Resolving the Constitutional Dilemma of the Uniform Civil Code in India through the Women's Convention.

The debate over the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is mired in the conflict between the right to freedom of religion and the right to gender-based equality. The retraction of the UCC also hinges on legal pluralism. This paper argues for shifting the foci of the debate towards gender-based violence as rightly suggested by the feminist argument in India. In order to do so, this paper argues that the debate over the UCC needs to be restructured around the Due Diligence Obligation (DDO) to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This paper presents the argument that the absence of a UCC creates a normative vacuum that is currently filled by an intersubjective climate on patriarchy which primes the average Indian mindset. This intersubjective mindset requires to be replaced by the normative language of the DDO to the CEDAW. This process of norm effectuation also ties into the question of how international norms are implemented in domestic contexts and reiterates the causal chain propounded therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]