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At a time when there’s a growing chorus, and a debate, on the need to review personal laws and have a uniform civil code, as in Goa where a 155-year-old Portuguese-era law is still in force, the Ministry of Law and Justice is learnt to have conveyed to a parliamentary committee that review of such laws can be undertaken when a “sizeable majority” of the population seek amendment of the existing laws or a new law is enacted.
Even in the case of Goa, where the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 continues, the Ministry is learnt to have pointed out to the committee that the original law must have undergone changes over the years, and if it requires review, it must be looked into.
The government, it is learnt, communicated its stance to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice which selected review of personal laws as a subject for examination during its 2021-22 tenure.
The committee, headed by BJP member Sushil Kumar Modi, has 28 members — 7 from Rajya Sabha and 21 from Lok Sabha.
It is learnt that the committee visited Goa on June 26 to study the common family law relating to marriage, divorce, succession etc., and applicable to all religious communities including Hindu, Muslim and Christian.
Goa’s Chief Secretary, the current and former Advocate Generals, representatives of civil society organisations were said to have briefed the committee on the state’s experience of implementing a uniform civil code related to family laws over the years.
Goa is the only state in India that has a uniform civil code regardless of religion, gender and caste. A former Portuguese colony, it inherited the Portuguese Civil Code, 1867 that is still applicable in the state even after it joined the Indian Union in 1961.
In other parts of the country, different personal laws are applicable to different religious communities. For instance, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 is applicable to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936 is applicable to matters related to Parsis, the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872 for Christians and the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat Application), 1937 is applicable to Muslims in personal matters.
Govt. and Politics
As fight within party rages, Maldives President Solih arrives in Delhi tomorrow (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
President Ibrahim “Ibu” Solih of Maldives arrives on an official visit under the shadow of a blistering political row in the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) that has pitted him against party colleague and Speaker Mohammed Nasheed.
This is Solih’s second official visit to India. He came once before in December 2018 days after his election. He was in Bengaluru on an unofficial visit in April 2019 to watch an IPL cricket match.
Over the last few months, Nasheed, who is former President, has been speaking openly against Solih and the government. He is also opposed to Solih’s candidature in the 2023 presidential elections.
Earlier this year, Solih’s candidate for the party chairmanship, Fayyaz Ismail, won over Nasheed’s candidate Imthiyaz Fahmy with 58 per cent of the votes, showing that a majority in the MDP are on Solih’s side.
Nasheed’s simmering hostility towards his former political protege boiled over after police arrested his brother Ahmed Nazim. Nasheed tweeted that “Ibu Solih’s administration has arrested my brother selectively accusing him of homosexuality. Arrest was made against criminal procedures and is politically motivated to appease hardline extremists in coalition”.
Nasheed accused the President of pandering to Islamist hardliners. Maldives is an Islamic republic of Sunni Muslims. Nazim, a former parliamentarian himself, was arrested along with two other men, one of them a police officer, and another a Bangladeshi national. Nasheed said in a party WhatsApp group that his brother had been targeted when several others could have been investigated for having same-sex relations.
The World
Military must be headed by reliable people loyal to Communist Party: Xi (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China is facing mounting instability and uncertainty in the national security situation, President Xi Jinping has warned, asserting that the Chinese military should be led by “reliable people” loyal to the ruling Communist Party to ensure its “absolute leadership” over the world’s largest armed forces.
Speaking at a study session on further implementing the strategy of strengthening the military by training competent personnel in the new era, Xi greeted the service personnel before the 95th anniversary of the founding of the PLA.
The two-million-strong People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest military in the world. We must lay emphasis on political integrity when cultivating, evaluating and appointing personnel, so that the party’s absolute leadership over the military is implemented in the whole process of personnel work.
Xi emphasised that the “armed forces must always be led by reliable people who are loyal to the Party. Noting that the starting point and ultimate goal of personnel work is to build armed forces that are able to fight and win, Xi called for efforts to enhance the supply of personnel with strong combat readiness in close step with developments in the forms of war.
In his address, Xi said the world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation, adding that China is “facing mounting instability and uncertainty in the national security situation.”
His comments came as China has ratcheted up tensions with the US over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s planned visit to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its mainland.
Xi told US President Joe Biden in their fifth virtual meeting on Thursday that “the position of the Chinese government and people on the Taiwan question is consistent, and resolutely safeguarding China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people”.
The public opinion cannot be defied. Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this. The US should honour the one-China principle.
Opinion
The Dragon in the Room (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
On July 26, 2022, the nation celebrated the 23rd Kargil Vijay Diwas. It is fitting that the government marks the day to remember the war heroes, especially the martyrs.
