Supreme Court Verdicts on Personal Laws: A Journey through Unity and Divergence in India

Abstract

This article explores the development of personal laws in India, focusing on the interaction between traditional customs, colonial influences, and contemporary legal frameworks. It examines how these elements have evolved within the context of the Indian Constitution and Supreme Court rulings aimed at reforming personal laws. India is a pluralistic multicultural society regarding religious, social, and personal law aspects. Different groups of people in India have separate religious personal laws, which India's secular state could see as unity in diversity and, at the same time, pose some questions about gender neutrality. However, these laws have generated debate about the meaning of gender equality in India since it is alleged that all religious personal laws, to various extents, give women fewer rights than men. Still, Indian women have been promised equality as a constitutional right. This article emphasises the role of judicial interference, as demonstrated by landmark Supreme Court judgements like Mary Roy, Sarala Mudgal, Shah Bano, Vineeta Sharma, and Shayara Bano cases, which have often challenged archaic old-style practices to uphold constitutional values of equality and justice and tries to reform personal law on these lines. The article explores the gendered insinuations of personal laws, criticising their patriarchal underpinnings and advocating for a more gender-sensitive legal framework. It also delves into the contentious debate surrounding the difficulties of codifying a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in a culturally diverse pluralistic society, balancing the need for legal uniformity. The socio-political context, including the influence of egalitarian and other social movements and partisan or impartial political relations and their dynamics, is crucial to understanding the public response in a multicultural society and the judiciary's evolving role in personal law reforms based on the broad vision forwarded by the constitution. The study calls for a refined lens to read judicial interventions, ensuring a proper balance between activism and restraint while upholding fundamental rights and fostering social justice in a multicultural, pluralistic society.