India, April 6 -- On March 24, the Gujarat Legislative Assembly passed its Uniform Civil Code (UCC). The stated purpose was the same as in Uttarakhand, which passed its own code in February 2024: to give women equal inheritance rights regardless of religion. It is a specific, measurable claim. There is now enough data to test it. Start with the number the debate never uses.

NFHS-5, the National Family Health Survey conducted between 2019 and 2021, found that 31.7 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 own land, either alone or jointly with someone else. For men in the same age group, the figure is 43.9 per cent. That gap of 12.2 percentage points exists in a country where the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act of 2005 already guarantees daughters...