Since 26 January 1950 Article 44 of the Constitution Has Asked the State to Work Towards One Family Law, and Marriage and Inheritance in India Are Still Governed by Different Personal Laws Depending on Religion

Marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance in India are not governed by one law, and which set of rules applies depends mainly on the religion of the people involved. Article 44 of the Constitution, in force since 26 January 1950, says “The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.” It sits among the Directive Principles, the goals that courts do not enforce, which our guide to that part of the Constitution explains.

A uniform civil code would be one set of family laws for every citizen. What exists instead is a mix of statutes and community laws, a code in Goa, a second in Uttarakhand since 27 January 2025, and a civil marriage law that any couple can choose.

What the Constitution says about family law

Article 44 was draft Article 35 when the Constituent Assembly took it up on 23 November 1948, and members argued both ways. Mohammad Ismail Khan said that “Such regimentation will bring discontent and harmony will be affected.” B. Pocker called it “a tyrannous provision which ought not to be tolerated”. K. M. Munshi answered that “Religion must be restricted to spheres which legitimately appertain to religion.”

B. R. Ambedkar told members they had “read rather too much into article 35”, which only asked the State to endeavour. He said a future Parliament might begin by applying a code only to those who declared themselves willing to be bound by it. The Assembly rejected an amendment that would have barred any change to a community’s personal law without that community’s approval, and it adopted the article the same day. The wider story is in our account of the Constituent Assembly and the piece on Ambedkar.

Family law is on the Concurrent List, the subjects on which Parliament and state legislatures can both make laws. Entry 5 lists marriage and divorce, adoption, wills, intestacy (dying without a will) and succession, joint family and partition, and “all matters in respect of which parties in judicial proceedings were immediately before the commencement of this Constitution subject to their personal law”. Because the entry is shared, state legislatures can make family laws as well.

Two articles protect tribal custom. Article 371A says no Act of Parliament on “religious or social practices of the Nagas” or “Naga customary law and procedure” applies in Nagaland unless its Legislative Assembly resolves that it should. Article 371G gives Mizoram the same protection for Mizo practice and law. How the Constitution treats religious freedom itself is covered in our article on secularism.

Which law applies to whom

The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 applies to any person who is a Hindu by religion in any of its forms, including a Virashaiva, a Lingayat or a follower of the Brahmo, Prarthana or Arya Samaj. It also covers Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, and anyone domiciled where the Act extends who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew, unless Hindu law would not have governed them. Section 2(2) leaves out members of a Scheduled Tribe unless the Central Government notifies otherwise. Section 5 requires, among other things, that neither party has a living spouse and that the bridegroom is 21 and the bride 18.

For Muslims, Section 2 of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937 says that in questions of marriage, dissolution of marriage, maintenance, dower, guardianship, gifts, wakfs and intestate succession, with agricultural land excluded, “the rule of decision” where the parties are Muslims is Muslim personal law. The Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939 lists grounds on which a marriage can be ended. The Law Commission’s 2008 report calls Muslim personal law on marriage otherwise uncodified.

Christians marry under the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872, which in Section 4 says Christian marriages are to be solemnised under it, divorce under the Indian Divorce Act, 1869, and inherit under the Indian Succession Act, 1925. Parsis have the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936. A Law Commission paper of 31 August 2018 notes that the picture is not one law per religion: Christians in Goa, Daman and Diu are governed by the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867, and those in Pondicherry by a mix of customary Hindu law, the 1925 Act and the French Civil Code of 1804.

The Special Marriage Act, 1954 sits alongside all of these. The Law Commission’s 2008 report describes it as an optional law, open to all citizens, under which the religion of the parties does not matter. It also lets a couple register an existing religious marriage under it.

How Hindu inheritance changed in 2005

Family law has changed one statute or judgment at a time, and the Law Commission’s 2018 paper lists the 2005 Hindu change, the 2001 amendments to Christian marriage and divorce law and the 2010 changes to adoption and guardianship law as examples. Inheritance is one of the largest. In a Mitakshara joint family, a traditional form of Hindu joint ownership, property is held by coparceners, relatives who each acquire an interest by birth, and until 2005 only males were coparceners. Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 passed a deceased male coparcener’s interest by survivorship to the surviving coparceners, with an exception where he left certain close female relatives.

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 replaced Section 6. It says the daughter of a coparcener shall “by birth become a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as the son”, with the same rights and liabilities. The date the change took effect was 9 September 2005, and a proviso protected any sale, partition or will made before 20 December 2004.

Two Supreme Court benches then read the amendment differently. On 11 August 2020 a three-judge bench settled the question. Its answers were that daughters born before or after the amendment are coparceners “in the same manner as son”, that they can claim the right from 9 September 2005, and that the father need not have been alive on that date. In a pending partition suit a daughter’s share equals a son’s, even after a preliminary decree.

Muslim family law in the courts from 1985 to 2019

Mohd. Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum, decided on 23 April 1985 by five judges, began as a maintenance claim. The couple had been married for 43 years, according to the later Danial Latifi judgment. The Court held that Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the general maintenance provision for wives, applies to a divorced Muslim wife who cannot maintain herself, and that it found no conflict with Muslim personal law on the husband’s duty. The judgment also said that “Article 44 of our Constitution has remained a dead letter”, adding “a beginning has to be made”.

