Why does BJP oppose the word secular?

 

Why does BJP oppose the word secular?

-SR Darapuri National President, All India People's Front

Speaking on Constitution Day in Parliament in 2015, BJP representative Rajnath Singh again reiterated that the inclusion of the word secular in the Constitution is unnecessary and has been misused a lot. He further defined secularism and said that it does not mean secularism but sect neutrality. Even before this BJP and its allies have raised similar objections to this word.

It is known that the words secular and socialist were included in the Preamble of the Constitution in 1976 by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment. It is also noteworthy that under the Right to Equality in Article 14 of the Constitution, discrimination based on religion is prohibited by the state against any citizen. Apart from this, according to the right to freedom of religion in Article 25 of the Constitution, every citizen has the fundamental right to profess, practice and propagate his religion. It is clear from these provisions of the constitution that our state is completely secular. These provisions are so clear that there is no scope for any kind of doubt in them, the BJP wants to keep them confused in the definition.

Being a secular state, all political parties are expected not to use religion in politics, which is also prohibited in the People's Representation Act. Similarly, it is the constitutional duty of the ministers and officers of the government to behave completely secularly in discharging their duties. But it is unfortunate that since independence till now neither our politics could become secular nor the people sitting on constitutional posts and administrative officers could become completely secular. The biggest example of this was our first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad. The first thing he did on assuming the office of the President was that he had replaced all the Muslim chefs (cooks) working in Rashtrapati Bhavan with Hindu cooks. His second act, which annoyed Nehru very much, was that after becoming the President, he went on a pilgrimage to Kashi and washed the feet of 200 Brahmins there and gave them dakshina. He probably did this because he was a Kayastha by caste, which is considered a Shudra in Bihar. Therefore, he thought it necessary to take blessings from the Vidvatjan Sabha of Kashi for his acceptance. Another act of his was to go for the installation of Shivling in Somnath temple after renovation, with which Nehru was very angry. Nehru's private secretary John Mathai wrote in his memoirs that the Somnath temple was renovated with the money that the then Agriculture Minister K.K. Munshi by increasing the price of sugar to the sugar mill association by Munshi in connivance with Sardar Patel, a part of it was received as a bribe. This information was received by Nehru when he could not do anything.

Nehru's personal secretary MO Mathai has also written in his memoirs that when Dr. Rajendra Prasad entered Rashtrapati Bhavan, he had ordered many langurs (Monkeys) because he was a Hanuman devotee. Dr. Rajendra Prasad used to feed the langurs with his own hands. They also used to go to North and South Block near Rashtrapati Bhavan and used to pick up the tiffins of the employees and tear files. When their population grew, they used to reach even the nearby houses and cause damage but they could not complain because they were President's baboons. Later, when Dr. Rajendra Prasad left the Rashtrapati Bhavan after the completion of his term, all the langurs were caught and sent to the Delhi Zoo.

Similarly, Babu Rajendra Prasad had also threatened to refuse assent to the Hindu Code Bill brought by Nehru and Ambedkar to give rights to Hindu women because he was against it as a Sanatani Hindu. It is also said that Sardar Patel wanted the Somnath temple to be renovated with government money, but Nehru did not allow it. In Nehru's absence, Sardar Patel had even got the Congress Working Committee to pass a resolution that Congressmen could become members of the RSS, but Nehru got it cancelled after returning from abroad.

Similarly, Madan Mohan Malaviya, who was a staunch Hindu, used to take Gangajal with him whenever he went to England. When an Englishman visited him, he used to purify his room by sprinkling Ganges water on his departure.