In a war that was fought for three months, 527 Indian soldiers were killed and 1,363 soldiers were wounded. It was not a small price that the country paid to secure its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The country had also won another war 50 years ago — the Bangladesh Liberation War. The Indian defence forces fought the war on two fronts: on the eastern border to help the Mukti Bahini liberate the then East Pakistan and create Bangladesh, and on the western border in retaliation to the Pakistan Air Force’s aerial strikes on 11 Indian air stations.
On the orders of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, India launched a full-scale invasion. India reported that 3,000 soldiers had died and 12,000 soldiers were wounded.
On December 16, 1971, Pakistan’s Eastern Army Commander, Lt Gen A A K Niazi, signed, unconditionally, the instrument of surrender with India’s Lt Gen J S Aurora. It was India’s greatest war victory.
Both victories were against Pakistan. Despite two earlier wars in 1947 and 1965, Pakistan had not learnt to live in peace with India. And despite its massive defeat in 1971, it attempted to sneak into Indian territory in Kargil in 1999.
Even after the defeat in the Kargil War, Pakistan still attempts to infiltrate into India. Seventy-five years after both countries became independent, Indians must reconcile themselves to live with an intransigent neighbour that knows that it can never defeat India in a regular war. Pakistan, therefore, is not the elephant in the room.
The elephant — or dragon — in the room is China. One thing is clear: the BJP government, for all its chest-thumping against Pakistan, is totally clueless about how to deal with the aggression of China.
It must rankle Prime Minister Modi that he did not get the true measure of Mr Xi Jinping when both sat on a jhoola on October 11, 2019, at Mammallapuram in Tamil Nadu. Even while the jhoola was swinging gently to the cool sea breeze, China’s PLA was in an advanced stage of planning to intrude into Indian territory.
On January 1, 2020, President Xi signed the order authorising military action. PLA forces crossed the LAC into Indian territory in March-April 2020.
Santhals and their Great Revolt of 1855 (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 1, Modern India)
A couple of generations ago, in June 1855 to be precise, the ancestors of today’s Santhals — one of the largest and most dispersed tribal communities and one of whose members, Droupadi Murmu, finds herself occupying the highest constitutional office in the country — revolted against an oppressive system forced upon them by the non-tribals, aided by the British colonial administrations and their local agents like the Daroghas and the local Zamindars.
The epicentres of the movement were the three adjoining districts of Birbhum, Murshidabad and Bhagalpur in the then undivided Bengal, where the Santhals lived in, and around the foothills of the Rajmahal hills in what was demarcated as Santhal Parganas.
The area was allocated for their resettlement through the Damin-i-koh regulation of 1832 by the British after they suppressed the local Paharias in the early decade of the 19th Century, a period when the Chuar, Bhumij and Kol tribes of Bengal and Bihar had already revolted and expressed their anger over their exploitation at the hands of outsiders.
Santhlas from many other areas also came and settled in the area. The colonial idea was to use the Santhals as a source of labour for the expansion of agriculture and other works.
Over the next century and a half, the Santhals would become the chief and cheap labour force for the British who put them to use in their tea gardens, and for land reclamation and colonisation for agriculture. Santhals were taken everywhere and thus a widely dispersed and disposed community came into being.
On the other hand, in the Damin-i-koh — or the land of the Santhals — the community’s hope for a settled agrarian life was soon to turn into a nightmare, with revenue demands from the colonial administration, and greedy and unscrupulous Zamindars and usurious caste groups.
Land grabbing was the regular pattern now and begari, the practice of bonded labour of the kind which can easily be defined as slavery, was to throttle the life of the Santhal men and women.
Economy
States, Centre to meet on labour: Modalities of four codes key agenda (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
With an aim to discuss the impending implementation of the labour codes and other labour-related issues, a national level meeting with labour ministers and officials of all states and the Centre will be held on August 25-26 at Tirupati, the conference is intended to finalise the modalities for the rollout of the labour codes.
A conference of state labour ministers and officials will be held next month. The meeting is intended to deliberate upon various issues since labour is a concurrent issue. Rulemaking for the labour codes will be discussed.
Also, modalities for the rollout of the labour codes have to be worked out,” the official said, without detailing a timeline for rollout of the labour codes.
With labour being a concurrent subject, both the Centre and states have to frame laws and rules. While Parliament cleared the four labour codes in 2020, and the Centre pre-published the draft rules for all four codes, some state governments are yet to complete the process.
Thirty one states/UTs have pre-published draft rules for The Code on Wages, while 26 states/UTs have done it for The Industrial Relations Code, 25 states/UTs for The Code on Social Security and 24 states/UTs for The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code.
In states where the draft rules are pending, most are related to The Code on Social Security and The OSH Code. In West Bengal, draft rules are pending for all four labour codes; in Rajasthan, draft rules are pending for three labour codes. Andhra Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland are among the other states where the draft rules are pending.