Are Personal Laws Justified In Secular India?

Law and Social Work

1. Are personal laws justified in secular India? Give reasons for your answer.
Secularism in India mainly implies parallel treatment of all religions by the State. Secularism in India acknowledges religious laws as binding on State and thereby equivalent cooperation of State in various religions, which is different from western concept of secularism.[ ][ ] Here the question of personal laws being contradictory to the idea of secularism is not a point at all because the way India has operationalised secularism is completely different as compared to the western countries who consider that in a secular state each individual has the right to practice their own religion in their own individual way and treat it as a private
The laws verifiably require the state and its foundations to perceive and acknowledge all religions, implement religious laws rather than parliamentary laws, and admiration pluralism.[ ][ ] Although India does not have any official religion but the general public has been given complete freedom in order to follow their own religion, all religions being equal in front of the State. In matters of law in present day India, the personal laws which have been in debate and are considered to hamper the idea of secularism has been very dangerous for women in India, the appropriate code of law is unequal, and India's own laws - on matters, for example, marriage, separation, legacy, divorce settlement - shifts with an individual's religion. Muslims in India have Sharia-based Personal Law, whereas all the Hindus, Christians, Sikhs as well as other non-Muslim Indians live under other Personal law. The endeavor to respect unequal, religious law has made various issues in India, for example, worthiness of child marriage,[ ] polygamy, unequal legacy rights, triple talaq, extrajudicial one-sided separation rights positive to some citizens, and clashing translations of religious books.[
If in case there is someone who does not want to get married or inherit under their own personal Law then they can look towards other laws or other rights that they are entitled to in our Indian constitution. For example the Shah Bano[ ] case where the Lady despite of marrying under Muslim personal law was able to claim formaintenance and was finally given the maintenance as order by the court but finally she did not accept the money and returned it back since she did not want to face the negative outrage of people from her community. Hence here what we need to look at is socialisation. People are brought up and socialised around their religious customs and traditions hence personal law based on religion is very much important and necessary. Hence here we can see that there are other rights and provision in the constitution if one feels there is unjust behaviour towards them under personal laws. Hence this is not the issue the main point is that if one wants to abide by their religious tenets then those tenets must actually be changing and dynamic and interpretation of these must be progressive as well as compatible with dignity of its people.[