It is clear from the conduct of some of the above persons who held high positions that Indian politicians have never been completely secular. Our former Vice President Shankar Dayal Sharma had gone to pilgrimage with full official trappings. Not only this, all our government programs are completed only by Hindu religious rituals and worship of Gods and Goddesses. Whenever and wherever the BJP has come to power, it has introduced RSS for government employees. The doors of membership have been opened. From this, you can get an idea that how secular our governments and administrations have been in practice or are at present. By the way, Congress too has mostly been pretending to be secular. Its behaviour has also mostly been communal. It is known to all that the idols were placed in the Babri Masjid of Ayodhya in 1949 during the Congress rule. It was the Congress government that opened the locks of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone of the Ram temple there. Rajiv Gandhi started his election campaign from Ayodhya only after taking the blessings of Ram. In fact, Congress has always been playing the card of soft Hindutva, in which BJP later defeated it because BJP has always been doing politics of Hard Hindutva. Even on the issue of Ram Mandir, it went ahead of the Congress and won the battle by getting the Babri Masjid demolished.

Some time ago in the Parliament, by interpreting the word secular instead of secularism, the BJP has again given the message that it is not ready to accept India as a secular nation because till now it has been doing the politics of religion and wants to make India a Hindu Rashtra. Even if BJP's definition is accepted that our constitution is only sect neutral but not secular, then it means that India is a religious nation. Now because Hindutva is the biggest sect, then only the Hindu religion can be the religion of the nation. Therefore, BJP is very muchafraid to accept the word secular, because by accepting it, its Hindutva politics will be in danger and its resolve to make India a Hindu Rashtra will remain incomplete.

Does the EWS verdict represent the revenge of the ruling classes?

 

Does the EWS verdict represent the revenge of the ruling classes?

Peter Ronald deSouza

https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/guest-column-peter-ronald-desouza-does-th

Poverty can be tackled by simpler policy instruments such as MGNREGA, which the verdict misses.

It is indeed a coincidence that in November 2022, two of the world’s largest electoral democracies are seeking to recalibrate their moral goals. In the case of India this concerns the contestation over the core features of the reservation or quota system. Something similar is taking place in the US with respect to the policies of affirmative action. The new social realities that these policies have produced, over the last half century in either country, have resulted in challenges being brought to their respective Supreme Courts. Law is the terrain on which the moral battle is being fought.

In both countries, the introduction of the reservation and affirmative action policies was the result of a self-conscious decision, a political acknowledgment if you will, that India and the US were nations that had sordid social pasts where some sections of their population had been forced to live a dehumanized existence.

India’s case for reservation was built on an acceptance that the caste system that had codified all aspects of existence, from using a common village tap, to common dining, to inter-marriage, to even worshiping in a temple, inflicted great social violence on victim communities.

Restitution for sordid past

The US case for affirmative action emerged similarly from an acceptance that slavery had brutally reduced human beings to commodities to be owned, bought, sold, and abused, a repugnant past that called for restitution. The reservation and affirmative action policies are seen as just such an effort at restitution.

In the Constituent Assembly discussions in India, a free democracy was imagined that had an institutional and policy order that would give humiliated and discriminated groups reservation in three important social spaces: educational institutions, public bureaucracies, and elected Assemblies. The refinements that followed the initial enactment either advanced or weakened this system of reservation. There is a large case history as well as several academic studies on this issue.

The latest Supreme Court EWS [Economically Weaker Sections] judgment is one such attempt at ‘refining’ (some will say undermining) this reservation system. In the US, through important cases in the Supreme Court beginning with the benchmark 1954 Brown vs Board of Education, which prohibited racial segregation in schools, to Bakke vs Regents of the University of California, Grutter vs Bollinger in 2003, and Fisher vs University of Texas in 2016, to name a few that challenged the use of racial profiling, the policies of affirmative action in university admissions have been seriously contested. Admissions, the challengers have argued, should be colour blind.

The current case, to be decided this November, has been filed by the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. It alleges that the affirmative action policies of these universities violate the 14th amendment that guarantees “equal protection of the laws”. Interestingly, the ethnic composition of the SFFA is largely Asian-American.

Not only have the moral coordinates, in both democracies, changed over time, there has also been a narrowing in their scope as the contours of the imagined nation have altered under pressure from new political realities. Whether this is a pushback, by their respective ruling classes/castes, against the reservation and affirmative action systems adopted is an interesting debate for another time.

