Some unusual things have been noticed in “social media” exchanges that are increasingly going viral and have caught the public imagination. In the context of the atmosphere that is increasingly taking root in the “national perception”, if it can be called that, it appears to be an unusual trend which, to people like us who watch events with care and concern, appears rather disturbing, to put it mildly.
We have had a bill tabled in Parliament to amend the law relating to waqfs. There was considerable controversy surrounding this and eventually it has been referred to the joint parliamentary committee which has invited suggestions from the public which, one would imagine, mean primary stakeholders involved.
Immediately a spate of WhatsApp exchanges followed, and members of the Muslim community were asked to write to the JPC rejecting the amendments as if their accepting or rejecting the amendments would be a determinant in the decision as to what parts of the proposed amendments should be junked, and what parts if any should be accepted, and constitute recommendations of the JPC to convert the bill into law or junk it.
Waqf Bill
Getting into the act Hindu groups have also been shown on WhatsApp and possibly other social media platforms turning up in large numbers to send to the JPC their “opinions”, presumably strongly urging that it should be immediately passed into law in the form in which it was circulated as a bill.
This brings us to an interesting question which is, are the powers that be in the government intending to decide whether or not the bill as tabled should be retained in the form in which it was tabled, or whether it should undergo changes, and if so how and to what extent, and whether there should be a complete overhaul or merely cosmetic changes etc., not on the basis of the merit or otherwise of the suggestions and objections etc. that may be received by the JPC but on the basis of how many representations in which direction are received, i.e., a majoritarian approach, if it can be called that?
In that case it is manifest that non-Muslims being in a majority a much larger number of “Yes” responses would be received than objections to the bill in the form in which it has been tabled. Is the JPC going to decide the issue on a careful consideration of the jurisprudence behind the law relating to judicial precedents that are time-honoured and have held their own over a century of contested litigation, or it is going to decide factoring in certain hostile proposals and intent behind what we see in the public domain, in the administration, and in certain decisions that have caused dismay to Muslims at large? Is this an electoral process, and are statutes to be made based on votes?
Making statutes on basis of votes
If that approach is to be the basis and if that is the justification for asking citizens to send their representations then we might as well scrap all laws and ask sections of the population what they believe should be done and draft and promulgate laws accordingly, doing away with the cumbersome paraphernalia of a legislative department of a “government”, a Law Commission that makes recommendations, many of which are completely ignored when it does not suit the government of the day, a Ministry of Law and all the adjuncts that lead up to the drafting and tabling of a bill and the subsequent deliberations and debate that go into it before it takes a final shape and becomes law and is accorded presidential assent. It will be a much simpler and easy process to simply take votes and craft laws based on what the majority of the citizens desire.
If that is not how the JPC intends to work, what is this public frenzy for?
That too would not have been too much of a problem provided real stakeholders were the only ones to participate, whereas what we see is that a large number of people, and in fact an astonishingly large number of people who have and will have nothing to do with any waqf or waqf property or would not even have known about what these are, are seen rushing to file their responses as if things are going to be decided on the number of votes cast in direction A or direction B.
Interfering with law
In a different matter, we see that reports are that when minarets were being built on a Masjid in Shimla there was such a strong opposition that it became a law-and-order situation even requiring, if I am not mistaken, a curfew. I do not think there would be any objection if the upper parts of any temple were being renovated or were being enhanced and to mollify the hostile public reaction the administration it appears made a statement that if the Masjid was found illegal it would be demolished. The issue here is that it was not a construction of the building that brought the matter into the public eye but the construction of the minarets, an identifying feature of a structure as a Masjid. Do we take it that the hostility is not towards the illegal structure but to the structure being adorned with minarets announcing its presence rather than a flat roof cowering low?
Seen in the context of the fact that hundreds and thousands of structures come up without proper permissions and without sanction and are therefore in every sense of the word illegal the objection to this singular construction of the minarets identifying the structure as a Masjid, is ominous. The public it appears is not incensed at an illegal construction. That is seen everywhere and no one even take notice. However, the minarets cause consternation: it is indicative of a building as a Muslim structure, and where the desire is that that segment of the population identified as Muslim is best induced to either evaporate, or better still, leave, the best way in which there can be such inducement is to restrict, and keep on restricting, any space that “they” occupy, either in visibility, or in public discourse, or positions, or anything.
