Stop ‘Pooja Archana’, Bow Before Preamble in Court Premises

‘Secularism is the religion of humanity .... It is a protest against theological oppression, against ecclesiastical tyranny, against being the serf, the subject or slave of any phantom, or of the priest of any phantom. "

- Robert Green Ingersoll

Simple ideas are perhaps the most difficult to implement.

For a country of around 1.4 billion, which has witnessed internecine violence on religious lines at the time of Independence, and which has turned a new leaf by adopting a Constitution based on secularism, which abhorred even mentioning the word God, why it is still difficult to avoid religious rituals in public domain, at least in the precincts of the courts?

Justice A S Oka, one of the finest judges of the Supreme Courts, who never fears to speak his mind, through his judgements and his talks, raised this question some time ago, while laying the foundation stone of a court building in Pune district, albeit in not so many words.

The proposal was quite simple:

This November 26, India completes 75 years of adopting our Constitution. The best way to show our respect to its core principles and values is to stop doing pooja archana or lighting lamp kind of rituals during any events related to Judiciary and instead bows down before its Preamble to start any event. The honourable judge shared his own experiences at Karnataka High Courts where he was able to reduce such rituals considerably, although he could not stop it completely.

In an ambiance suffused increasingly with religiosity, the proposal itself was a breeze of fresh air.

No doubt, the challenges and difficulties in moving in this direction look enormous. A look at one such experience from Gujarat is worth elaborating.

More than a decade ago, a petition was filed before the Gujarat High Court itself, challenging the presence and participation of the Chief Justice of the High Court and other dignitaries as hosts, in the religious rituals held at the foundation stone laying ceremony of High Court's new building. The petition included photographs of the event as well.

The petitioner was Raju Solanki, a noted Gujarati poet and an activist of the Dalit movement. The key issue that was raised through his organisation called Council for Social Justice was that this very Act violated the provisions of secularism in the Indian Constitution.

What happened later was unexpected. The Gujarat High Court, did admit that the ceremony took place and also acknowledged that the presence of the dignitaries of the courts but still it called it a 'frivolous petition' and fined the petitioner with Rs 20,000 fine supposedly for wasting its time.

When the judgement was challenged by the petitioner in the Supreme Court, it also upheld the decision of the High Court and said that the said event was a custom and not a 'religious ritual'

The Rajasthan experience is also an eye-opener.

It is not directly related to holding religious rituals in the Court premises but underlines the humongous challenge one is confronted with when one has to uphold Constitutional Principles and values when one is faced with the onslaught of faith.

The issue veers around the statue of Manu installed in the court premises around three-and-half decades back (1989) during the government of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS leader. The anomaly of the situation is that despite resistance by Dalit and other human rights groups, the statue remains there, whereas a statue of Dr B R Ambedkar, who was the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, lies outside the premises. Ambedkar had famously declared when the Constitution was promulgated, that it had ‘ended the rule by Manu’.

A meeting at the Court in 1989 had decided to remove the statue, but Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Acharya Dharmendra filed public interest litigation (PIL) to stop the removal. The High Court stayed the removal, saying that the matter should be taken up by a bench of more than two judges, including the Chief Justice. The issue still lingers on.

No doubt, a lasting solution in this connection is that people themselves become aware of the perils of mixing religion in social life or public life or become more conscious of the fact that in a country where people from multiple religious communities and faiths are living together, it will be injurious to social health that in a particular region the religious rituals of the numerically largest community are given precedence? Time that they realise how such a thing can create further fissures and exclusions in the society.

Till we reach that situation, we will have to consider a top- down approach to move in this direction.

Look at two recent judgements -- albeit of the high courts -- where in one case it has taken a firm stand vis-a-vis illegal religious structures coming up or in another case, it has even warned against building religious structures on government land.

Can one think of a fresh judicial intervention to help break new ground in the Raju Solanki case?

Imagine the highest courts initiates a process of revisiting its own judgement in the particular case or move afresh in this direction to at least maintain the sanctity of the court premises in tune with our Constitution's commitment to secularism.

The fact of the matter is that a decade of Narendra Modi’s rule, which gave a free play to the project of Hindutva Supremacisn in the country, where even the basic structure of the Constitution was also stigmatised by the ruling dispensation, has severely impacted the third pillar of democracy -- the judiciary -- in very many ways.

It has been still able to project/defend a semblance of autonomy but surreptitiously or not so surreptitiously it has impacted the quality of the judges. A measure of this change can be gauged from the fact that as of now there is an increase in the number of theocratic judges who find source of law in religion than the Constitution.

Mohan Gopal, an advocate and legal academician, in a video,  tells us how this has occurred with the ascent of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at at the Centre :

“An increase in traditionalist/ theocratic judges - as it happened in Modi led NDA regime is essentially part of two part strategy to achieve the goal of establishing Hindu Rashtra by 2047, not by overthrowing the Constitution but by interpretation by the SC as a Hindu Document” ( -do)

First step involves appointing judges who are ready to look beyond and the second phase which will now begin where judges will identify the source and it began with the Hijab judgement ...

..We can slowly reach a stage where we can say that India is a Hindu Theocracy under the same constitution- as reinterpreted by the SC , so the idea is to hijack the judiciary and establish a Hindu Theocracy (-do-)

A reflection of this changed image, where conservative ideas get precedence, can also be had from the speech of Supreme Court Justice Abdul Nazeer at a conference organised by Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, an RSS affiliate.

According to him, the Indian legal system continued to neglect the great knowledge of the “legal traditions as per Manu, Kautilya, Katyayana, Brihaspati, Narad, Yagyavalkya and other legal giants of ancient India” and it is time to dismantle the present Indian judicial system. One can read the lecture to know how it was '[f]ull of with political rhetoric of Right-wing politics and deeply imbued with Brahminism'.

Whether one wants to acknowledge it or not, the penetration of conservative, reactionary ideas in the judiciary is a stark reality today.

A simple photograph at the time of Ram Temple inauguration speaks loudly about this change.

It is a photograph that features many ex-Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and other senior judges of the highest court, who had attended the inauguration of the Ram Temple. The list of 13 judges included four retired Chief Justices of the SC. Former CJIs Ranjan Gogoi and SA Bobde, and Justice Abdul Nazeer, who were also part of the Ayodhya bench, could not make it to the programme owing to prior official commitments.

No doubt their presence did add legitimacy to a political programme where the Prime Minister of a country of 1.4 billion, which calls itself secular, inaugurated a temple.

The question is, what prompted the judges to attend the programme. because all of them were witness to this decades- old saga - where a 500-year-old religious structure of Muslims was consciously targeted -- and they had been witness to the whole episode, right from demolition of the Babri Masjid and the violent movement that preceded before and after the demolition? The final judgement of the highest courts had left much to be desired but it was important that it did not condone the ‘criminal act of demolition’

Why did they join this political programme when the whole event manifested a step away from the basic values and principles of Constitution?

Perhaps, the best way to conclude this brief note is by mentioning that within a span of less than three months, there were two important developments in the Kolkata judiciary

One retiring judge of the Kolkata High Court joined BJP and was immediately declared a candidate for the Lok Sabha election and the other retiring judge sang paeans to RSS in his farewell ceremony.

Will we ever know where they found the source of law in their long career? Was it religion or the Constitution?

The writer is a veteran independent journalist. The views are personal.