Parliament then passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. In Danial Latifi v Union of India, decided on 28 September 2001, five judges upheld it. They read Section 3 to mean that a husband must make a reasonable and fair provision for the divorced wife’s future, to be made within the iddat period, the waiting period after a divorce, although it can extend beyond that period. The Court wrote that the Act codified what the Shah Bano judgment had stated, and held that the husband’s liability is not limited to iddat.

Shayara Bano v Union of India, decided on 22 August 2017, concerned talaq-e-biddat, an instant and irrevocable divorce by three pronouncements at once. The order of the Court says that by a majority of 3 to 2 the practice is set aside. The three judges reached that result by different routes. Two held that Section 2 of the 1937 Act is a “law in force” under Article 13(1), and that the practice is manifestly arbitrary and so violates Article 14. The third wrote that “What is held to be bad in the Holy Quran cannot be good in Shariat”.

The two judges in the minority held that talaq-e-biddat is part of personal law protected by Article 25, and that Articles 14, 15 and 21 apply only to State action. They wrote that reform of personal law has come only through legislation, and directed the Union to consider a law, with an interim injunction on the practice for six months. Parliament passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, with the Lok Sabha voting on 25 July and the Rajya Sabha on 30 July 2019. PRS Legislative Research summarises it as declaring any talaq of that kind void and illegal, with up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine for the husband.

Goa, which kept its Portuguese-era code after 1961

Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule on 19 December 1961, and the story of that is in our article on Goa’s liberation. An ordinance of 5 March 1962 and then the Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act, 1962 continued the laws in force there until a competent legislature changed them. Among them was the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867.

In Jose Paulo Coutinho v Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira, decided on 13 September 2019, the Supreme Court held that the Code, which it called an Indian law as applied in Goa, also governs the succession of a Goan whose property lies outside Goa. It described Goa as “a shining example of an Indian State which has a uniform civil code”, adding that this is so “except while protecting certain limited rights”.

The Court’s summary of the Goa system includes joint ownership of the assets each spouse brings to or acquires in the marriage, so that each takes half on divorce unless a prenuptial agreement says otherwise. It also includes the legitime, the portion of a person’s property, at least half, that must go to the legal heirs. Parts of the Code were replaced on 22 December 2016 by the Goa Succession, Special Notaries and Inventory Proceedings Act, 2012.

Uttarakhand’s Code of 2024

The Uniform Civil Code, Uttarakhand, 2024 states its purpose as “to govern and regulate the laws relating to marriage and divorce, succession, live-in relationships”. The record in the Gazette says the President assented to it on 11 March 2024. It came into force on 27 January 2025 and was amended by an ordinance in January 2026, according to All India Radio News. It extends to the whole state and applies to residents who live elsewhere. Section 2 excludes members of Scheduled Tribes and persons whose customary rights are protected under Part XXI of the Constitution.

Section 4 sets the conditions for marriage: neither party has a living spouse, the man has completed 21 years and the woman 18, and the parties are not within the prohibited degrees of relationship unless their custom permits. Section 5 allows marriage in accordance with the religious beliefs, practices and customary rites of the parties, naming “Saptapadi”, “Ashirvad”, “Nikah”, “Holy Union” and “Anand Karaj”. Registration must follow within 60 days, though under Section 20 a marriage is not invalid solely because it was not registered. Section 29 bars the dissolution of any marriage except under the Code, “notwithstanding any usage, custom, tradition, personal law”.

On inheritance, Section 51 divides the estate of a person who dies without a will among Class-1 heirs, who include the spouse, the children and the parents. Each surviving spouse and each surviving child takes one share, and the parents together take one.

The code has been challenged in court. On 12 February 2025 a Division Bench of the Uttarakhand High Court issued notice to the state and the Union on a public interest petition by Almasuddin Siddiqui and Ikram, who cite Articles 14, 19, 21 and 25, and tagged two other petitions with it. No judgment in these cases appears in the sources checked for this article.

Arguments on a national code

The 21st Law Commission’s consultation paper of 31 August 2018 said it had dealt with laws that are discriminatory “rather than providing a uniform civil code which is neither necessary nor desirable at this stage”. It wrote that “it is discrimination and not difference which lies at the root of inequality”, and suggested a range of amendments to existing family laws. The 22nd Law Commission invited public views again on 14 June 2023, with 30 days to respond, because more than three years had passed since that paper. No Law Commission report on the subject after the 2018 paper appears in the sources checked for this article.

The Prime Minister said in the Independence Day address of 15 August 2024 that the Supreme Court has repeatedly raised the issue and that “it is time for the country to demand a Secular Civil Code”. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board’s response to the Commission, reported by The Tribune on 6 July 2023, said that “not only tribals but every religious minority should also be kept out of the purview of UCC”.

The state route has widened in 2026. LiveLaw reported on 23 July 2026 that Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam have uniform civil code laws, and that the Madhya Pradesh Assembly passed its bill on 21 July 2026, awaiting the Governor’s assent.