My limited brief here is to revisit the initial moral reasoning in India and see how EWS measures up to it. This is important because, on first reading, there seems to be considerable confusion by both learned judges and eminent commentators who have used key concepts interchangeably, as if they are the same (which they are not), and who have replaced the empirical evidence required by their argument with whim and opinion. Virat Kohli had a bad day at the crease.

Moral claims

Marc Galanter in his scholarly 1984 book Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India offers three time-dimension analytical frames that produce the moral claims which undergird the reservation system. He argues that victim communities must be offered reparations for the horrors inflicted in the past. Compensation is a way to atone for wrongs committed. But reparation alone is not enough. Something more has also to be done to change the present persistence of practices of negative discrimination. Countering it by policies of positive discrimination is perhaps the way. This too is not enough, since additional action is required for a just and fair future.

The evolving package of reservation policies is seen as the composite that addresses each requirement, reparations for the past, positive discrimination in the present, and policies for an equal and dignified future.

Further, this composite package has three analytical strands, each of which has to be considered independently. The first is restitution, which I have just discussed. The second is the recognition that reservation has the unintended outcome of producing a plural society by producing a petit bourgeois leadership from the victim communities that is so vital for any democracy. The third is the recognition that these policies have, integral to them, both a material and a cultural dimension.

Hence, economic backwardness, disadvantage, inequality, or poverty, are necessary but not sufficient conditions for reservation. The cultural dimension of a social system that imposes discrimination and humiliation is equally important in designing the policy. Systematic cultural oppression is faced by communities and not by individuals. Hence, the policies target communities who are victims and not individuals, an aspect that appears to be missing or goes unacknowledged in the EWS judgment.

It was only in May 2022 that Dalits entered the Anjaneya temple in Karnataka’s Yadgir district for the first time. Despite laws and affirmative action, victims of the caste system continue to struggle for dignity and equality. | Photo Credit: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Such cultural oppression produces a cumulative effect of both disadvantage and discrimination, deprivation and humiliation. Reservation policies are one way of remedying this situation. This ignorance of the interlinkages results in an illegitimate conflation of distinct concepts such as discrimination and disadvantage. They are not the same. A poor Brahmin is not half as disadvantaged as a poor Dalit. One has cultural status that gives power in certain contexts while the other does not. One can even oppress the other through exclusion and denial of access to important cultural goods.

Analysis of judgment

In addition to studying its conceptual confusion there are other aspects of the EWS judgment that will need to be analysed. For example, does EWS reservation extend to EWS sections among the religious minorities? Can a poor Parsi claim EWS benefits? How does the EWS judgment align with earlier judgments?

Since the 50 per cent limit has now been breached, has it inaugurated an open season to take reservation to 99 per cent? Does the judgment make it imperative for the government to conduct a caste census so that an empirical basis is available to determine quotas for groups? Will it be available for groups who are already reservation beneficiaries? If it does not, does the EWS system violate the constitutional provisions of equality? Is there a time dimension specified after which EWS reservation will cease?

Since reservation is for groups who suffer both discrimination and disadvantage, and since a creamy layer of such groups is excluded, can the concept of a cultural creamy layer be used to describe poor forward castes?

In what follows I shall not offer answers to these questions but shall limit myself to an important argument missing in the EWS judgment, particularly the one concerning the production of a petit bourgeois leadership among victim communities.

Spaces of social power

Reservation allows members of victim communities to enter spaces of social power so far denied them by the oppressive cultural rules of the social system. By creating leadership through education, and by placing such leaders in public bureaucracies and the political system, reservation releases victim communities from the mental bondage that had made them accept their inferior status and occupations.

This cultural gain is more important than the anti-poverty programme that the EWS judgment appears to have become. There are many other policy instruments available to address poverty such as MGNREGA and EWS scholarships. Reservation cannot be one of them because of its two dimensions: cultural and material.

