In a landmark judgment on vote bank politics, India’s Supreme Court has barred political parties from using religion and caste to seek votes. Anyone who violates this will be disqualified if elected. The order comes just ahead of state elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa. The ruling puts the regional politicians in a jam and this could force political parties to change their strategy for the coming Assembly elections. The top court said electoral malpractice would invite consequences under the Representation of the People Act, 1951. It said elections are a secular activity and religion has no place in polls.
The judgment is important as it amplifies what Section 123 (3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, provides. The Section defines as “corrupt practice” appeals made by a candidate or his agents to vote or refrain from voting for any person on the ground of “his” religion, race, caste, community or language.
A 7-judge constitution bench of the SC gave the verdict. “The relationship between man and God and the means which humans adopt to connect with the almighty are matters of individual preferences and choices,” the judgment said in a 4:3 majority verdict. The verdict widens the scope of the election law that does not clarify as to whose religion, caste, race, community or language one cannot cite during an election speech.
But three dissenting judges said the decision amounted to “judicial redrafting of the law”. They said such a decision could be seen as prohibiting people from articulating legitimate concerns of voters and reducing “democracy to an abstraction”. Chief Justice T S Thakur, who retired last week, backed the majority view.
To say the least, the SC judgment will go a long way in curbing inflammatory speeches from politicians during elections. It will keep a check on leaders like Azam Khan (Samajwadi Party) who infamously said in Ghaziabad in April 2014: “Peaks of Kargil were not conquered by Hindus, but by Muslim soldiers raising the battle cry of God is the greatest.”
Who can forget Varun Gandhi (BJP) spewing venom in Pilibhit in March 2009? “If anyone raises a finger towards Hindus, then I swear that I will cut that hand.” Or as recent as November 2016 when Mayawati (BSP) said in Lucknow: “BJP leaders should refrain from making personal attacks on a “Dalit ki Beti’.” Dirty politics like Congress president Sonia Gandhi (in September 2015) asking Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid mosque in New Delhi, to issue a fatwa to vote for Congress is fresh in everyone’s memory.
All these things will stop immediately because of the SC ruling and this will do the Indian democracy a power of good.
India’s communal politics had touched the nadir during the Khalistan movement and when former PM Rajiv Gandhi gave in to conservative Muslim clerics in the Shah Bano case, and the subsequent opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid to appease the majority community.
It is a given that all political parties in India field candidates keeping in mind the communal make-up of the constituencies. For years India’s democracy has been divided and ruled by politicians playing identity politics that seeks to represent backward castes and minorities. Needless to say, caste and religion has put our politics and country in jeopardy.
In West Bengal Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee unabashedly plays the religion card, while Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party’s Mayawati and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Lalu Prasad Yadav have been ruling the roost in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, respectively. But this has neither benefitted the religion nor the caste.
It is heartening to know that in future they are less likely to play such kind of politics, thanks to the SC ruling.
Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi was perhaps the only leader in recent past who have not succumbed to such dirty politics. He won the 2014 General Elections on sheer development plank. Even last week at a massive gathering in Lucknow, Modi asked people to move away from politics of cynicism and negativity to politics of hope.
Because of the SC order, certainly the politicians will be a bit cautious of what they speak, henceforth. They may refrain from speaking about caste or religion but things won’t change overnight, as caste politics has become endemic in our elections and the mindset is difficult to change.
The forthcoming assembly elections will be the acid test of the SC ruling, especially in Uttar Pradesh, where the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya and caste-based mobilisation are top poll planks. In Punjab too, religion and sacrilege are top campaign issues.
This development in India is a potential game changer that could drastically alter the way we play our politics. Let’s hope this verdict paves the way for a real democracy in India and helps her becoming a truly secular nation where people will vote based on the merit of the candidates, not the huge caste following they wield.
Also, the SC verdict seems to have opened a Pandora’s box of problems. When the top court declares religion can’t be used to seek votes, does that mean the registrations of political parties like All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM), the Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian Union Muslim League will become invalid?
Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM is a party which is based on religion, the premise of AIMIM is religion and people of certain community. Now, does Owaisi stand in contravention of law as has been laid down by the verdict? Same goes with other similar parties.
The Supreme Court’s 1995 judgment (Justice JS Verma bench) terming Hindutva a way of life still stands as the current verdict didn’t go into this issue. Many would say the SC is contradicting itself. You cannot say Asaduddin Owaisi is communal but a BJP leader who wants a Ram temple in Ayodhya and asks for vote in that regard is not communal because Hindutva is only a way of life and not a religion. So how does the current verdict reconcile with the ‘Hindutva’ judgment? These are some of the pertinent questions that require more clarity.
However, looking at the positive side, the current SC verdict is a move to clean the communal dust in Indian politics through democratic means. The SC has reiterated the fundamental principle on which India was founded and that was the separation of the Church and the State. And when this gets implemented the Indian polity will get much cleaner.
The verdict has the potential to completely alter the political landscape of India. The opportunity in this judgment is it provides a level playing field to every politician. That is you go back to the Constitution. Two persons of different faiths are entitled to have their faith and practise it. But where they become one is when they follow the Constitution in letter and spirit and that’s the opportunity. Constitution makes us first Indian citizens and that is the level on which we have complete equality. There is no Hindu state. Hindu state opportunity was there in 1947. We chose to go the Constitution way. The problem will arise if those beyond the Hindu community say we need the religion aspect to come in.
