes of solemnisation.²² This is best described as framework unification rather than wholesale replacement, and it offers a more readily transplantable template for India than a code that displaces religious personal law in its entirety.

The Philippines takes a different but instructive approach: its Code of Muslim Personal Laws operates alongside the general Civil Code, applying to Muslim Filipinos in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance while the general code governs other citizens, illustrating a durable model of structured coexistence rather than convergence.²³ Both examples suggest that uniformity and pluralism need not be conceived as a binary choice, and that India’s Law Commission, which has twice solicited public views on family law reform without producing a draft code, might usefully examine framework unification as a middle path.²⁴

VI. Conclusion

The Constitution neither compels a single, homogeneous civil code nor forecloses one. Article 44 authorises reform; Articles 25(2)(b), 26 and 14 discipline how that reform may be pursued. The judiciary’s repeated invocation of Article 44, paired with its consistent practice of advancing reform through narrow, provision-specific review rather than by judicial direction to legislate an omnibus code, reveals an implicit institutional preference for gradualism. The Goa and Uttarakhand experiences confirm that uniform codification is achievable in India, but also that its legitimacy is fragile where communities perceive it as externally imposed rather than internally negotiated.

This article has argued that neither the unqualified preservation of legal pluralism nor an unqualified drive towards uniformity is constitutionally or practically defensible. The better course is a two-track approach: codifying universal, non-negotiable, gender-just minimum standards, covering the age of marriage, free consent, monogamy, registration, maintenance and non-discriminatory inheritance, as secular civil incidents under Article 25(2)(b), while preserving genuinely religious modes of solemnisation and doctrine under Articles 25 and 26.

Three recommendations follow. First, the Law Commission should complete its long-pending consultation through sustained, community-specific hearings rather than legal-expert submissions alone. Second, any future code, whether State or national, should follow a Kenya-style framework-unification model that standardises secular civil incidents while preserving diversity in solemnisation, rather than the full-replacement model adopted in Uttarakhand. Third, Uttarakhand’s rollout should be treated as an evaluable pilot: its gaps on adoption and guardianship, and the privacy concerns raised by mandatory live-in registration, should be corrected before any national extension is contemplated. A Uniform Civil Code pursued on these terms would fulfil the constitutional promise of Article 44 without becoming, as its critics fear, a threat to the legal pluralism that Articles 25 and 26 were written to protect.

Footnote(S):

¹ Uniform Civil Code (Uttarakhand) Act 2024; see also ‘Uttarakhand Becomes First State to Implement Uniform Civil Code’ DD News (New Delhi, 27 January 2025).

² Constitution of India 1950, art 44.

³ Constitution of India 1950, art 44 (n 2).

⁴ Constitution of India 1950, art 25(1) and art 25(2)(b).

⁵ Constitution of India 1950, art 26.

⁶ Hindu Marriage Act 1955; Hindu Succession Act 1956, as amended by the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005.

⁷ Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937.

⁸ Indian Christian Marriage Act 1872; Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act 1936; Indian Succession Act 1925.

⁹ Special Marriage Act 1954.

¹⁰ Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act 1962, s 5(1) proviso, continuing the Portuguese Civil Code 1867 in Goa.

¹¹ Mohd Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum (1985) 2 SCC 556.

¹² Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986.

¹³ Sarla Mudgal v Union of India (1995) 3 SCC 635.

¹⁴ John Vallamattom v Union of India (2003) 6 SCC 611.

¹⁵ Shayara Bano v Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1.

¹⁶ Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019.

¹⁷ Jose Paulo Coutinho v Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira (2019) 20 SCC 85.

¹⁸ Uniform Civil Code (Uttarakhand) Act 2024, s 2 (n 1).

¹⁹ Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act 1962 (n 10).

²⁰ Uniform Civil Code (Uttarakhand) Act 2024 (n 1).

²¹ Uniform Civil Code (Uttarakhand) Act 2024; see also ‘Introduction of Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand’ Bar and Bench (11 March 2025).

²² Marriage Act 2014 (Kenya).

²³ Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines, Presidential Decree No 1083 (1977).

²⁴ Law Commission of India, Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law (31 August 2018).

Reference(S):

Cases

• John Vallamattom v Union of India (2003) 6 SCC 611.
• Jose Paulo Coutinho v Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira (2019) 20 SCC 85.
• Mohd Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum (1985) 2 SCC 556.
• Sarla Mudgal v Union of India (1995) 3 SCC 635.
• Shayara Bano v Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1.

Legislation

• Constitution of India 1950, arts 14, 15, 25, 26, 37, 44.
• Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act 1962.
• Hindu Marriage Act 1955.
• Hindu Succession Act 1956 (as amended by the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005).
• Indian Christian Marriage Act 1872.
• Indian Succession Act 1925.
• Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937.
• Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986.
• Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019.
• Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act 1936.
• Special Marriage Act 1954.
• Uniform Civil Code (Uttarakhand) Act 2024.
• Marriage Act 2014 (Kenya).
• Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines, Presidential Decree No 1083 (1977).

Secondary Sources

• Flavia Agnes, Family Law Volume 1: Family Laws and Constitutional Claims (Oxford University Press 2011).
• Werner Menski, Hindu Law: Beyond Tradition and Modernity (Oxford University Press 2003).
• Law Commission of India, Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law (31 August 2018).
• Tahir Mahmood, ‘Uniform Civil Code Revisited: A Juridical Analysis’ (2016) 2 Indian Law Institute Journal 1.
• ‘Introduction of Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand’ Bar and Bench (11 March 2025).
• ‘Uttarakhand Becomes First State to Implement Uniform Civil Code’ DD News (New Delhi, 27 January 2025).