If you do not protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, then there is a strong possibility India at some point starts pulling apart." For his gratuitous advice Obama was pilloried by Modi loyalists.
That some Parsis may be traumatized by the bugaboo of UCC is a small price to pay. The community is too minuscule to be of any political consequence. The Parsis’ fear is based largely on racial and gender concerns. Many oppose the children of Parsi mothers married to non-Parsis being considered Parsis; they are also fearful that adoption would accord the adoptee the rights and benefits of a child born of a Parsi father, or of converts to Zoroastrianism availing of all the rights accorded to born Parsis. As Justice Frank Beaman noted in his judgment in the historic Parsi Punchayet case of 1908 (also referred to as Petit vs Jeejeebhoy), "While the religion and its ritual purity are still the mainspring of communal life, they are intimately bound up with the exclusiveness and the purity of the tribe or caste."
The objectives of the UCC may be laudable in themselves: a common code of personal laws applicable to people of all religious faiths. But on which community’s laws would the standard be based? And which section or sect of that faith? Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and other faiths all have groupings and divisions. As Madras based member of the Constituent Assembly B. Pocker Sahib Bahadur is quoted as stating in The Indian Express (IE) of June 28, 2023, "By uniform, I ask, what do you mean, and which particular law, of which community are you going to take as standard?"
"The Parsi community has been feeling for quite some time now that the Parsis have been wrongly grouped for over a hundred years along with Europeans, East Indians and Armenians, all of non-Indian extraction, and that Parsis by their establishment in this country for over 1,300 years, have acquired the stamp of an indigenous community and are entitled to be reckoned along with Hindus, Mohmedans, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists and Indian Christians," wrote Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Sir Cowasjee Jehangir on July 15, 1959 while submitting a "memorial" to the Government of India regarding the Indian Succession Act (see Sapur F. Desai’s History of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet: 1860-1960.).
The submission noted among other things that the "Hindus, Mohmedans, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Indian Christians are not obliged to take out letters of administration or probate for the whole of the estate of an intestate or of a person dying leaving a will. In this respect the Parsis are grouped along with Europeans, East Indians, Armenians and Jews. The Parsis of India desire to submit this memorandum to you for your kind consideration and request you to give them the relief they seek and to place them on a footing of equality with the other communities of India."
Social reformer B. R. Ambedkar who chaired the drafting committee for India’s Constitution "assured (members) that the UCC would not be enforced upon the people." The IE quotes Ambedkar as stating "Article 44 of the Constitution ‘merely proposes that the State shall endeavor to secure a civil code’…Ambedkar also underlined the possibility that a future parliament could make provisions for applying the UCC in ‘a purely voluntary’ manner."
According to Desai’s History, in 1947 the Minority Rights Advisory Committee wrote to Sir Homi Mody, member of the Indian Legislative Assembly and the Indian Constituent Assembly, seeking his views on "What should be the nature and scope of the safeguards for a minority in the new Constitution?" Mody replied, "I assume that the provisions to be incorporated in the Constitution with regard to the fundamental right of the citizen will adequately cover the rights of every individual."
To the further question "What machinery should be set up to ensure that the safeguards are effective?" he noted, "The agency which would inspire the most confidence would be an independent judiciary at a high level which would have the right to override the acts of the executive (police, bureaucracy, etc) and the legislatures (state assemblies, parliament, and so on) whenever they infringed the rights given by the Constitution to individuals or groups."
Mody sent a copy of his reply to Sir Shapoorji B. Billimoria, then chairman of the BPP, who in turn sent his views on the subject concluding, "We trust this representation of the Parsi community will be given a fair hearing…and justice dispensed with impartiality and with equity." Billimoria suggested calling "a conference of Parsis where these questions may be considered at length and a clear mandate" given. But Mody shot down the proposal noting disaffection from those not invited, and publicization of "our differences. I see, besides, a lot of difficulty about accepting any sort of mandate. It would tie me down to a course of action which I may find impracticable in the light of the discussion at the meeting of the Committee."
Over the years personal laws of all communities have evolved. Even the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act today permits divorce by mutual consent. The rights of Parsi women under the Indian Succession Act, at least, have been enhanced if not in other matters. The children of a Parsi woman and a non-Parsi father are still not considered Parsis. Three court cases by courageous Parsi women challenging this injustice have been filed. Victory in even one case could mean victory for all.
Rather than coerce or ram so-called "reforms," the Government should make every endeavor to encourage reform from within communities and provide incentives to those who seek approval for laws that grant parity to women and other disadvantaged sections of society.