By promising a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) which will keep tribals out of its ambit, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has reiterated the BJP’s qualified pitch for the move, which is a part of its core agenda.

Shah isn’t the first from the party or the Narendra Modi government to have said this. The BJP has repeatedly qualified its quest for uniformity in family laws to assert that tribal cultures need to be insulated.

The party’s UCC pitch, which has seen repeated ideological iterations since the days of the Jana Sangh, questions the existence of Muslim personal law in a secular state. But, over the past year, it has been accompanied by assurances that tribals will not be affected.

The reason lies in the move by the BJP, once seen as an “upper caste party”, to woo tribal voters, alongside backwards and Dalits, in recent years.

On Sunday too, Shah assured that the identity and heritage of tribal communities would be preserved.

In July 2023, the late BJP leader Sushil Modi, who then chaired the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, said the tribes of the Northeast states should be kept out of the purview of a UCC. He said this in the context of a discussion on the Law Commission examining the question of a UCC in India.

The same month, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju, while speaking to the media on Arunachal Pradesh, said: “We don’t need to discuss the issue of a UCC in Arunachal and tribal areas. If you have studied the Constitution and rules or you have seen provisions, you must know that UCC is not applicable in Tribal Scheduled Areas. Secondly, whatever laws are being made are for the betterment of the country. These laws are made as per the Constitution. In the Constitution, if Arunachal Pradesh is a tribal state, then it is not applicable as there is no such thing mentioned in the Constitution. So, there is nothing to discuss about it.”

In July 2023, another BJP minister, S P Singh Baghel, also said the government would not interfere with the customary practices of tribals, while adding that “appeasement politics” would not prevent a UCC. “The BJP chose to nominate a tribal woman as the President of India… It also has the largest number of tribal MLAs, MPs, Rajya Sabha members and ministers. The customs of the Northeast are respected by the party, and we will not hurt any religious or social customs, but appeasement politics is not right either,” he said.

He added that as per the sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which grants special provisions to certain tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, nothing would apply to these areas unless their own state legislatures ratify the Centre’s decision.

Moreover, Article 371 A of the Constitution has special provisions with regard to Nagaland. “No act of Parliament in respect of religious or social practices of the Nagas; Naga customary law and procedure; administration of civil and criminal justice involving decisions according to Naga customary law; ownership and transfer of land and its resources, shall apply to the State of Nagaland unless the Legislative Assembly of Nagaland by a resolution so decides,” it states.

Earlier this year, while asserting that Assam would become the third state after Uttarakhand and Gujarat to implement the UCC, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, speaking at a press conference in January, made it clear that it would exempt tribals.

The Uttarakhand UCC draft, too, exempted tribals from its purview, making it clear that uniformity did not mean tinkering with tribal practices.

The BJP’s Meghalaya vice-president Bernard Marak, too, maintained last year that scheduled areas in the state would remain outside the purview of the UCC.

Amid its repeated assertions of exemption for tribals, the BJP faces criticism that its pitch for UCC is targeted at Muslim personal laws, rather than ensuring uniformity in all practices.

Defending his party’s stand, a BJP leader from the Northeast, who did not want to be named, said: “Let us not forget that gender reform is a major reason for the desirability of a UCC. But Meghalaya is matrilineal. Go to the Northeast states, and you will find a lot of gender empowerment among tribes. Should we make courts disrupt these practices which, anyway, already empower women? We need to be certain where the objective of empowering women is served and where it isn’t.”