India is witnessing the budding of a monotheistic religion whose ‘holy book’ is holding sway on its believers to the extent that they are blind to the impact their proselytisation is having on the nuances that make a culture unique. The book is the Constitution of India and, unfortunately, its believers have taken help of a blind deity with a pair of scales in hand to ensure that their beliefs gain the upper hand over others. While these devotees of the Constitution believe they are seeing things in the right perspective, what they are ignoring is the fact that there can be another perspective, which is the truth of someone else and what in their belief is correct. To see things solely in black and white and nothing in between is part of the grand hypocrisy and two-faced nature of most humans, especially us Indians. This Constitution is now coming in handy for such people to go roughshod over other opinions. The Constitution, and its born-again believers feel that to bulldoze beliefs based on the diktats of the book is the sole way to emancipate humanity.
And the definitions in the book are seen as adequate to justify their stand.
The fact stares us in the face that despite the numerous years that have passed since Independence, the country has not seen adequate social or economic development. The question is not whether the book has taken a look at this pluralist society in the right perspectives and given what each needs to nurture and allow them to grow but whether we have yet understood the love that went into it for the creation of a new nation. The approach in the Constitution itself is not flawed.
In India, there is a silent development that is going largely unnoticed. Its indigenous people are being wiped out in the name of the Constitution and they are being forced to become part and parcel of the contorted homogenous ‘mainstream’. Peoples, who bear the knowledge of centuries of evolution in their genes and had practices that were most in tune with nature and sustainability are lost to the onslaught of ‘civilization’ and lure of better life or ‘development’. The Constitution has undoubtedly made huge differences in the lives of the many peoples who form the unity of this nation when its actions worked in alignment with their interests and brought in changes they have adopted after deliberation. It is the spirit of the Constitution that is being relegated to the background now, purposefully.
For instance, judicial activism is being allowed to take the place of lawmaking. It appears the only place where laws are being seen to be made today is in the Supreme Court. The legislature is sitting mute on issues, seemingly in the hope that the rulings would throw up matters that can be made rallying points at the elections. In other words, the political system, the most vital aspect of any democracy, is conveniently taking the back seat and letting things roll on their own. Due to this, the Indian judiciary has taken an approach that is insensitive and harmful to the multiple facets of human experience that make India what it is. The nuances of a culture must be understood in its totality first before it is labelled as violative of rights and only those who understand things in its entirety should sit in judgement of a matter. The limitations of law and legal systems should be kept in mind before the judiciary is entrusted with taking decisions on matters where its blind approach is woefully inadequate to view things in a just manner. The only thing that hasty rulings made by judges with no interest in understanding matters from all perspectives can do is to demolish beliefs and practices whose truth and benefits are not understood well enough. Thus damaging society grievously.
The Aadhaar judgement is a case in point where majority judges, except Justice Chandrachud, seem disconnected with reality. Similarly, judgements pronounced recently concerning punishing rape victims who turn hostile or the portion concerning Ayodhya clearly outbalance the goodness exhibited in the Privacy and Sec 377 decisions. These also demonstrate that it is not the Constitution that is at fault. The words written in that book are being vigorously perverted by those who believe they are messengers of Divinity.
Sadly, there is no space for reconsidering these so called momentous judgements, those which will go a long way in destroying the fabric or India’s democratic society and freedom of the individual.