During the post-colonial period, the framers of the Indian Constitution envisaged a uniform civil code governing the personal laws in the country and thereby incorporated Article 44 in Part IV of the Indian Constitution in furtherance of the Directive Principles of State Policy. Thereby, making it incumbent on the state to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code thought-out the territory of India. The directive principle embodied under Article 44 of the Constitution is aimed at gradually achieving, rather than at once, far reaching equality for all citizens.
The Preamble to the Constitution resolves to constitute a ‘Secular Democratic Republic.’ Which in effect means that there shall be no state religion and the state shall not discriminate on the basis of religion. The personal laws of each religion, which is comprised of separate ingredients and founded on distinct ideologies, the uniform civil code must strike a balance between the protection of fundamental rights and religious principles of different communities. Marriage, divorce, succession etc. can be matters of a secular nature, which the law can regulate. Therefore, a uniform codified law, which will subsume all religions in relation to the personal laws governing different communities, should be necessitated.
