A New Idea of India: Individual Rights in a Civilisational State

by Harsh Gupta 'Madhusudan'

After the Supreme Court struck down the abhorrent practice of triple talaaq as unconstitutional, the Modi government formulated the legislation to outlaw and criminalise instant divorce. Even so, a significant number of ‘secular’ politicians and intellectuals argue that this women-friendly reform should come from within the community. Former editor of The Hindu newspaper Malini Parthasarathy wrote in 2013 that ‘it’s not for us the majority to dictate to minorities how to live their lives.’

affirmative action must not be based on malleable identities,

When the Supreme Court was deciding on decriminalising homosexuality, all the three religious groups that supported Section 377 in the court were Christian47—the Apostolic Alliance of Churches, the Utkal Christian Council and Trust God Ministries.

Milli Gazette, which describes itself as the leading English paper of Indian Muslims, called the apex court’s decision ‘a step towards self-destruction’

The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board issued a statement that ‘Legalizing homosexuality is against Indian values and culture.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s general secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani said, ‘Homosexuality is against nature, religion and cultural values of India. It should not have been allowed.

the response of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to the issue was more mellow. In 2016, the joint general secretary of the RSS Dattatreya Hosabale said, ‘Homosexuality is not a crime but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish but [it should] be treated as a psychological case. Approach to homosexuality should be “no criminalization, no glorification either”

On the LGBTQ community, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said in 2018: Everyone is a part of society. How they are, they are, accept people for what they are. Society has changed. It is important that society prepares itself so people do not feel isolated.53

All these facts surrounding the repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, of course, did not prevent the popular show Made In Heaven from painting Right-wing forces as the villains who were against homosexuality and LGBTQ rights.

India’s Hindu majority has no theological mandate against blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality or abortion,56 and yet the country was always spiritual enough to never fall for the materialist philosophy of communism—‘the god that failed

The Congress had opposed separate electorates initially, before Motilal Nehru opportunistically constructed an about-turn with the Lucknow Pact of 1916 where the Congress party accepted separate religion-based electorates.

The idea of separate electorates for Dalits was supported by B.R. Ambedkar and stoutly opposed by Mahatma Gandhi.

caste and gender identities are less easy to change than one’s religious identity.

would be baffling to any rational, neutral observer how these are termed ‘secular’—is incentivising conversions from the majority community,

In the Constituent Assembly debates, some Indian Muslim leaders proposed separate electorates. Sardar Patel shot the idea down, saying to thunderous applause: Those who want that kind of thing have a place in Pakistan, not here. Here we are building a nation and laying the foundations for one nation, and those who choose to divide again and sow the seed of disruption will have no place, no quarter here and I must say that plainly enough.

In a free, democratic India, if Muslims are to be treated as a group and not as individual Indian citizens, why then did we accept the trauma of Partition?

But ultra-conservative Islamist leaders and ‘secular’ politicians, who are invested in denying the individuality of the Indian Muslim for maintaining their power, want to box these individuals into a group identity.

Most intellectuals saw no wrong when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched separate, exclusive schemes for minorities.

Words of these kinds, Orwell says, are often used in a consciously dishonest way. ‘That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.’ The same applies to the words ‘secular’ and ‘communal’ in popular Indian discourse.

Soon after the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government assumed office in 1999, stray incidents of church vandalism in a few states were presented as evidence of the persecution of Christians and their institutions, with none other than Pope John Paul II raising the issue with the Indian prime minister.

Swarajya magazine’s Swati Goel Sharma has comprehensively documented the deep bias in media reporting on hate crimes and alleged lynchings of minority groups.

Mother Teresa is seen as a saint by some devout Christians. To assert that she was universally seen as a saint is not just false, but also unacceptable. For example, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comment in 2015 that Mother Teresa had an evangelical agenda68 is simply a statement of fact—it is something that she herself proudly admitted.

A committed harvester of souls for her God, Teresa received criticism69 for baptising the impoverished on their deathbeds.

British writer Christopher Hitchens called her the ‘ghoul of Calcutta’ and described her as ‘a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud

Western nations shower praise and money on Mother Teresa while Sister Nivedita remained unsung in the West …

It is true that many of India’s leading schools and colleges are run by Christian organisations and have done yeoman’s service for the country for many decades. But this has not been entirely without an agenda.

