By Olav Albuquerque / Free Press Journal
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 story was originally published in freepressjournal.in. Read the full story here