Can religion, politics be kept totally apart

Vice-president Hamid Ansari, speaking at Jammu University’s convocation on Saturday, expressed himself with analytical anguish on the considerable difficulties in the path of the practice of secularism in India at the level of political governance, other than at the formal level.

He also wondered if a more complete separation of religion and politics might not better serve Indian democracy. These are sentiments with which many across the country will identify, especially at the level of ordinary citizens whose everyday life, liberty, security and the protection of their property, to say nothing of their freedom to freely practise their religious faith, so crucially depend on the complete neutrality of the state in practical terms, between forms of worship and the religious preferences of citizens.

But Mr Ansari might be casting too great a burden on the Supreme Court in urging it “to clarify the contours within which the principles of secularism and composite culture should operate with a view to strengthen their functional modality and remove ambiguities”. The role of the higher judiciary is necessarily circumscribed by circumstances. It can make pronouncements when a matter relating to majoritarian impulses taking hold, and the resultant squeezing of the rights of religious minorities, is brought before it for adjudication or for the purpose of establishing clarity in the light of our constitutional principles. However, it may be unrealistic to expect it to take suo motu cognisance of every single case of majoritarianism gaining the upper hand.

The vice-president has spoken of observers arguing that pronouncements of the Supreme Court have “effectively vindicated the profoundly anti-secular vision of secularism” of some quarters. Such a view needs to be more robustly established with the aid of careful research.

There has been overt and implied criticism in some quarters about former Chief Justice of India J.S. Verma’s observation of Hindutva being “a way of life”. But this single observation cannot lead us to think that the Supreme Court has, in general, given comfort to an “anti-secularism vision of secularism”, especially when Justice Verma’s observation was not in the context of deciding a case which critically depended on defining Hindutva, although it is true that far-right Hindu communal outfits had sought to play up Justice Verma’s remarks out of context. But that is a political matter.

The vice-president’s overall concerns are legitimate as he casts his eye on the indifference shown in recent times by various organs of the state to victimisation of religious minority communities in a variety of ways. This is the consequence of certain social and political forces coming to the fore in the electoral arena. The remedy necessarily lies in the reversal of fortunes in this sphere, and not through judicial mediation.