14 Aug 2023: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

E. Editorials

Category: GOVERNANCE

1. Bulldozing the law and the Constitution

Syllabus: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Mains: Concerns associated with  Ethnic cleansing 

Background

• Recently, people’s homes and businesses were demolished in the Haryana districts of Nuh and Gurugram.
• These are the people who are accused in criminal situations, particularly those involving offences with racial or ethnic sensitivity, without following the legal process. 
• The Punjab and Haryana High Court intervened in an unusual manner, taking judicial notice Suo Motu and stopping the demolition campaign. 
• The High Court‘s inquiry into whether the State is engaging in ethnic cleansing brings us to the crux of the matter.

About Ethnic cleansing 

• Ethnic cleansing is a deliberate programme designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas by violent and terror-inspiring means.
• The UN-appointed Commission of Experts (1992), whose task it was to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, is credited with using it for the first time. 
• Ethnic cleansing is the result of state measures such as arbitrary arrest, incarceration, damage of property, forcible removal, displacement, deportation, and extrajudicial execution.

Ethnic Cleansing Law in India

• Ethnic cleansing is not defined in the Indian Penal Code or international law. 
• Any such subversive act is gravely hostile to the constitutional protections under Part III of India’s Constitution, despite the lack of official recognition. 
• According to Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, no one may be deprived of their life or personal freedom unless doing so in accordance with legal procedures. 
• It is a constitutional outrage that elected governments show such scant regard for such fundamental values despite such a broadening of the reach of Article 21.

Concerns over High Court intervention

• The High Court acknowledged that the demolition campaign had violated the law’s established procedure by proceeding without demolition orders or notices. 
• As a result, there is concern and judicial action under Article 226 of the Indian Constitution.
• In order to advance selective social control, the administrative act of demolishing homes and buildings without giving notice or consulting the affected parties requires court intervention. 
• Any argument in the opposite direction undermines the legitimacy of the constitutional process.

Rule of Law

• Rule by law is the opposite of all that the rule of law stands for, despite the fact that it is acknowledged as a fundamental aspect of the Constitution. 
• Since that time, Article 21 of the Indian Constitution has reflected this civilisational journey and had its boundaries increased by the Supreme Court. 
• When rule by law is implemented, this progressive journey is brutally turned around. 
• Rule by law is when a political goal is carried out by using the law as a tool of social control, repression, and oppression. 

Conclusion

The Constitution breaks down when the state frequently engages in religious persecution. Such occurrences are anticipated to be avoided by constitutional courts. It is one thing to pursue the offender; it is quite another to evict his family or a neighbour, where the republic’s hope lies.

Nut Graf: While no one disputes that persons who cause societal turmoil should be dealt with according to the law, what is criticised is the administrative enmity that morphs into a colorable exercise of power. 

2. Dalit Christians — exclusion by society, church, state

Syllabus: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Mains: Issues associated with Dalit Christians

Background

• The Union Government established a commission in 2022 to investigate the potential for granting Dalit Christians Scheduled Caste (SC) classification. 
• The Tamil Nadu Assembly has approved a resolution to make this change to the 1950 Presidential (SC) decree. 
• The Justice Ranganath Misra Commission (2007) suggested allowing Dalits to apply for SC quota advantages after making a conversion to Christianity. 

Issues associated Dalit Christians

• The main defence is that the underlying dream of equality has not been fully accomplished. 
• Millions of Hindu Dalits migrated to more egalitarian religions, notably Christianity, to escape the horrors of casteism.
• Contradictions and ambiguities in their identity have resulted from this, and they have not experienced the predicted upward social mobility. 
• This is also a result of their fellow believers’ resistance to abandoning the long-standing custom of untouchability in society and bringing it into the church.

Theory of Intersectionality 

• The result of intersectional discrimination is the uniqueness of discrimination that Kimberlé Crenshaw, the founder of the Theory of Intersectionality, introduced.
• The ‘Theory of Intersectionality’ provides a more comprehensive explanation of the Dalit Christian quandary by allowing for the integration of caste and religion as well as a composite concept of Dalit Christians as both Dalits and a religious minority group. 
• The insufficiency of the “single-axis framework” of the laws of the state of India, which offers legal protection to isolated categories, is also extrapolated from this.
• It demonstrates how different oppressive systems including those based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and ability cannot be understood independently of one another. 
• These power structures interact with one another to provide unique individual social experiences. 

Intersectionality and identity

• Identity refers to a person’s assertion of belonging to specific social categories and social identities linked to numerous social categories that are prevalent in society.
• As a result of the flawed logic that holds that Christianity does not acknowledge casteism and that, as a result, a Hindu Dalit who converts to Christianity no longer qualifies as a Dalit, the phrase “Dalit Christians” is sometimes used as an oxymoron. 
• This is the same viewpoint that the government of India has towards Dalit Christians, despite the fact that Dalit Christians’ infirmities persist even after conversion and the government just sees them as “Christians.”

A ‘single-axis’ framework

• In the Soosai Etc versus Union Of India And Others case (1985), a Dalit Catholic shoemaker asked the Supreme Court of India for an extension to put up a kiosk on a platform in Madras so that he may compete with Hindu shoemakers. 
• ‘It is necessary to prove further that the disadvantages and handicaps incurred from such caste membership in the social order of its genesis Hinduism,’ the court ruled in dismissing the complaint. 
• This indicates that the Dalitness of Soosai was completely disregarded when the single-axis framework technique was used.

Conclusion

Caste prejudice exists in Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, and while these religions give privileges to its Dalits, they exclude Dalit Christians on the grounds that Christianity is of “foreign import,” calling their democratic citizenship into question.

Due to the state’s unwillingness and in spite of overwhelming evidence in their favour, the’single-axis’ communal framework of the law has prevented Dalit Christians from being included to the SC list. The addition of Dalit Christians to the SC list in the 1950 Presidential (SC) decree represents a step in the right direction.

Nut Graf: The underlying dream of equality has not been fully accomplished for Hindu Dalits who became Christians.