NEW DELHI: Supreme Court docket on Monday trashed a recent try to equate ‘Hindutva‘ with fundamentalism by outrightly rejecting a PIL by a 65-year-old physician searching for to get the time period, which he claimed was inimical to secular material, changed with ‘Bhartiya Samvidhanatva‘.
This was the third problem in SC to “Hindutva” since 1994 when the apex court docket, in Ismail Faruqi judgment, stated, “Ordinarily, Hindutva is known as a lifestyle or mind-set and it’s not to be equated with, or understood as spiritual Hindu fundamentalism.”
On Monday, Dr S N Kundra got here up with a special argument: “The phrase ‘Hinduism’ leaves a number of scope for its misuse by spiritual fundamentalists of a specific faith, and by these bent upon altering our secular Structure to a theocratic Structure (Manusmriti).Thus, inadvertently, SC’s observations (that Hinduism is a lifestyle) are placing our Structure at peril.”
A bench headed by CJI D Y Chandrachud would have none of this and stated, “we is not going to entertain such petitions”. It even refused permission to the petitioner to put his case, saying the court docket has higher work to do.
Kundra had argued, “Steady efforts are made by spiritual fundamentalists of a specific faith, below garb of Hindutva to advertise homogenised majority and cultural hegemony in India. Makes an attempt are additionally made to make Hindutva a mark of nationalism and citizenship.”
The petitioner who didn’t again up the cost with proof, additional stated: “The secular material of the nation is being tremendously broken by misusing the time period ‘Hindutva’. All actions blatantly selling/propagating a specific faith, are carried out by these holding prime constitutional posts utilizing the time period ‘Hindutva’ to throw sand within the eyes of individuals/media/authorized observers”.
SC in its Dec 1995 judgment in Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo case, had dominated that “no exact which means will be ascribed to the phrases ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Hinduism’; and no which means within the summary can confine it to the slim limits of faith alone, excluding the content material of Indian tradition and heritage. It’s also indicated that the time period ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se, in summary, will be assumed to imply and be equated with slim fundamentalist Hindu spiritual bigotry…” The court docket had stated the phrases ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se can’t be construed to depict hostility, enmity or intolerance in the direction of different spiritual faiths or professing communalism.
In 2016, a 7-judge bench of SC refused to rethink the 1995 judgment that outlined ‘Hinduism’ as a lifestyle, rejecting a plea by social employee Teesta Setalvad for redefining the phrase ‘Hindutva’ and banning its use in elections.