Reflections on the year
Few will look back on the world as it was in 2016 and judge that it was memorable for the right reasons. The turbulence was extraordinary, the tragedy of displacement stark, and the mindless violence grossly self-defeating. Political deceit was as brazen as it has ever been, making the noxious brew an existential threat to the well-being of all humankind across continents. The complacency of the congenitally self-righteous has been shaken by the commotion. Brexit, jihadi terrorism in Europe, the continent’s deepening social disorder brought about the flood-tide of refugees from the Greater Middle East, North and sub-Saharan Africa have shaken the arrogant certainties of the European Union and its purblind directory. The political earthquake – beyond measurement on the Richter scale – was the victory of Donald Trump in the US Presidential elections. As an event it can rightly be likened to Hercules cleansing the Augean Stables of its mephitic filth. Corporate media disinformation, absurdist Russian cyber hacking tales stealing the US election for Trump are obscene in their contempt for every free-thinking citizen’s intelligence. Barack Obama’s presidency started eight years ago with promise, then turned into calamity, ends in disaster. Media avatars like the Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN have disgraced their profession. Indian broadsheets such as The Times of India and The Hindu, for example, use these discredited US agencies as their oxygen, hence diminishing their own credibility.
American media oligarchs, the corporate world of banking, finance and politics took the biggest beating in the Republic’s. The man written off as the most certain loser this side of paradise has ridden to triumph on a giant swell of white working and middle class anger at the swindle of their white super rich cheats joined at the hip by their consensual bipartisan Beltway elites long accustomed to ruling roost with falsehoods and corrupt management. The Sisyphean ascent to normality will begin post January 20.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria have been a financial strain like no other on the American purse. A Syrian peace without any American representative at the talks is an incredulous spectacle. The American media, suffering indecent exposure following their poisonous coverage of the presidential election are mostly in after shock, hence unconvincing in their dissembling sanctities. President-elect Trump will start with a clean slate. He can do much to restore America to rude health. He has the power to reshape history.
Save our boys, not our girls
“Aaj tak hum sab log ek galat direction mein effort karte rahe hai (Till today we all have given our efforts in the wrong direction)… we should save our boys, not our girls…because if we save our boys then our girls will be safe.”
This is a hard-hitting dialogue delivered by Amitabh Bachchan in the much-acclaimed film ‘Pink’ that sarcastically describes the condition of women in the patriarchal mindset society. It just sums up the solution to the problem of increasing sexual violence against women – the burning issue in India.
Recently Bengaluru city, known for its high-tech industry and parks, was in the news for all the wrong reasons – sex attacks.
The alleged mass molestation of women on December 31, 2016, in the City of Gardens has shaken the conscience of the nation. Today it has become a national debate – the whole country is talking about it. Media reports claimed thousands of men on M G Road and Brigade Road, two of the most buzzing areas in Bengaluru city, had mobbed revellers and groped women – almost along the lines of what happened in Cologne (Germany) last New Year’s eve. And adding insult to injury was the highly insensitive remark by Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara who said: “Such incidents do happen on New Year’s eve and Christmas and that they do take a lot of precautions.”
However, getting into the bottom of sex attacks, the problem is not about sexual drive alone, it’s about the power to possess. The problem predominantly lies with the society. One basic mistake that the society has done is – somewhere in the minds of the male youth, we have put the idea that a female is an object, a thing that you can possess. If a father refuses to give his daughter in marriage, the groom still thinks he can take her away. “You can take her away” mindset is still there in the background.
Somewhere people have been brought up with an idea that a woman is a commodity and this is deeply implanted in their mind at an early age. As they say “Child is the father of man” – inculcating a wrong belief in a boy manifests in him when he grows up and this wrong idea (objectification of women) gets deeply entrenched in him with the passage of time. Speaking out against violence against women, a virtuous male preacher will always tell you to imagine the victim as somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter, or somebody’s sister. But the reality is – a woman is also a “somebody”, a fact the majority of the society has failed to recognise. Society, many a time unwittingly, tells us that women are objects, not subjects. The way women are objectified in pornography has only given credence to this wrong belief.
By the way, punishment is not the solution. Of course, punishment can be a deterrent, but it is not an absolute fix. It does not prevent things. Bringing in harsher laws does not lead to a better society. We all know maximum molestations and sexual assaults happen within the four walls of the house. And most of them are never reported. It never goes to the law. So this cannot be contained by new laws or harsher punishments.
Looking at the larger picture, the important thing is not what happened in Bengaluru, it is about what kind of human beings are we raising? It’s time we look at the essentials of life and look for more in-depth solutions to the problem.
The need of the hour is not only to combat sexual objectification but also to change the mindset of mainstream society towards women. Maybe there won’t be an ideal society where no such thing will happen, but this will certainly go a long way in reducing the percentage of such crimes.
As Gandhiji rightly said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”, the solution to this raging problem lies in individual transformation. If the society has to change, the first thing is to invest time for your own transformation. Every parent must invest their time and energy into their children, to transform them into more inclusive human beings. If this is done, needless to say, the society will be in the pink.
