The Vice
President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that ‘Why Pluralism and
Secularism are essential for our Democracy’ He was delivering the 25th Annual
Convocation Address of National Law School of India University (NLSIU), in Bengaluru,
Karnataka today. The Governor of Karnataka, Shri Vajubhai Vala, the Chief
Justice of India, Justice Jagdish Singh Kherar, the Chief Minister of
Karnataka, Shri Siddaramaiah, the Supreme Court Judge, Justice Dipak Misra, the
Minister of Higher education, Karnataka, Shri Basavaraj Rayareddi, the Minister
for Law and Justice, Karnataka, Shri T.B. Jayachandra, the former Chief Justice
of India, Dr. Justice (Rtd.), Rajendra Babu, the Chairman, Bar Council of
India, Shri Manan Kumar Mishra, the Vice Chancellor, NLSIU, Prof. R. Venkata
Rao and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
Following is
the text of Vice President’s Convocational Address:
“It is a
privilege to be invited to this most prestigious of law schools in the country,
more so for someone not formally lettered in the discipline of law. I thank the
Director and the faculty for this honour.
The nebulous
universe of law and legal procedures is well known to this Audience and there
is precariously little that I can say of relevance to them. And, for reasons of
prudence and much else, I dare not repeat here either Mr. Bumble’s remark that
‘the law is an ass’ or the suggestion of a Shakespearean character who
outrageously proposed in Henry VI to ‘kill all lawyers.’ Instead,
my effort today would be to explore the practical implications that some
constitutional principles, legal dicta and judicial pronouncements have for the
lives of citizens.
An interest in
political philosophy has been a lifelong pursuit. I recall John Locke’s dictum
that ‘wherever law ends, tyranny begins.’ Also in my mind is John Rawl’s
assertion that ‘justice is the first virtue of social institutions’ and that in
‘a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled and the
rights secured by justice and are not subject to political bargaining or to the
calculus of social interest.’ To Rawls, the first task of political philosophy
is its practical role to see, whether despite appearances on deeply
disputed questions, some philosophical or moral grounds can be located to
further social cooperation on a footing of mutual respect among citizens.
The Constitution
of India and its Preamble is an embodiment of the ideals and principles that I hold
dear.
The People of India
gave themselves a Republic that is Sovereign, Socialist, Secular and Democratic
and a constitutional system with its focus on Justice, Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity. These have been embodied in a set of institutions and laws,
conventions and practices.
Our founding
fathers took cognizance of an existential reality. Ours is a plural society and
a culture imbued with considerable doses of syncretism. Our Population of 1.3 billion comprises of over 4,635
communities, 78 percent of whom are not only linguistic and cultural but social
categories. Religious Minorities constitute 19.4 percent of the total. The human diversities are both
hierarchical and spatial.
It is this plurality that the Constitution endowed with a
democratic polity and a secular state structure. Pluralism as a moral value
seeks to ‘transpose social plurality to the level of politics, and to suggest
arrangements which articulate plurality with a single political order in which
all duly constituted groups and all individuals are actors on an equal footing,
reflected in the uniformity of legal capacity. Pluralism in this modern sense
presupposes citizenship.’
Citizenship as
the basic unit is conceptualized as “national-civic rather than
national-ethnic” ‘even as national identity remained a rather fragile
construct, a complex and increasingly fraught ‘national-civic-plural-ethnic’
combinations.’ In the same vein, Indianness came to be defined not as a
singular or exhaustive identity but as embodying the idea of layered
Indianness, an accretion of identities.
‘Modern
democracy offers the prospect of the most inclusive politics of human history.
By the same logic, there is a thrust for exclusion that is a byproduct of the
need for cohesion in democratic societies; hence the resultant need for dealing
with exclusion ‘creatively’ through sharing of identity space by ‘negotiating a
commonly acceptable political identity between the different personal and group
identities which want to/have to live in the polity.’Democracy ‘has to be judged not just by the
institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices
from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard.’ Its ‘raison
d’etre is the recognition of the other.’
