Unified Civil Code: Alimony payments of 20 rupees/month to Shah Bano put UCC in the spotlight in 1985 | India News

NEW DELHI: The decision of lawyer Mohd Ahmed Khan, who had an annual income of 60,000 rupees in the 1970s, to appeal to the Supreme Court against the granting of a monthly alimony of 179 rupees to his wife Shah Bano, who was abandoned after 43 years of marriage, brought into the spotlight article 44 of the constitution, which provides for a unified civil code (UCC) for the country.
Bano had been married to Khan in 1932 and evicted from their marital home in 1975. In April 1978 she appealed to a court in Indore, claiming 500 rupees a month as alimony.

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Khan gave her talaq in November 1978. In August 1979 the judge awarded her a miserable sum of 20 rupees a month. Upon her appeal, Madhya Pradesh HC increased the amount to Rs.179.20. Khan challenged him in front of the SC.
A five-man SC bench headed by then CJI YV Chandrachud upheld the alimony awarded by the HC in April 1985 with instructions for the husband to pay an additional sum of Rs. 10,000 as expenses to Bano. The HC’s groundbreaking comments on the UCC made in this case continue to generate political excitement. The SC had said: “It is also regrettable that Article 44 of our Constitution has remained dead letter.” There is no evidence of official activity to draft a common civil code for the country. There seems to have been a belief that it is up to the Muslim community to take the lead in reforming their personal rights. A common civil code will help national integration by eliminating differing loyalties to laws with conflicting ideologies.
“No community is likely to startle the cat by making gratuitous concessions on this issue. The task of the state is to create a single civil code for the citizens of the country, and it undoubtedly has the legislative power to do so. A lawyer in the case whispered, reasonably audibly, that legislative competence is one thing, political courage to use that competence quite another. We understand the difficulties involved in bringing people of different faiths and different beliefs onto a common platform, but a start must be made if the Constitution is to have any meaning.”
The Chamber harshly criticized the All India Muslim Personal Law Board for siding with the husband, citing a report by the Commission on Marriage and Family Law in Pakistan from the late 1950s, in which it expressed grave concern that large numbers of middle-aged women in the country were being divorced “purposelessly” and left destitute.
The report of the Pakistani Commission concluded: “The question that Muslim countries are likely to face in the near future is whether the law of Islam is viable – a question that requires great intellectual effort and will certainly be answered in the affirmative.” But it is precisely this question that continues to complicate reforms of Muslim personal laws, which even after 73 years of India becoming a republic and 67 years of the codification of Hindu personal laws, are still not knocked out are dified.
Instead of trying to introduce UCC, the Rajiv Gandhi government enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Right on Divorce) Act in 1986 to reverse the effects of the Shah Bano ruling. Although the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the 1986 law, it continued to rule steadfastly – in the cases of Danial Latifi (2001), Iqbal Bano (2007) and Shabana Bano (2009) – that Muslim women should not be deprived of the benefits of Section 125 of the CrPC, which requires husbands to pay maintenance to wives. The Supreme Court remained silent for nearly a decade, during which time it dismissed a written petition filed by Maharishi Avadhesh (1994) challenging the 1986 law and calling for the passage of a common civil code or the codification of Muslim private law, saying, “These are all matters for the legislature.”
In the 1995 Sarla-Mudgal ruling, the Supreme Court was more explicit in insisting that the legislature take action to pass the UCC. It said: “Where more than 80% of citizens already have enshrined personal rights, there is no longer any justification for putting on hold the establishment of a single civil code for all citizens in India.”
On March 29 of this year, the SC had dismissed a PIL seeking passage of the UCC. It had repeated what it had said as early as 1994: “Appealing to this court to enact the UCC is like moving a wrong forum.” It falls within the exclusive domain of Parliament.”