NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Monday trashed a fresh attempt to equate ‘Hindutva‘ with fundamentalism by outrightly rejecting a PIL by a 65-year-old doctor seeking to get the term, which he claimed was inimical to secular fabric, replaced with ‘Bhartiya Samvidhanatva‘.
This was the third challenge in SC to “Hindutva” since 1994 when the apex court, in Ismail Faruqi judgment, said, “Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or state of mind and it is not to be equated with, or understood as religious Hindu fundamentalism.”
On Monday, Dr S N Kundra came up with a different argument: “The word ‘Hinduism’ leaves a lot of scope for its misuse by religious fundamentalists of a particular religion, and by those bent upon changing our secular Constitution to a theocratic Constitution (Manusmriti).Thus, inadvertently, SC’s observations (that Hinduism is a way of life) are putting our Constitution at peril.”
A bench headed by CJI D Y Chandrachud would have none of this and said, “we will not entertain such petitions”. It even refused permission to the petitioner to place his case, saying the court has better work to do.
Kundra had argued, “Continuous efforts are made by religious fundamentalists of a particular religion, under garb of Hindutva to promote homogenised majority and cultural hegemony in India. Attempts are also made to make Hindutva a mark of nationalism and citizenship.”
The petitioner who did not back up the charge with evidence, further said: “The secular fabric of the nation is being greatly damaged by misusing the term ‘Hindutva’. All activities blatantly promoting/propagating a particular religion, are carried out by those holding top constitutional posts using the term ‘Hindutva’ to throw sand in the eyes of people/media/legal observers”.
SC in its Dec 1995 judgment in Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo case, had ruled that “no precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Hinduism’; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian culture and heritage. It is also indicated that the term ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se, in abstract, can be assumed to mean and be equated with narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry…” The court had said the terms ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se cannot be construed to depict hostility, enmity or intolerance towards other religious faiths or professing communalism.
In 2016, a 7-judge bench of SC refused to reconsider the 1995 judgment that defined ‘Hinduism’ as a way of life, rejecting a plea by social worker Teesta Setalvad for redefining the word ‘Hindutva’ and banning its use in elections.