Secularism as a
concept and as a political instrumentality has been debated extensively. A
definitive pronouncement pertaining to it for a purpose of statecraft in India
was made by the Supreme Court in the Bommai case and bears reiteration:
‘Secularism
has both positive and negative contents. The Constitution struck a balance
between temporal parts confining it to the person professing a particular
religious faith or belief and allows him to practice profess and propagate his
religion, subject to public order, morality and health. The positive part of
secularism has been entrusted to the State to regulate by law or by an
executive order. The State is prohibited to patronise any particular religion
as State religion and is enjoined to observe neutrality. The State strikes a
balance to ensue an atmosphere of full faith and confidence among its people to
realise full growth of personality and to make him a rational being on secular
lines, to improve individual excellence, regional growth, progress and national
integrity… Religious tolerance and fraternity are basic features and postulates
of the Constitution as a scheme for national integration and sectional or
religious unity. Programmes or principles evolved by political parties based on
religion amount to recognizing religion as a part of the political governance
which the Constitution expressly prohibits. It violates the basic features of
the Constitution. Positive secularism negates such a policy and any action in
furtherance thereof would be violative of the basic features of the
Constitution.’
Despite
its clarity various attempts, judicial and political, have been made to dilute
its import and to read new meaning into it. Credible critics have opined that
the December 11, 1995 judgment of the Supreme Court Bench ‘are highly
derogatory of the principle of secular democracy’ and that a larger Bench
should reconsider them ‘and undo the great harm caused by them’ This remains to
be done; ‘instead, a regression of consciousness (has) set in’ and ‘the slide
is now sought to be accelerated and is threatening to wipe out even the gains
of the national movement summed up in sarvadharma sambhav.’
It
has been observed, with much justice, that ‘the relationship between identity
and inequality lies at the heart of secularism and democracy in India.’ The
challenge today then is to reiterate and rejuvenate secularism’s basic
principles: equality, freedom of religion and tolerance, and to emphasize that
equality has to be substantive, that freedom of religion be re-infused with its
collectivist dimensions, and that toleration should be reflective of the
realities of Indian society and lead to acceptance.
Experience of
almost seven decades sheds light on the extent of our success, and of
limitations, on the actualizations of these values and objectives. The
optimistic narrative is of deepening; the grim narrative of decline or crisis.
Three questions
thus come to mind:
- How has the
inherent plurality of our polity reflected itself in the functioning of
Indian democracy? - How has
democracy contributed to the various dimensions of Indian pluralism? - How consistent
are we in adherence to secularism?
Our democratic
polity is pluralist because it recognizes and endorses this plurality in (a)
its federal structure, (b) linguistic and religious rights to minorities, and
(c) a set of individual rights. The first has sought to contain, with varying
degrees of success, regional pressures, the second has ensured space for
religious and linguistic minorities, and the third protects freedom of opinion
and the right to dissent.
A question is often raised about national integration.
Conceptually and practically, integration is not synonymous with assimilation
or homogenization. Some years back, a political scientist had amplified the
nuances: ‘In the semantics of functional politics the term national
integration means, and ought to mean, cohesion and not fusion, unity and not
uniformity, reconciliation and not merger, accommodation and not annihilation,
synthesis and not dissolution, solidarity and not regimentation of the several discrete
segments of the people constituting the larger political community… Obviously,
then, Integration is not a process of conversion of diversities into a
uniformity but a congruence of diversities leading to a unity in which both the
varieties and similarities are maintained.’
How and to what
extent has this worked in the case of Indian democracy with its ground reality
of exclusions arising from stratification, heterogeneity and hierarchy that
often ‘operate conjointly and create intersectionality’?
Given the
pervasive inequalities and social diversities, the choice of a system committed
to political inclusiveness was itself ‘a leap of faith.’ The Constitution
instituted universal adult suffrage and a system of representation on the
First-Past-The-Post (Westminster) model. An underlying premise was the Rule of
Law that is reflective of the desire of people ‘to make power accountable,
governance just, and state ethical.’
Much earlier,
Gandhi ji had predicted that democracy would be safeguarded if people ‘have a
keen sense of independence, self respect and their oneness and should insist
upon choosing as their representatives only persons as are good and true.’