Chest thumping
I am reminded of a similar situation that had come up where adjacent to a high-profile school, a masjid that existed, sought to build a minaret: a writ petition came to be filed where the school did not wish to be seen as objecting, not to offend parents of Muslim students, but was steering the matter with other persons arrayed as petitioners. (Today there would be no such apprehension: there would be in-your-face chest-thumping.) The objection was not to what existed beside the school: it was to the minaret. One is reminded of the French law that prohibits minarets on masaajid: nothing shall be permitted that rises high, taller than surrounding buildings. How can “these people” be allowed to stand tall, when “we” are the ones who govern?
Then there has been a stand by a child rights body that objects to madrasas, claiming that the children who attend madrasas are at a loss because they are deprived of the facilities the State offers to schools: maybe a mid-day meal, may be anything. It is completely ignored that these madrasas cater to children who are from poor segments, who are from families who desire their children to grow up learning of their faith from teachers aware of the religion, who believe that otherwise they would not be able to attend conventional schools either because of paucity of funds, or timings, or distances, and also because it is increasingly believed what is taught in schools, very indirectly, may not conform to what they believe in, and possibly because of their fear of losing their identity. The “opponents” of this segment of the population are clear: they want this segment to “merge” with them, not by adding its colour to their own but by complete obliteration of their colour altogether, creating a monochromatic body that has nothing left of the vestiges of a Muslim presence in India at any time in the past.
Is Urdu dying or being killed?
Like Urdu is reported dying out because of throttling of funds for facilities for teaching Urdu, compulsion of knowledge of other languages even where Urdu is spoken by large segments of the population before one can qualify for jobs in those areas ensures a slow but sure demise of the language and a consequential intended obliteration of the cultural roots of the Muslim community of which almost all meaningful records of the past are in Urdu and Farsi, resulting in a marginalisation of the language, then of the culture and the identity of that segment of the people: surprising when in a contest between whether the official language of the nation should be Hindi or Urdu, when the Constitution was being framed, Hindi won over Urdu by one solitary vote.
That brings me to the social relevance of social media making one wonder whether the impact of the so-called “social” media is not social at all, but a misnomer for media that is racist, communal and publicly accessible, and where anyone can disseminate or “provide” any content that can be picked up repeated and magnified, leading not to social cohesion but unsocial upheaval, if not downright anti-social aggressiveness manifested by brazen breaches of law and order which are actually advertised through videos and glorified, being treated by proponents as feathers in the nationalistic caps of the new elite, “our” empowered stormtroopers.
These are in the public eye, and so we assume judges of Constitutional Courts too are aware of these. To any social scientist, to any think-tank, to any student of sociology and political science, the mischief that is afoot is palpable and clear. There needs to be course correction before the downhill slide accelerates to uncontrollable momentum, which is obviously what is desired by some sections. So what can the judges do? That is one question. What ought they to do? That is another question. What ought they to not do? You tell me.
30 retired judges attend VHP meet
A report says 30 retired judges of the Supreme Court were in attendance at a VHP meeting where the waqf bill was on the agenda, along with “other matters” such as “religious conversions, cow protection, temple-mosque disputes in Varanasi and Mathura, and persecution of the Hindu minorities in neighbouring countries.” They had the right to attend, of course, and give expression to their views (and how much we would like to know what those views were?).
It would have been more inclusive and of so much greater value if the initiative could also boast the presence of any thinker who was completely independent of a political body, say, a Muslim, a Christian and a Sikh, or at least a few credible journalists, because failing that, it enables suspicion of likely subjective slant in judicial decisions of the past. The meeting, ostensibly to focus on “reforms for building a developed India,” missed a beautiful opportunity to be far more comprehensive, towards which status it could have also included in its agenda “how to reverse the spread of communal poison, compensating of victims of vigilantism, restoration of credibility of democratic institutions and freedom of speech, curtailing majoritarianism in public life, repealing of unconstitutional laws, removal of unauthorised mosques and temples, restoration of secular character of all institutions of governance,” etc.
Maybe in the next few sessions we shall have the privilege of seeing participation by all DGPs, Chiefs of Military and Paramilitary units, and who knows, maybe even sitting judges. After all, if the elite of society do not take part in “reforms for building a developed India”, who will? Jai Hind.
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