Hadiya mustn’t be in the dock 

Hadiya mustn’t be in the dock 

Context

We need to fortify constitutional freedoms against sectarian challenges

A prone constitution

Seventy years after Independence, we may have legislated to give the country a common market, but there still seems doubt that the provisions of the Constitution may operate without a dominant sect seeking to subjugate them to customary perceptions and discrete traditions

Multiple courts

Time may come when it will be demanded that we have as many courts as we have sentiments, and that in all cases, individual choices must remain subservient to the diktats of the custodians of those sacrosanct sentiments

Time to implement 1^st amendment

It is time to say that India’s democracy will never be truly credible until the republic adopts a provision akin to the American First Amendment

• That provision secures to the citizen the absolute right to freedom of expression, which includes, most crucially, religious freedom so long as the exercise of this right does not occasion violence
• The provision enjoins the state to enforce laws to protect every citizen’s right to profess and practice any religious faith. Think how much bigoted mayhem was caused in the US when Malcolm X and Cassius Clay embraced Islam; yet, they had the full protection of the law of religious freedom

Way forward

Thought must be given to reforming Article 19(2) which, in its present form, more often than not, renders the exercise of this freedom a hazard more than a right. But this ideal is unlikely to work even after legislation is passed unless India’s investigating agencies—the CBI, NIA —are rendered autonomous of the government of the day, like the FBI and justice-enforcing institutons in the USA