With 20 months left for the general elections, a group of seers have drafted a new constitution for a Hindu rashtra, shifting the national capital from New Delhi to Varanasi and disenfranchising Muslim and Christian Indians. With the 11 convicts who raped a pregnant Bilkis Bano and killed her daughter walking out of Godhra jail, preceded in 2018 by former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani being acquitted after first being sentenced to 28 years in jail in the 2002 Narodia Patiya massacre of 97 Muslims, this new constitution may imply that religion overrides justice.

What is even more disturbing is a senior Supreme Court advocate and a so-called defence expert were part of those who drafted this constitution showing a map of akhand (=unified) Bharat which comprises Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar as a single entity. Drafting a Hindu constitution which deprives Muslims and Christians of their right to vote is a criminal offence which attracts three years in jail under sections 153 (a) and (b) of the Indian Penal Code, apart from other penal laws. But the police are keeping mum.

Although it seems farcical, the mechanism for replacing our Constitution with the Hindu one is mystifying. Under this Hindu constitution, Muslims and Christians can work, study, and enjoy all rights except the right to vote. Only the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs can vote after turning 16 years or contest elections on turning 25. This Hindu constitution totally ruptures the basic structure of our existing Constitution, so those who drafted it have committed a criminal offence.

Criminalising triple talaq obliterated Islamic obscurantism, criminalising beef-eating and conversion to either Islam or Christianity, while allowing reconversion to Hinduism or ghar wapasi were further steps in making India a de facto if not a de jure Hindu state. The alleged dilution of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 by raising the Gyanvapi mosque dispute and the toppling of the Uddhav Thackeray government in Maharashtra on the grounds he had jettisoned hardcore Hindutva already proved India of 2022 is not India of 1950. We are a Hindu state.

Apart from Nepal which was a Hindu monarchy till 2008, there has never been an official Hindu state in Asia. A Muslim has never become prime minister in India nor completed a five-year-term as a chief minister of any Indian state. But India has had a Muslim President and Chief Justice but never a Christian. In a Hindu rashtra, however, only a Hindu will be considered eligible for these top posts.

This Hindu constitution declares 543 members will be elected to the Parliament of Religions which will abolish the British parliamentary system of democracy so that government and parliament will be conducted on the basis of the varna system while the judiciary would have to follow the Treta and Dvapara yugas which seem absurd because all the law records will have to be rewritten in Sanskrit. The varna system is anti-thetical to our Constitution which ensures reservations for the deprived castes and classes. That is why Constitutional morality is the opposite of religious morality.

This new constitution may have the RSS tacit approval but Dr BR Ambedkar in his essay The Annihilation of Caste pointed out the impracticality of enforcing caste or varna in modern government as per the ancient Hindu texts like Manusmriti. This would prove detrimental to the Hindus themselves because not all are Kshatriyas or Brahmins. The ancient Hindu texts insist the Kshatriyas advised by the Brahmin sages must rule the people.

This Hindu constitution declares the Gurukul education system will teach ayurveda, mathematics, nakshatra, bhu-garbha (whatever that might mean) and astrology while it is not clear if western physics, chemistry, biology or medicine will be taught. Every citizen will get compulsory military training like Israel, just as the youth of the Bajrang Dal are trained to use weapons. Agriculture will be totally tax-free. Whether the penal law of this utopian Hindu state will follow that of the ancient dharmasastras or that of the law-giver Manu remains unclear.

What makes all this fascinating is the fact that an advocate from the Supreme Court had earlier petitioned the judges to delete the word secular from the preamble of the Constitution because it was introduced by Indira Gandhi in 1976. This petition is still pending in the apex court but this advocate has been rewarded by the Sanathan Sanstha at Ponda in Goa as a saint for working selflessly for the Hindu cause. His son is an advocate-on-record in the apex court which implies this father-son duo have a sound grasp of modern law.

There is no doubt that India is now a Hindu state, which has departed from Nehruvian socialism as the preamble proclaims, because the existing fundamental rights such as freedom of religion for Christians was diluted by criminalising propagation of their faith under the Freedom of Religion laws. Poor Muslims right to livelihood was effaced by banning cattle slaughter even before 2014 during the Congress regime. Today, the so-called secular Constitution with its laws and policies eroded the rights of minorities in innovative ways.

Theoretically, these changes are reversible because the basic structure of the Constitution remains intact. The emphasis on individual freedoms, civil liberties and fundamental rights has shifted away from the citizen contravening the wishes of the first Constituent Assembly. But with a Hindu government in power at the centre and in the states, the state has been given power to curtail even the fundamental right to life and liberty which is why the 11 rapists have had their life sentences commuted by the Gujarat government. They were seen being feted and garlanded.

We have to accept that Hindutva is a sinister species of Hinduism because it is Hindutva and not Hinduism which demonises Muslims as the eternal enemy within, followed closely by the Christians. This new Hindu constitution has done what our sovereign Parliament cannot do which is to override the Constitution enacted 75 years ago with 395 articles, eight schedules and 22 parts.

This is why religion is regarded by the poor as true, by the wise as false and by those who govern us as a useful tool to fool everybody.

The writer holds a PhD in law and is a senior journalist and advocate at the Bombay High Court

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Religion overrides justice in the Hindu constitution - Free Press Journal