The Betrayal of India’s Children: How Vote-Bank Politics Entrenched Medievalism

When India became independent in 1947, our leaders inherited a wounded, fragile nation. Partition had torn the land, displaced millions, and left Muslims within India anxious about survival. In such a moment, our Constitution-makers faced a profound choice: should all citizens be guaranteed the same dignity in family law, or should communities retain their separate “personal laws”?

They chose pluralism over uniformity. Hindu law was codified and reformed in the 1950s - polygamy was abolished, inheritance was modernized, minimum marriage ages were fixed. But Muslim law was left untouched, on the grounds that it was “too sensitive.” Article 44 of the Constitution promised a future Uniform Civil Code, but only as an aspiration.

That “later” never came. And it is here that lies the great betrayal.

The Vote Bank Trap

In the decades after Partition, India’s political class found it easier to treat Muslims not as citizens but as a vote bank. Once the educated elite had migrated to Pakistan, Indian Muslims were left vulnerable. Instead of empowering them with modern education, economic opportunity, and reform, politicians handed authority to conservative clerics and boards.

Muslim Personal Law became a symbol of identity, but in practice it was a weapon of control. The state legitimized religious authorities as the “voice” of Muslims, sidelining reformers, women’s groups, and progressive scholars.

Thus, Muslim women and children, the weakest within the community, were sacrificed so that politicians could parade as protectors of minority rights, while securing electoral loyalty.

A False Pluralism

Let’s be clear: pluralism was never the problem. India is rich precisely because it is diverse. The problem was cowardice - the refusal to distinguish between protecting culture and protecting clerical power.

Childhood, dignity, and equality are not negotiable values. Yet by refusing to touch Muslim Personal Law, leaders allowed puberty-based marriages, triple talaq, and other medieval practices to survive well into the modern Republic.

Ask yourself: if Hindu, Christian, and Parsi girls could be guaranteed 18 as the minimum age for marriage, why should a Muslim girl be told that her “identity” requires her to be married at 15? That is not cultural autonomy. That is child abuse in the name of community.

The Real Failure

It is fashionable to excuse the framers of the Constitution by invoking the fragility of 1947. But moral compromises made in fear became habits of governance. Successive generations of Congress, Communist, regional parties kept Muslim Personal Law frozen in time.

And in the vacuum, clerics claimed guardianship of identity. What was sold as “minority protection” became the entrenchment of patriarchy.

The true failure was not just in 1950. It was in every election where Muslims were treated as a block to be managed rather than as individuals with rights. It was in every Parliament that lacked the courage to legislate equality across communities. It was in every court that ducked the question of whether child marriage could ever be justified under the banner of religion.

The Cost

The cost has been borne, silently, by millions of Muslim girls who never got the protections their sisters in other communities already had. The Constitution promised them dignity as citizens; politics delivered them into the hands of men quoting seventh-century texts as eternal law.

This is the betrayal: the rights of children were curtailed, not for religion, but for power.

The Path Not Taken

Imagine another history: In the 1950s, Nehru and Ambedkar stand firm. They reform Hindu law and Muslim law together, declaring that in independent India no child, Hindu or Muslim, can be married before 18. Imagine if Parliament had drawn a clear line: culture may vary, but dignity is universal.

India would still have pluralism, but without medievalism. Muslim women would have grown with rights, not with excuses. The clerics would have lost their stranglehold. And the word “UCC” would not today be a communal weapon, but a simple description of equal citizenship.

Conclusion

To understand is not to excuse. Yes, our leaders feared alienation in 1947. But fear cannot justify sacrificing generations of children. The political class, in the name of protecting Muslims, abandoned them to religious authorities and called it pluralism.

That is not pluralism. That is betrayal.

India will one day have to reckon with this unfinished promise, not because Article 44 says so, but because the dignity of children demands it.