ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the story forward, beginning with the passage of the Hindu Code bills and the politics surrounding them. The huge poster that adorned the campaign office of the Arkansas governor Bill Clinton at Little Rock who was running for the American presidency in 1992 read: 'It is Economics, Stupid'. The decade of the 1950s was a decade of a forward march towards replacement of the traditional Hindu personal law by a modern and standardised code, which would have little to do with the Hindu dharmashastras. Since, in Indian politics, communalism connotes Hindu-Muslim communalism the personal law controversy is viewed from that perspective alone. The discourse on Muslim personal law and the position held by the Majlis-e-Musahwarat on the question polarised the Muslim community into traditionalists and modernists. The Muslim criticism of the judgment was, therefore, the product of both a historical process as much as it was a doctrinally inspired move.
