Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed.
In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality.
“It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other community is stuck in a time warp due to appeasement.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Previous governments have stayed away from amending the religious and customary laws that govern India largely for fear of angering voters — the majority Hindu, as well as minority Christian and Muslim groups — as it could potentially clash with their right to practice their faith.
Modi’s government has not released any proposals on how it plans to change the current laws, but some minority groups have raised concerns that it might target Muslims.
Creating a new civil code has featured prominently in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election manifestos in the past two national elections and remains a key, but unfulfilled part of its Hindu nationalist agenda.
Modi is seeking to extend his decade in power by another five years in elections that began on April 19 and are to run until June 1. Results are expected on June 4.
The prime minister also reiterated a pledge to have simultaneous local and national polls, under the slogan “one nation-one election.”
The BJP has long pushed to have concurrent elections as a way to cut down costs, although opposition groups have said it goes against India’s federal system.
Modi also responded to allegations from the opposition that recent comments he made on the campaign trail were religiously divisive. He said he was calling out the policies of the Indian National Congress, the main opposition, which favor affirmative action for some groups.
“To show that Congress violated the constitution by enacting laws to provide reservations on the basis of religion is not polarization,” Modi said.
The prime minister also responded to a debate last week sparked by a Congress official’s comments about using an inheritance tax to redistribute wealth.
“I do not think they are solutions by any stretch of imagination. These are actually dangerous problems disguised as solutions,” Modi said. “Would you work day and night if the government would take away your money at the end in the name of redistribution?”
To boost growth, the government needs to remove barriers and empower people, he said.
“This unleashes their entrepreneurial potential as we have seen in our country,” he said.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS