Anywhere in a case like that, it is only individuals pursuing case in courts. Nowhere does a suo moto case gets registered in cases like this. Beef is an example of the beef. I did not stop at beef. I very much want a uniform civil code which the current government leaders championed all their life. Strike down the law that prevented Shah Bano from getting alimony. Stop oral divorce. When these things cannot be done, at least stop the competitive pandering further.
"Nehru, too realised this, as is clear from the Constituent Assembly debates He knew, of course, what Secularism meant, but he also knew that the Constitution drafted by them did not adhere to the principles of what was, in his words, dictionary Secularism.
Reservations, restrictions on freedom of religion, Anglo-Indian quota, banning centuries-old caste beliefs of Hinduism – were interventions both felt were required, and rightly so. They were also grand enough to realise that true Secularism would have disallowed those interventions. As historian Ian Copland in his authoritative book, A History of State and Religion in India writes, “Their reasoning appears to have been twofold. (1) That, since ‘Enlightenment Secularism’, with its core principle of separation, founded on the Protestant conception of religion as essentially a private concern with which states had no legitimate business, was never going to work in a country where rulers and religious publics had been interacting from time immemorial, it was better not to use the term at all, than to use it fraudulently; and (2) that giving official recognition to the term might lead people to think that the new government had religion in its sights. Ambedkar felt sufficiently worried by this prospect to remind the Lok Sabha in 1951 that continued references in Parliament and the media to India being a secular state did not reflect what the Constitution was ‘intended to mean’.”
......
Reading the Constitutional debates, one astonishing fact emerges – that our founding fathers might not have inserted the word SECULAR in our Preamble but they drafted for us a secular Constitution, or as close to a secular Constitution they could get. Their minds lived and breathed secularism. They were convinced that the future for India lay in secularism. But it wasn’t enlightened European secularism. It was a glorious Indianised version of it. Glorious because it took into account our history and civilisation and yet stayed true to the path of religious equality.
So why didn’t these seculars insert the word SECULAR in the Preamble? Because they knew their draft intervened heavily in religious matters when a secular Constitution technically must not. The founding of
Articles 15(4), 16(5), 17, 25, and 45 meant that our Constitution was laying down rules as to how certain practices within religions are unconstitutional, even criminal, while other practices that hurt a particular religious sentiment but are practiced by other religious groups – like cow slaughter – are to be banned. Additionally, the question of religious education – that entailed extraordinarily heated debates on how a secular state should conduct itself – made it obvious that the word SECULAR was now redundant in the Indian context.
S Radhakrishnan: What is our ideal? It is our ideal to develop a homogeneous democratic State. That is why we have provided for fundamental rights, we allow no discrimination in public employment, we say, it is a secular State. We have to effect a compromise between the ideal we have in view and the actual conditions which have come down to us.
KT Shah: Sir, I beg to move that in clause (1) of article 1, after the words “shall be a” the words SECULAR, FEDERAL, SOCIALIST be inserted. Next, as regards the secular character of the State, we have been told time and again from every platform, that ours is a secular State. If that is true, if that holds good, I do not see why the term could not be added or inserted in the constitution itself, once again, to guard against any possibility of misunderstanding or misapprehension. The term SECULAR, I agree, does not find place necessarily in constitutions on which ours seems to have been modelled.
BR Ambedkar: Sir, I regret that I cannot accept the amendment of Prof KT Shah. The Constitution is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the
various organs of the State. It is not a mechanism whereby particular members or particular parties are installed in office. What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether.
Vice-President: The question is: That in clause (1) of Article 1 after the words “shall be a” the words SECULAR, FEDERAL, SOCIALIST be inserted. The motion was negatived.
.........
Jawaharlal Nehru: Another word is thrown up a good deal, this SECULAR STATE business. May I beg with all humility those gentlemen who use this word often, to consult some dictionary before they use it? It is brought in at every conceivable step and at every conceivable stage. I just do not understand it. It has a great deal of importance, no doubt. But it is brought in in all contexts, as if by saying that we are a secular State we have done something amazingly generous, given something out of our pocket to the rest of the world, something which we ought not to have done. We have only done something which every country does except a very few misguided and backward countries in the world. Let us not refer to that word in the sense that we have done something very mighty.
........
ardar Bhopinder Singh Man: On the one hand, we are short of property and on the other hand, concessions are being given to Muslims. This is secularism no doubt, but a very one-sided and undesirable type of secularism which goes invariably against and to the prejudice of Sikh and Hindu refugees.
PS Deshmukh: The specious, oft-repeated and nauseating principle of secularity of the State. I think that we are going too far in this business of secularity.
.....
Mohamed Ismail Sahib: It is not necessary for a secular State to ban religious education in State institutions. Sir, it will not be in contravention of the neutrality or the secular nature of the State to impart religious instruction.
Sardar Bhopinder Singh Man: What is the use of calling India a secular State if you allow religious instruction to be imparted to young boys and girls?
......
Mahboob Ali Baig Sahib Bahadur: Legislate with regard to personal laws would go against the claims that this government is going to be secular.
Mohamad Ismail Sahib: If anything is done affecting the personal laws, it will be tantamount to interference with the way of life of those people who have been observing these laws for generations and ages. This secular State which we are trying to create should not do anything to interfere with the way of life and religion of the people.
Mahboob Ali Baig Sahib Bahadur: Now, Sir, people seem to have very strange ideas about secular State. People seem to think that under a secular State, there must be a common law observed by its citizens in all matters, including matters of their daily life, their language, their culture, their personal laws. That is not the correct way to look at this secular State.
Hussain Imam: The apprehension felt by the members of the minority community is very real. Secular State does not mean that it is anti-religious State. It means that it is not irreligious but non-religious and as such there is a world of difference between irreligious and non-religious.
KM Munshi: If a religious practice followed so far covers a secular activity or falls within the field of social reform or social welfare, it would be open to Parliament to make laws about it without infringing this Fundamental Right of a minority. If the religious practices in the past have been so construed as to cover the whole field of life, we have reached a point when we must put our foot down and say that these matters are not religion, they are purely matters for secular legislation.
Jaipal Singh: We have heard such a lot of pious language about a democratic State, of a secular State, of our being voluntarily opposed to the establishment of theocracy in India. Here, Sir, I submit, by the back door we are trying to interfere with the religious rights of the most ancient people of this country.
HC Mookherjee: Sir, are we really honest when we say that we are seeking to establish a secular state? If your idea is to have a secular state it follows inevitable that we cannot afford to recognise minorities based upon religion. This to my mind is the strongest possible argument why reservation of seats for religious groups should be abolished immediately.
.......
BR Ambedkar: That in State institutions there shall be no religious instruction, we have in my judgment travelled the path of complete safety.
....
M Ananthasayanam Ayyangar: All people have come to the same opinion that there should be a secular State here; so we should not allow conversion from one community to another. I therefore want that a positive fundamental right must be established that no conversion shall be allowed, and if any occasion does arise like this, let the person concerned appear before a Judge and swear before him that he wishes to be converted.
.....
Damodar Swarup Seth: I feel, Sir, that in a secular state minorities based on religion or community should not be recognised. If they are given recognition then I submit that we cannot claim that ours is a secular state. Recognition of minorities based on religion or community is the very negation of secularism. I therefore submit that only minorities based on language should be recognised.
.....
KT Shah: The draftsmen seem to be torn between two rival ideals: one suggesting the Constitution for a wholly secular State, in which religion has no official recognition. On the other hand, there seems to me to be a pull – somewhat sub-conscious pull, if I may say so – in favour of particular religions or denominations, whose institutions, whose endowments, whose foundations, are sought to be protected.
....
Jagat Narain Lal: Again, the words “Secular State” should not have come into the Constitution.
It would have been enough if it had been said that the State should not interfere with any religion. Or, we could have said that the State should have a spiritual and moral outlook, instead of saying that it should be secular. The introduction of these words has created a lot of misunderstanding.
....
SV Krishnamurthy Rao: One thing I would like to see omitted is the provision for freedom to propagate religion. In a secular State, such a provision is out of place in our Constitution.
.....
Jawaharlal Nehru: Now I use the words “Secular democracy” and many others use these words. But sometimes I have the feeling that these words are used today too much and by people who do not understand their significance. It is an ideal to be aimed at and every one of us whether we are Hindus or Muslims, Sikhs or Christians, whatever we are, none of us can say in his heart of hearts that he has no prejudice and no taint of communalism in his mind or heart.