Aakar Patel | Hindu Rashtra via reinterpretation of the Constitution?

There are two directions in which our present enthusiasm for majoritarian politics can go. I have long thought that there is only one place we can land up in, and we will come to that briefly at the end, but there is another view that we should consider. It was put forward a few weeks ago through a speech on the judiciary by Prof. Mohan Gopal, a former head of the National Law School.

His speech was reported by Live Law under the headline ‘Theocratic Judges Who Find Source of Law In Religion Than Constitution Increased’. His basis for saying this was an examination of the record of all judges appointed to the Supreme Court from 2004 to the present time (the speech was made on February 21, 2023). Of the 111 judges appointed, 56 came in the UPA’s decade and 55 under the present BJP government, so the number is even. Next, he looked at the impact that the judges made, and whether the judges were biased. Not biased in their outlook, which Prof. Gopal accepts can only be determined through subjective interpretation, and therefore difficult if not impossible to arrive at. But looking at bias only through their judgments. His finding was that during the UPA period there were six judges who were constitutionalist, meaning that they believed in the primacy of the Constitution alone and no other source of law. This number had gone up to nine under the NDA.

Next, again going only by their judgments, he identified those individuals who looked beyond the Constitution to find sources of law in Hindu religious texts. He could find none from the UPA period, and nine from those appointed by the NDA government, of whom five were still on the bench. These individuals have sent down judgments that have found sources of law outside the Constitution of India and in religion. The Ayodhya judgment went much beyond the law to adjudicate the case, and the Supreme Court’s hijab judgment also finds authority in religious texts.

Prof. Gopal’s thesis is that he sees a Hindu Rashtra coming to fruition by 2047 in two steps. The first phase is by appointing judges who are open to looking at religious sources beyond the Constitution. The second phase is by appointing judges who will identify the sources of religious law. Thus, Hindu Rashtra will come not by overthrowing the Constitution but by the reinterpretation of the Constitution as a Hindu document. The hijab judgment, Prof. Gopal says, was one such instance. That judgment says that “dharma” applies to the Constitution because the Hindi phrase used for secularism in the Preamble is not “dharma nirpeksh” but “panth nirpeksh”, referring to sect. The Constitution was thus not “dharma nirpeksh” but dharma itself, meaning Sanatan Dharma.

The judgment says: “The use of word ‘panth nirpeksh’ in the Constitution brings out the difference in the terms ‘dharma nirpeksh’ and ‘panth nirpeksh’. ‘Panth’, or sect, symbolises devotion towards any specific belief, way of worship or form of God, but ‘dharma’ symbolises absolute and eternal values, which can never change, like the laws of nature. ‘Dharma’ is what upholds, sustains and results in the well-being and upliftment of the ‘praja’ (citizens) and society as a whole.”

Constitutional law is thus ‘dharma’. In Karnataka schools, “homa” is allowed but hijab is not, and the reason is that hijab is religion but “homa” is dharma, for the benefit of all mankind. Prof. Gopal explains the rise in the number of judges who are constitutionalists under the NDA by saying that the Supreme Court’s collegium is not blind to the direction that the BJP is taking the country. That resistance is playing out in the present tussle between the collegium and the government in the appointment of judges. Two other important points he makes can be taken up briefly. First, that the oligarchy that rules India finds opposition in the Constitution, which stresses values like equality, secularism, dignity, and so on. Unlike Pakistan, where the oligarchy and the constitution are aligned, the primary resistance to the capture of the State by India’s oligarchy comes from the Constitution. And so, the energy of the BJP is primarily focused there.

Lastly, that the judiciary has become amenable to capture because it is itself lacking in diversity whether of religion, caste, gender or region. Being composed essentially of upper caste Hindu males, it has in some ways helped to further the project.

That said, Prof. Gopal believes that the immediate goal should be to protect the Collegium from any kind of governmental interference in judicial appointments.

My view of what the end-state of the present majoritarianism focus of India is I have written about here and in my books. It is that Hindutva is minority-focused and plays itself out in persecution alone rather than internal reform. Both judgments Prof. Gopal has used to illustrate his case — Ayodhya and hijab — also go after minority rights. It will be interesting to see if, assuming that he is correct, the Hindu Rashtra produced through judicial reinterpretation also addresses things like caste and chaturvarna, which will result in a seismic shift in Hindu society.

To be clear, Prof. Gopal does not exclude minority persecution from his thesis. He adds a second element which I had not considered. His speech is clear, precise and direct, and is available on YouTube. It requires being listened to, understood and debated.

The writer is the chair of Amnesty International India. Twitter: @aakar__patel