This, when read alongside Ambedkar’s apprehension that absence of equality and
fraternity could bring forth ‘a life of contradictions’ if the ideal of ‘one
person, one vote, one value’ was not achieved, framed the challenge posed by
democracy.
Any assessment
of the functioning of our democracy has to be both procedural and substantive.
On procedural count the system has developed roots with regularity of
elections, efficacy of the electoral machinery, an ever increasing percentage
of voter participation in the electoral process and the formal functioning of
legislatures thus elected. The record gives cause for much satisfaction.
The score is
less emphatic on the substantive aspects. Five of these bear closer scrutiny –
(a) the gap between ‘equality before the law’ and ‘equal protection of the
law’, (b) representativeness of the elected representative, (c) functioning of
legislatures, (d) gender and diversity imbalance and (e) secularism in practice:
·
Equality before the law and equal protection of the law:
‘The effort to pursue equality has been made at two levels. At one level was
the constitutional effort to change the very structure of social relations:
practicing caste and untouchability was made illegal, and allowing religious
considerations to influence state activity was not permitted. At the second
level the effort was to bring about economic equality although in this
endeavour the right to property and class inequality was not seriously
curbed…Thus the reference to economic equality in the Constitution, in the
courts or from political platforms remained basically rhetorical.’
-
Representativeness
of the elected representative: In the 2014 General Election, 61% of
the elected MPs obtained less than 50% of the votes polled. This can be
attributed in some measure to the First-Past-the-Post system in a
fragmented polity and multiplicity of parties and contestants. The fact
nevertheless remains that representation obtained on non-majority basis
does impact on the overall approach in which politics of identity prevails
over common interest.
-
Functioning
of legislatures, accountability and responsiveness: The primary tasks
of legislators are legislation, seeking accountability of the executive,
articulation of grievances and discussion of matters of public concern.
The three often overlap; all require sufficient time being made available.
It is the latter that is now a matter of concern. The number of sittings
of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha which stood at 137 and 100
respectively in 1953 declined to 49 and 52 in 2016. The paucity of time
thus created results in shrinkage of space made available to each of these
with resultant impact on quality and productivity and a corresponding
lessoning of executive’s accountability. According to one assessment some
years back, ‘over 40 percent of the Bills were passed in Lok Sabha with
less than one hour of debate. The situation is marginally better in the
Rajya Sabha.’ Substantive debates on public policy issues are few and far
in between. More recently, the efficacy of the Standing Committee
mechanism has been dented by resort to tactics of evasion by critical
witnesses. A study on ‘Indian Parliament as an Instrument of
Accountability’ concluded that the institution is ‘increasingly
becoming ineffective in providing surveillance of the executive branch of
the government.
The picture with
regard to the functioning of the Sate Assemblies is generally much worse.
Thus while public participation in the electoral exercise has
noticeably improved, public satisfaction with the functioning of the elected
bodies is breeding cynicism with the democratic process itself. It has also
been argued that ‘the time has come to further commit ourselves to a deeper and
more participatory and decentralized democracy – a democracy with greater
congruence between people’s interests and public policy.’
-
Gender and
diversity imbalance: Women MPs constituted 12.15% of the total in
2014. This compares unfavourably globally as well as within SAARC and is
reflective of pervasive neo-patriarchal attitudes. The Women’s
Reservation Bill of 2009 was passed by the Rajya Sabha, was not taken up
in Lok Sabha, and lapsed when Parliament was dissolve before the 2014
General Elections. It has not been resurrected. Much the same (for other
reasons of perception and prejudice) holds for Minority representation.
Muslims constitute 14.23 percent of the population of India. The total
strength of the two Houses of Parliament is 790; the number of Muslim MPs
stood at 49 in 1980, ranged between 30 and 35 in the 1999 to 2009 period,
but declined to 23 in 2014.
An
Expert Committee report to the Government some years back had urged the need
for a Diversity Index to indentify ‘inequality traps’ which prevent the
marginalized and work in favour of the dominant groups in society and result in
unequal access to political power that in turn determines the nature and
functioning of institutions and policies.