That is why even though only a small segment of victim groups gets the opportunity benefits, the whole group gets the symbolic benefits. ‘One of ours is a Vice-Chancellor’. ‘One of ours sits in the chair of the Rashtrapati and has forward caste staff address him as ‘Sir’.’ This symbolic gain is not insignificant. Reservation is about this cultural achievement.

When reservation produces this cultural leadership, from among hitherto discriminated groups, it will produce not just a more vibrant cultural ecosystem but a more sustainable democracy.

The leadership that will emerge will give ‘voice’ and ‘presence’ to the discriminated communities. It will change the landscape of politics, making it more plural, as is happening gradually today in what is referred to as India’s silent revolution. It will normalise the presence of hitherto excluded groups within regular political life. Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel, by occupying positions of power, are achieving this normalisation for immigrant communities within British democracy. Reservation hastens this normalisation by strengthening the equal citizenship of hitherto discriminated groups.

The learned judges who have ruled on the EWS scheme seem to suggest that a system crafted over millennia has faded away after 75 years of democracy. One of us is wrong. Ask the anthropologists and political sociologists who study India. They will tell you why some of them see the EWS judgment as the revenge of the ruling classes.

Peter Ronald deSouza is former Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He recently co-edited Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility and Ambivalence, Routledge, 2022.

Exposing the ‘Forced Conversions’ Lie

 

                       Exposing the ‘Forced Conversions’ Lie!

                         — by Cedric Prakash — 23/11/2022

Srinivasan Jain, the popular TV anchor with NDTV, has done a tremendous service to the Constitution of India and thereby, to the people of India! In a hard-hitting exposé on his weekly segment ‘Truth vs Hype’, released on 19 November, Jain talks about the so-called ‘Forced Conversions’ with incontrovertible facts and the falsehoods and myths that are built around the issue!  A good part of his expose is an interview with Ashwin Kumar Upadhyay, the petitioner in the current case on ‘forced conversions’ in the Supreme Court.

Jain directly takes on Upadhyay and the 65-page petition submitted by the latter to the Supreme Court. Jain emphatically states that not a single example cited by Upadhyay in the petition comes under the ambit of ‘forced conversion’. In fact, Jain proves that one of the examples is completely fake! Upadhyay however, continues with his rant without being able to authenticate or substantiate or furnish a single bit of evidence to prove his points, as Jain says, in an absolutely ‘flimsy’ petition!

Who is this Ashwin Kumar Upadhyay? He is obviously a member of the BJP and an advocate in the Supreme Court. His claim to fame comes from the several Public Interest Litigations (PILs) he has filed – many of them are apparently frivolous and are summarily dismissed by the Courts and even at one time referred to a PIL as Publicity Interest Litigation. In August 2021, he was arrested in connection with alleged inflammatory and anti-Muslim slogans raised at a protest rally in Delhi – for which permission was not granted by the police!

In April 2021, a three-judge bench of Justices Rohinton F Nariman, B.R. Gavai and Hrishikesh Roy, dismissed a similar ‘forced conversion’ petition by Upadhyay and had even threatened to impose heavy costs if he persisted with the petition. The bench at that time had opined that any religious conversion law would be violative of the constitution as the constitution clearly allows joining of any religion of one’s choice and that’s why the word “propagate” is in the Constitution. The bench termed “very harmful” the petition that asked for a strict central law to check religious conversion and observed that adults are free to choose their faith. The bench also cautioned senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan, who represented Upadhyay in the matter. Upholding Article 25 that allows people to profess, practice and propagate religion, Justice Nariman asked “What kind of a petition is this? This is a very harmful petition. If you are going to argue this, we are going to impose a heavy cost on you”, said Nariman; he added, “There is a reason why the word ‘propagate’ is there in the Constitution. You have to have some meaning for that word. There is no reason why somebody above 18 cannot choose one’s own religion or somebody else’s religion,” The petition was immediately withdrawn!