Even today, top ranked institutions like St Stephen’s College in Delhi, Christian Medical College in Vellore, St Xavier’s College in Kolkata and countless missionary schools across India clearly declare themselves to be minority institutions and admit Christian students through explicit quotas; all of this is done at a subsidy, implicit and explicit, from Indian taxpayers, who are largely Hindus.

If self-funded and independent institutions were to retain their Christian quotas, that is their choice. The problem is that such choices are not available to Hindus.

Writing in June 2007, when there was talk of St Stephen’s College increasing its Christian quota, historian Ramachandra Guha had observed: According to the Union ministry of education, fully 95 per cent of the expenses of the college are met by the University Grants Commission. Why should a college that draws so heavily on the public exchequer be allowed to choose 40 per cent of its students from 2 per cent of the country’s population?

‘If my DNA is tested, it will not differ markedly from Bhagwat’s,’ wrote an impassioned Ribeiro in his article. But the reality is the Indian State treats a Ribeiro or a John differently from a Bhagwat or a Gupta.

It exempts elite minority schools from the Right to Education Act while forcing even low-cost private schools run by the majority community to be burdened, even to the extent of closing down, by the pernicious legislation’s financial liabilities.

Take religious institutions. A number of state governments have legislated their way onto the governing boards of major temples in which corrupt, inefficient and even non-Hindu government nominees sit as members, much to the chagrin of devotees, directing the day-to-day affairs of sacred Hindu sites. However, in the governance of churches, mosques or gurdwaras, community members have the final say.

The rise of the internet has enabled the spread of awareness about Nehruvian chauvinism and enhanced its opponents’ ability to organise and advocate to end it and bring equality.

BJP MP from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh. Singh’s bill proposed amendments to Articles 15 and 25–30 of the Indian Constitution, which would give Hindus the right, on par with the minorities, to manage their religious and educational institutions.

the increasing feeling of revulsion towards the minoritarianism of the Indian State is resulting in pushback from members of the majority community.

The BJP promised to free temples from government control in its election manifesto for the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections.

It should be worrying for every genuinely secular Indian that Hindus and non-Hindus are treated differently by the Indian State.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi used his brute parliamentary supermajority to overturn a Supreme Court judgment providing alimony to a divorced Muslim woman.

Modi faced opprobrium from the intelligentsia for declining to wear the Muslim skull cap. Not wearing the cap amounted to an insult to Muslims and a violation of secularism, was the verdict.

Yet, it increasingly makes sense to have income cutoffs across all quotas, for there is no convincing answer to a simple question: why should a rich Dalit or tribal be preferred over a poor Dalit or tribal Indian for the same seats or positions?

It is notable and revelatory that just three MPs opposed the amendment in the Lok Sabha,81 and all three were from Muslim-oriented parties:

The philosopher Karl Popper wrote in his classic work The Open Society and Its Enemies that if we want to see tolerance thrive, it is very important that we do not tolerate intolerance beyond a point.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

But there are cases where the exercise of such individual rights can lead to the demise of the very State that is supposed to protect these rights. How then does one square the circle once again?

The Kashmir valley, an area of about 4,000 square kilometres, has an overwhelming demographic dominance of Sunni Muslims, a dominance that was secured by the violent and brutal expulsion of Kashmiri Hindus from there in 1990.

One school of thought says, let us not hold any people, even if within a small valley, against their will. But then, what would be the implications of a second religious Partition for India? It would imply that a minority that becomes a majority in an Indian State can never be truly Indian, and this may cause further fissures within the rest of India.

Demographic changes in Kerala, West Bengal and Assam are moving in that direction, as census data from 2001 and 2011 show.

In West Bengal, the Muslim population increased by 21.8 per cent between 2001 and 2011, compared to 10.8 per cent for the Hindu population. In Kerala, the Muslim population increased by 1...

per cent for the Hindu population. In Assam, the Muslim population increased by 29.5 per cent between 2001 and 2011, compared to 10...

It is important to contrast the secessionist demands of the Sunni Muslim Kashmir Valley with such demands in, say, Catalonia (Spain), Scotland (United Kingdom) or Quebec (Canada). Any successful secession in the latter cases would result in a new nation-state within the broader West.