-
Secularism
in actual practice. Experience shows that secularism has become a site
for political and legal contestation. The
difficulty lies in delineating, for purposes of public policy and practice,
the line that separates them from religion. For this religion per se, and
each individual religion figuring in the discourse, has to be defined in
terms of its stated tenets. The ‘way of life’ argument, used in
philosophical texts and some judicial pronouncements, does not help the
process of identifying common principles of equity in a multi-religious
society in which religious majority is not synonymous with totality of the
citizen body. Since a wall of separation is not possible under Indian
conditions, the challenge is to develop and implement a formula for
equidistance and minimum involvement. For this purpose, principles of faith
need to be segregated from contours of culture since a conflation
of the two obfuscates the boundaries of both and creates space to
equivocalness. Furthermore, such an argument could be availed of by other
faiths in the land since all claim a cultural sphere and a historical
justification for it.
In life as in law, terminological inexactitude has its
implications. In electoral terms, ‘majority’ is numerical majority as
reflected in a particular exercise (e.g. election), does not have permanence
and is generally time-specific; the same holds for ‘minority’. Both find
reflection in value judgments. In socio-political terminology (e.g. demographic
data) ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ are terms indicative of settled situations.
These too bring forth value judgments. The question then is whether in regard
to ‘citizenship’ under our Constitution with its explicit injunctions on rights
and duties, any value judgments should emerge from expressions like ‘majority’
and ‘minority’ and the associated adjectives like ‘majoritarian’ and ‘majorityism’
and ‘minoritarian’ and ‘minorityism’? Record shows that these
have divisive implications and detract from the Preamble’s quest for
‘Fraternity’.
Within the same ambit, but distinct from it, is the
constitutional principle of equality of status and opportunity, amplified
through Articles 14, 15, and 16. This equality has to be substantive rather than
merely formal and has to be given shape through requisite measures of
affirmative action needed in each case so that the journey on the path to
development has a common starting point. This would be an effective way of
giving shape to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy of Sab Ka Saath Sab Ka
Vikas.
It
is here that the role of the judicial arm of the state comes into play and, as
an acknowledged authority on the Constitution put it, ‘unless the Court strives
in every possible way to assure that the Constitution, the law, applies fairly
to all citizens, the Court cannot be said to have fulfilled its custodial
responsibility.’
How then do we go about creating conditions and space for a
more comprehensive realization of the twin objectives of pluralism and
secularism and in weaving it into the fabric of a comprehensive actualization
of the democratic objectives set forth in the Constitution?
The answer would seem to lie, firstly, in the negation of
impediments to the accommodation of diversity institutionally and amongst
citizens and, secondly, in the rejuvenation of the institutions and practices
through which pluralism and secularism cease to be sites for politico-legal
contestation in the functioning of Indian democracy. The two approaches are to
be parallel, not sequential. Both necessitate avoidance of sophistry in
discourse or induction of personal inclinations in State practice. A more
diligent promotion of fraternity, and of our composite culture, in terms of
Article 51A (e) and (f) is clearly required. It needs to be done in practice by
leaders and followers.
A
commonplace suggestion is advocacy of tolerance. Tolerance is a virtue. It is
freedom from bigotry. It is also a pragmatic formula for the functioning of
society without conflict between different religions, political ideologies,
nationalities, ethnic groups, or other us-versus-them divisions.
Yet
tolerance alone is not a strong enough foundation for building an inclusive and
pluralistic society. It must be coupled with understanding and acceptance. We
must, said Swami Vivekananda, ‘not only tolerate other religions, but
positively embrace them, as truth is the basis of all religions.’
Acceptance
goes a step beyond tolerance. Moving from tolerance to acceptance is a journey
that starts within ourselves, within our own understanding and compassion for
people who are different to us and from our recognition and acceptance of the ‘other’
that is the rairon d’etre of democracy. The challenge is to look beyond
the stereotypes and preconceptions that prevent us from accepting others. This
makes continuous dialogue unavoidable. It has to become an essential national
virtue to promote harmony transcending sectional diversities. The urgency of
giving this a practical shape at national, state and local levels through
various suggestions in the public domain is highlighted by enhanced apprehensions
of inSecurity amongst segments of our citizen body, particularly Dalits,
Muslims and Christians.