Some months ago in June 2022, another of Upadhyay’s petitions in the Delhi High Court received the same fate. Marking an observation on the fundamentality of Article 25 of the constitution, Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said, “(religious)conversion is not prohibited in law. Every person has a right to choose and profess any religion of his/her choice. It is a Constitutional right. If someone is forced to convert, then it’s different issue but to convert is a person’s prerogative.” The bench then asked Upadhyay, “What is the basis for your prayer? There is no material basis on record. No document, no instance. You have given three Supreme Court judgments and rest is your averment”. Clearly taking him on his lies that there are several cases of mass conversion, the bench queried, “You have said mass conversion. Where are statistics? Has any aggrieved come forward?”

Interestingly, on 14 November 2022, the two-judge bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice M.R. Shah and Justice Hima Kohli, responding to Upadhyay’s latest petition, directed the Central Government to inform the Apex Court what steps it intends taking to curb deceitful or compulsory religious conversions. The Order states, “The issue with respect to the alleged conversion of religion, if it is found to be correct and true, is a very serious issue which may ultimately affect the security of the nation and violate citizens’ right to freedom of conscience and right to freely profess, practice and propogate(sic) religion. Therefore, it is better that the Union Government may make their stand clear and file a counter on what further steps can be taken by the Union of India and/or others to curb such forced conversion, may be, by force, allurement or fraudulent means”.

Upadhyay demands a Central law against ‘fraudulent religious conversion and religious conversion by intimidation, threatening, deceivingly luring through gifts and monetary benefits’, as it offends Articles 14, 21, and 25. His petition states, “there is not even one district which is free of black magic, superstition and religious conversion… Incidents are reported every week throughout the country where conversion is done by intimidating, threatening, luring through gifts and monetary benefits.” The very fact that the Supreme Court has even agreed to entertain this recent plea is in dire contrast to its vowed position of upholding Article 25. The next hearing is scheduled for 28 November and as the Order states, “Counter, if any, on behalf of the Union of India be filed on or before 22.11.2022.”

The track record of Justice M. R. Shah, clearly shows that he does not have a high degree of credibility in safeguarding the objectivity of the judiciary or for that matter the Constitution of India. It is certainly not prudent for any sitting justice of any Supreme Court to refer to the Prime Minister of one’s country as “the most popular, loved, vibrant and visionary leader”– as he did so in a function in Ahmedabad in February 2021! Earlier in 2018, as

Chief Justice of Patna High Court he termed PM Narendra Modi as a “model and hero”. His closeness both to Modi and Amit Shah is the talk of the town and has also been the subject of controversy and litigation. Justice Shah is due to retire in May 2023, one certainly will not need much of an effort to guess the ‘suitable reward’ which awaits him!

During the course of the hearing on 14 November, Justice Shah apparently said that “people get converted for rice bags!” His statement is entirely fallacious; however, even if there is an iota of truth in it – does he not have the duty to first pull up the Government and question them as to why people are hungry and poor in the country – when the Government splurges on non-essentials like statues and in the jaunts of the Prime Minister???  He needs to pay attention to the fact that India still has the highest number of poor people (almost 229 million) in the world. Besides, India hosts the highest number of poor children. 97 million children (21.8% of Indian children) are poor in the country. The 2019-2021 data revealed that around 16.4 per cent of the Indian population is poor; of these,4.2 % live in extreme poverty since their deprivation score is above 50%. About 18.7% of the population is vulnerable and could be pushed into extreme poverty. Of these, two-thirds fall into the category where one person is at least deprived of nutrition. The ‘Human Development Report 2021-22- Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World’, by the UNDP, India is ranked 132 among 191 countries and territories on the 2021 Human Development Index (HDI). India’s ranking in Global Hunger Index 2022, also released in October, is now a pathetic 107 out of 121 countries!

Upadhyay’s petition also claimed (without any fact), that if forced conversions were not checked, Hindus would soon become a minority in India. (Srinivasan Jain also challenged him on this during the expose, for which Upadhyay had no answer) There could not be a bigger lie than this! One only has to visit the Census data 2011, to realise that the growth rate of minorities is on the decline! Unfortunately, we live in Goebbelsian times: tell a lie a thousand times and people will soon accept it as the truth!

