For democratic functioning of parliament, judicial accountability and electoral transparency
On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy to remove the words secular and socialist from the Preamble which had been inserted through an amendment in 1976. On the face of it, this categorical clarification from the apex court should have put an end to the relentless campaign against the Constitution, but within a few days we heard a most virulently majoritarian statement by a sitting judge of the Allahabad High Court. Addressing a convention of the legal cell of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Justice Shekhar Yadav who has been a judge of the High Court since December 2019 said the law would have to satisfy the majority. He went on to make vitriolic remarrks about the Muslim community calling it inherently violent.
Such brazenly Islamophobic remarks have of late become rather routine in courts across the country showing the deep inroads made by the RSS and Hindutva ideology in India's judiciary. In this particular case it remains to be seen how the Supreme Court which has taken note of the statement chooses to deal with it. The future of the impeachment move initiated by a few MPs in the Lok Sabha will also be known over the next few days. Regardless of the outcome of this particular event, the gross violation of the constitutional spirit by a sitting High Court judge only reflects the growing threat to the Constitution and the secular democratic foundation of the republic.
This adverse judicial environment needs to be seen in conjunction with the growing mockery of the other core institution of democracy - the Parliament of India - by the executive arm of the Indian state. The Prime Minister and his entire cabinet and other members of the ruling coalition have made it a policy to disrupt parliament proceedings and not allow any discussion or debate on issues raised by the opposition. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha too have shed all semblances of neutrality and parliamentary decorum and become fully complicit in this exercise. Repeatedly silenced and ridiculed by the Chairperson, Opposition MPs in the Rajya Sabha have now been forced to serve a notice of no-confidence against him for his utterly partisan conduct.
In the wake of its utterly dubious victory in Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Sangh-BJP brigade feels emboldened enough to intensify the fascist onslaught and target the opposition on all fronts. The damning indictment of the Adani group in the bribery scam is being presented as an anti-India conspiracy and the opposition is being sought to be delegitimised as a tool of this grand external design. The growing foreign policy challenges in South Asia, especially in the wake of recent political shifts in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, are also being seen in the same light. On the domestic front, the government has no answer to the deepening economic crisis. Hence the systematic silencing of parliament and orchestrated whipping up of Islamophobia.
Forces of the people's movement must face this juncture by carrying forward the democratic agenda. The villages of Maharashtra are showing a new determination to question blatant electoral irregularities and the complete lack of transparency and accountability of the Election Commission by their innovative insistence on holding a parallel poll through ballots. The government's desperate measures to stop this democratic exercise of the people only reveal its utter vulnerability on the question of electoral transparency. The government must not be allowed to delay the census any further or manipulate the forthcoming delimitation round to upset the federal balance of the country. If the Modi government thinks it can silence the people by rigging elections, disrupting parliament and subverting institutions, the people's movement will have to prove the regime wrong by its tenacity, determination and political imagination.