The
alternative, however unpalatable, also has to be visualized. There is evidence
to suggest that we are a polity at war with itself in which the process of
emotional integration has faltered and is in dire need of reinvigoration. On
one plane is the question of our commitment to Rule of Law that seems to be under
serious threat arising out of the noticeable decline in the efficacy of the
institutions of the State, lapses into arbitrary decision-making and even
‘ochlocracy’ or mob rule, and the resultant public disillusionment; on another
are questions of fragility and cohesion emanating from impulses that have
shifted the political discourse from mere growth centric to vociferous demands
for affirmative action and militant protest politics. ‘A culture of silence has
yielded to protests’ The vocal distress in the farm sector in different States,
the persistence of Naxalite insurgencies, the re-emergence of language related
identity questions, seeming indifference to excesses pertaining to weaker
sections of society, and the as yet unsettled claims of local nationalisms can
no longer be ignored or brushed under the carpet. The political immobility in
relation to Jammu and Kashmir is disconcerting. Alongside are questions about
the functioning of what has been called our ‘asymmetrical federation’ and ‘the
felt need for a wider, reinvigorated, perspective on the shape of the Union of
India’ to overcome the crisis of ‘moral legitimacy’ in its different
manifestations.
I
have in the foregoing dwelt on two ‘isms’, two value systems, and the
imperative need to invest them with greater commitment in word and deed so that
the principles of the Constitution and the structure emanating from it are
energized. Allow me now to refer to a third ‘ism’ that is foundational for the
modern state, is not of recent origin, but much in vogue in an exaggerated
manifestation. I refer here to Nationalism.
Scholars
have dwelt on the evolution of the idea. The historical precondition of Indian
identity was one element of it; so was regional and anti-colonial patriotism.
By 1920s a form of pluralistic nationalism had answered the question of how to
integrate within it the divergent aspirations of identities based on regional
vernacular cultures and religious communities. A few years earlier,
Rabindranath Tagore had expressed his views on the ‘idolatry of Nation’.
For
many decades after independence a pluralist view of nationalism and Indianness
reflective of the widest possible circle of inclusiveness and a ‘salad bowl’
approach, characterized our thinking. More recently an alternate viewpoint of
‘purifying exclusivism’ has tended to intrude into and take over the political
and cultural landscape. One manifestation of it is ‘an increasingly fragile
national ego’ that threatens to rule out any dissent however innocent.
Hyper-nationalism and the closing of the mind is also ‘a manifestation of
insecurity about one’s place in the world.’
While
ensuring external and domestic security is an essential duty of the state,
there seems to be a trend towards sanctification of military might overlooking
George Washington’s caution to his countrymen over two centuries earlier about
‘overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are
inauspicious to liberty.’
Citizenship
does imply national obligations. It necessitates adherence to and affection for
the nation in all its rich diversity. This is what nationalism means, and
should mean, in a global community of nations. The Israeli scholar Yael Tamir
has dwelt on this at some length. Liberal nationalism, she opines, ‘requires a
state of mind characterized by tolerance and respect of diversity for members
of one’s own group and for others;’ hence it is ‘polycentric by definition’ and
‘celebrates the particularity of culture with the universality of human rights,
the social and cultural embeddedness of individuals together with their
personal autonomy.’ On the other hand, ‘the version of nationalism that places
cultural commitments at its core is usually perceived as the most conservative
and illiberal form of nationalism. It promotes intolerance and arrogant
patriotism’.
What
are, or could be, implications of the latter for pluralism and secularism? It
is evident that both would be abridged since both require for their sustenance
a climate of opinion and a state practice that eschews intolerance, distances
itself from extremist and illiberal nationalism, subscribes in word and deed to
the Constitution and its Preamble, and ensures that citizenship irrespective of
caste, creed or ideological affiliation is the sole determinant of Indianness.
In
our plural secular democracy, therefore, the ‘other’ is to be none other than
the ‘self’. Any derogation from it would be detrimental to its core values.
Jai Hind.
***
KSD/BK
