Overdose of secularism!

What is the best thing in an air travel? My answer would be – you do get to read a lot. Typically, reading while travelling denotes catching up with one of the recent best sellers and if you missed to carry one, you end up reading all kinds of newspapers (yes – it’s free)..

What I am going to dwell upon has nothing to do with the above. In one of my recent travel, I encountered a similar problem of not having a best seller and ended up reading most of the newspapers. Thats when I came across the reference to a bill drafted by the National Advisory Council (This is a council set up by Prime Minister’s office to provide policy and legislative inputs to the Government with special focus on social policy and the rights of the disadvantaged groups, with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi as the Chairperson). More out of curiosity, I chose to have a go at the proposed legislation. With my limited understanding, I would say the whole thing seemed absurd to me:

The draft bill in question is ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011.’ The bill can be accessed at http://nac.nic.in/pdf/pctvb_amended.pdf

The intent appears to be laudable, i.e., preventing communal violence in the country.

Before getting into an analysis or stating my views, I have to make a disclaimer and state that I belong to majority community (of course, not my choice) and I learned the meaning of the word ‘minority’ because the government chose to teach me.

Coming back to the draft bill, the proposed statute is quite complex and impractical. There are few areas which are outright disturbing and to cite a few from the definition sections;

3 (c) “communal and targeted violence” means and includes any act or series of acts, whether spontaneous or planned, resulting in injury or harm to the person and or property, knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of any group, which destroys the secular fabric of the nation;

3 (e) “group” means a religious or linguistic minority, in any State in the Union of India, or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within the meaning of clauses (24) and (25) of Article 366 of the Constitution of India;

3 (j) “victim” means any person belonging to a group as defined under this Act, who has suffered physical, mental, psychological or monetary harm or harm to his or her property as a result of the commission of any offence under this Act, and includes his or her relatives, legal guardian and legal heirs, wherever appropriate

The draft bill also has a definition for sexual assault under article 7 which state that ”A person is said to commit sexual assault if he or she commits any of the following acts against a person belonging to a group by virtue of that person’s membership of a group':

Not reproducing the entire definition here but would say without hesitation that the definition is sophomoric and quite hilarious, will be ripped apart by lawyers if this ever becomes a law. For the limited purpose of this article, it again refers to sexual assault against a person belonging to a Group. I always thought sexuality or sexual assault is a gender issue and not a majority/minority issue.

The Bill as a whole goes on a presumption that communal trouble is created only by members of the majority community. Whilst offences committed by majority community are punishable, offences committed by minority groups are not treated as offences.

In a nutshell, No member of the majority community can ever be a victim - How very nonsensical!

As is the case with every new law – this bill also envisages setting up a body known as National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation which will have seven members with a stipulation that at least four (including the chairman and vice-chairman) shall belong to a 'group' (read - the minority community). No prizes for guessing that this will be one of the high profile political appointments and a way for any incumbent government to keep those retired babus happy.

My humble questions or thoughts are:

• Do we need such legislation?
• Are we not over-doing the secularism card?
• What do they achieve by this legislation apart from political mileage and votes?
• Violence and terror has no caste, creed, religion or reasons. So, why should we attempt on a classification.
• Why do we have to invent new laws when we have enough laws if implemented well can be equally effective?
• Is this bill not taking away the ‘right to equality’ guaranteed to citizens under article 14 of the Constitution of India? The exception to this right inserted by politicians since independence can only be for the purpose of ‘advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribe’ and this bill is definitely not meant for that.

There is no paucity of laws in our country.. to the extent that no one has a clue as to how many laws we have; but what is lacking is the political will implement those. What you need is a serious and disciplined approach to mete out justice to all and not another law to add to the list.

Signature campaign against the bill can be accessed at at http://www.petitiononline.com/cvb_nac