Jaipur: While personal laws are “heavily stacked against women”, a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the current political climate may not be the correct solution, said Supreme Court senior advocate Saurabh Kripal.
Kripal was speaking Thursday at a panel discussion called ‘Democracy and Equality: The Constitution story’. The event saw four panellists—Kripal, lawyer and former Rajya Sabha member Ashwani Kumar, Research Director and founder of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy Arghya Sengupta, and criminal lawyer and author Nitya Ramakrishnan—explore the foundational principles of the Constitution and the role of institutions in upholding them.
“UCC will never be a secular law. It will always be the law stamped with the power of the majority, which in today’s day, we know what it is,” Kripal said when asked if UCC could uplift women in a religious and patriarchal society.
Elucidating his point, Kripal said that as soon as the Supreme Court had struck down triple talaq, “the government goes one step further and says, ‘Any man who says talaq, talaq, talaq will now be sent to jail for doing that act’.”
“You will send someone to jail. Meanwhile, that man’s wife will starve, the children will starve. And this is a way, really, perceptually, attacking the Muslim community in the name of doing justice to women,” he added.
He also gave the example of the UCC—introduced in Uttarakhand—which says that a couple in a live-in relationship will require a stamp from the temple priest, illustrating how majority sentiments are at the forefront of the UCC.
Besides sounding a warning bell about the diminishing space for minorities in India, Kripal supported reservations, saying they do not contradict principles of equality enshrined in the Constitution. “The reality is that when we talk about equality, asking people who have tremendously different life experiences, education and starting blocks in life to be treated equally is inherently unequal.”
Questioning why the country has not had a single Dalit Prime Minister, he said that only ceremonial posts, such as that of President, end up with tribal or Dalit communities. “How is that the case?” he asked.
Among the other panellists, Arghya Sengupta, who is also a constitutional scholar, questioned the colonial legacy of the Constitution and heavy restrictions on fundamental rights, which, he said, remained “constrained by the power of the state”.
“The remnants of a colonial state still continue. The citizen is still below,” he said. Even Article 21, which guarantees personal liberty, is constrained by the preventive detention laws, he added.
The police forces and the bureaucracy have not been re-trained since the times the British ruled India, Sengupta said, claiming that they were colonial institutions.
Governors, who once acted as “stooges of the British”, are now seen trying to rule states, he said.
Advocating a rethink on the Constitution, especially preventive detention laws, rights without duties and the lack of emphasis on decentralisation, Sengupta sought more local self-governance, instead of Delhi being the sole power centre.
On the principles of secularism in the Constitution, Nitya Ramakrishnan said, “The entire Constitution is, in my view, testament to the values of secularism, whether it does so adequately or not, there would be many and as I said, those are the aspirations.”
However, Ramakrishnan also warned that “something fundamental is at stake” while raising the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Babri Masjid case. Not only did the judgment benefit the “criminal community” but it also threw into the spanner the Places of Worship Act, which had been a settled question of the law, she said.
Ashwani Kumar said courts must not be echo chambers of the government. Calling India “a democracy in retreat”, he said, “Democracy is not majoritarianism. It is not only popular sovereignty. It is the whole bill of rights that aims to power values, not to the majorities.”
The panellists also emphasised the importance of understanding and engaging with the Constitution, rather than treating it as a holy text. They stressed the need for citizens to assert constitutional values and criticised the political class for often failing to uphold these principles. The session concluded with a call for leadership that aligns with the Constitution’s ideals.
ThePrint is a digital media partner for Jaipur Literature Festival 2025
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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Why did The Print feel the need to report this specific discussion at the JLF? Sessions and dialogues have been held on a wide range of issues at the JLF. But why was this one selected by The Print for reporting while all other sessions at the JLF went unreported?
Such clever machinations and sly acts by The Print burnish it’s infamy as a platform pandering to the Left-liberal cabal and it’s anti-Hindu ideologies.
People like Mr. Saurabh Kripal are the bane of Hindu society. With people like him and Nitya Ramakrishnan around, no wonder Hindus were ruled and subjugated for 8 centuries by Islamic and Christian invaders. These are exactly the kind of Hindus who would readily sell the nation to Islamic fanatics and Christian bigots.