Though there are State anti -conversion laws (which are patently unconstitutional), there is no hard data, to prove any so-called ‘forced’ conversions; no is there any substantial information on cases filed under these laws and convictions made by courts of law and upheld by higher courts. The argument then is that if the state laws have not succeeded, what is the guarantee that a central law would put an end to forced conversions. In January 2021, Madhya Pradesh came up with a stringent ordinance; within the first 23 days, as many as 23 cases were filed alleging forced conversions; none of them have resulted in conviction. There has been just one conviction by the lower court out of sixteen cases under the UP law.

There have also been several incidents of conversion to Hinduism. In 2014, 57 Muslim families with more than 200 members converted to Hinduism in Agra. In 2021, 300 Muslims in Haryana converted to Hinduism.  Ironically enough the anti-conversion laws do not seem to apply to them and innocuously referred to as ‘ghar wapasi’ (homecoming).  On 5 October, more than 8,000 Dalits left Hinduism and embraced Buddhism in a mass conversion rally in Delhi. A few days later on 14 October, more than 100 Dalit men and women did the same, throwing pictures of Hindu deities into the Krishna River to renounce their faith. The anti-conversion laws basically perpetuate a casteist and patriarchal society because all of them had been enacted on the premise that women, SCs and STs are vulnerable, need protection and cannot take vital decisions in their life on their own. Embracing another religion away from Hinduism is a clear statement that they want to live a more dignified and humane life and there is absolutely no ‘force’ in their voluntary decision!

The point of the matter however, is not whether one has the right ‘to convert another’ but whether as an adult citizen of India, one has the right to choose a religion of one’s choice. Article 25 of  the Constitution of India  guarantees the freedom of conscience, the freedom to profess, practice and propagate religion to all citizens and Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.

One also needs to ask: if two mature consenting adults would like to marry each other, what right has the State to stop them from doing so? Then, if a Dalit girl wants to embrace Buddhism, since it is the religion of her husband and will perhaps lead to enhancing the quality of her life, does she have the right to do so? Or for that matter, if a Christian girl wants to freely embrace Islam after marrying a Muslim, does she also have the right to do so? Why should the State (with its brutal mechanism and vigilantes) or anyone else, interfere in matters which are personal and private and clearly violative of Article 21: the right to privacy. On 24 August 2017, the Supreme Court of India in a historic judgement declared the right to privacy as a fundamental right, protected under the Indian Constitution. In declaring that this right stems from the fundamental right to life and liberty, the Court’s decision has far-reaching consequences for every citizen. In an order that is expected to have a significant impact, the very day of the Supreme Court order 14 November, the Madhya Pradesh High Court held that the provision of the state’s anti-conversion law requiring prior notice to a district magistrate for religious conversion violated a person’s fundamental right to life and privacy and so was unconstitutional.

One also needs to take note that addressing a huge gathering of Mahars in Bombay in May 1936, Dr B. R. Ambedkar openly spoke out his ideas on conversion and why he considered it to be the best and only route towards emancipation saying, “I tell you all very specifically, religion is for man and not man for religion; to get human treatment, convert yourselves. Hindu society does not give equality of treatment, but the same is easily achieved by conversion.”  Are those in power listening to Ambedkar today?

The ‘forced conversion’ issue is certainly a lie, a ‘bogey’, foisted on the nation! It is clearly meant to defocus from more important and pressing issues plaguing the nation today: which include, the growing impoverishment of the poor, rampant corruption and the total lack of Constitutional governance by those in power!  Besides, with elections coming up, a ploy like ‘conversions’ becomes an emotive and manipulative subject! It is left to be seen, that if in keeping with the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and as the nation observes ‘Constitution Week’, whether this two -member bench of the Apex Court will have the courage to stand up for what is right and appropriately penalise the petitioner of such a frivolous and unsubstantiated petition?

(Fr Cedric Prakash SJ is a human rights, reconciliation and peace activist/writer. Contact: cedricprakash@gmail.com )