Yesterday, the Vice- President of India- Hamid Ansari while addressing the Sixteenth convocation of Jammu University, found urging the honourable Supreme Court of India to clarify contours within which secularism and composite culture should operate so as to remove vagueness.
The Vice- President seemed wondering on the issue that ‘whether a more complete separation of religion and politics might not better sever Indian democracy. It was make clear by the Vice- President- Hamid Ansari that few years earlier, the lawyer- Raveev Dhavan And Fali S. Nariman, in their published volume on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the Supreme Court of India, firmly observed that the “Supreme Court has a lot to reflect upon and not least on how to protect the minorities and their ilk from the onslaught of majoritarianism”.
Moreover, as per Vice- President- Ansari, the courts should assure that the Constitution of India is applicable ‘fairly’ to all the citizens of India, and till that time, the court cannot be said to have fulfilled “its responsibilities”
The ‘heterogeneity’ of India cannot be overlooked by any public discussion on India, which is being a ‘secular’ republic with a “composite culture”, as said by the Indian Vice- President. Moreover, Ansari further sought to give statistic that there are 4,635 communities in India, where around 1.3 billion’s population is being comprising and there are 19.4 per cents of the total population, which are covered under religious minorities.
Moreover, he pointed three well- admitted features of the Secular State, and that were liberty for practicing religion, equality among the religions in the practices of the State and also Neutrality or a Fence of separation among the State and religion. However, as per Ansari, there had been contradictory application of such features and this has resulted for ‘Major’ anomaly.
Further, Ansari said that the ‘as per observers and their arguments, the various apex court’s decisions have intensely justified the “anti- secular vision of the Secularism” of some quarters.
He also quoted K N Pannikar, and pointed that “Whether India developed as a melting pot of cultures or only remained a salad bowl” further he said that this is no more the issue. However, he put the very crucial question as per his own, that “whether Indian culture is conceived as a static phenomenon, tracking its identity to a single unchanging source, or a dynamic phenomenon, critically and creatively interrogating all that is new.”
Adv. Faim Khalilkhan Pathan
