India: in Uttarakhand, a controversial new Civil Code provides for surveillance of unmarried couples
In India, the state of Uttarakhand adopts a new Civil Code harmonized between religions but controversial. According to the authorities, this is to combat certain abuses such as polygamy, but it also provides for the surveillance of unmarried couples. A Uniform Civil Code that Hindu nationalists plan to pass across India.
Indian women (illustration). The new Civil Code of the State of Uttarakhand aims to combat certain abuses such as polygamy, but it also provides for the surveillance of unmarried couples. Getty Images/Xavier Arnau
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With our correspondent in Bangalore,
Côme Bastin
In Uttarakhand, this Himalayan
state
of more than ten million inhabitants, led by Narendra Modi's BJP, lovers who live under the same roof will now have to notify the police. In the absence of this official declaration, they risk imprisonment. Those under 21 will have to prove to the authorities that their families approve of their lifestyle.
“
Dangerous disease
”
The prospect makes defenders of individual freedoms jump, who see it as a means of criminalizing relationships outside of marriage. A BJP MP had also described them in December as a “
dangerous disease
”.
The provision is part of a broader law, the "
Uniform Civil Code
", a long-standing demand of Hindu nationalists, which aims to abolish the various marriage and inheritance laws that currently differ in India according to religions.
A harmonized regime soon to be national
In particular, polygamy or certain divorces that are very unfair for women, authorized in certain cases by Muslim law inspired by sharia, are in the
viewfinder
. This harmonized regime must ultimately be national, but Uttarakhand adopted it without delay, on its own terms, and without consulting civil society.
Read alsoIndia: with the consecration of “his” temple, Modi establishes Hindu supremacy against minorities
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