
IJJS
Uniform Civil Code: Modernizing Laws for Providing Gender Justice
AUTHOR: SAKSHI NIGAM, STUDENT, ICFAI LAW SCHOOL, DEHRADUN, INDIA
Abstract After the 70 years of commencement of Indian Constitution, India is lagging behind in implementing the Article 44 which was incorporated in Directive Principle of State Policy of Indian Constitution, which has been gathering dust with no government have political guts and wisdom to touch it. Article 44 which creates an obligation on the state shall enact Uniform Civil Code for all citizens of the country. This code will modernize the various personal laws of all religion for providing uniformity between communities as well as uniformity within communities, i.e., Gender Justice. This is the high time to come up with the codification of personal laws similar to criminal and procedural laws. In absence of such legislation of UCC, personal laws of all religious communities relating marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession, adoption, maintenance, contracts, custody of children etc. have been governed through religious texts and beliefs which leads to gender inequalities and discriminatory practices as they have largely been drawn from the customs that were favorable to the native patriarchy. This research paper aims on the origin of UCC and necessity of modernization of personal laws in a common set of civil code which incorporates the internal morality of laws within the territory of India and also providing the gender justice to women.
Keywords: Uniformity, Directive Principle of State Policy, Gender Justice, Personal laws, Modernization, codification.
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