The idea of a UCC in India has been debated for decades including within the Constituent Assembly itself, but its recent passage in BJP-governed states has reignited the question of whether this reform is genuinely about protecting women’s rights across communities, or is it primarily a political tool aimed at communalising what is, at its core, a secular problem of gender justice. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has openly linked the passage of the UCC to the BJP-RSS ideological project, stating that, “Had I not been a BJP CM and a swayamsevak of RSS, probably I would not have been able to bring the UCC to the assembly.” Interestingly Sarma currently serving as the 15th Chief Minister of Assam was a former member of the Indian National Congress (INC) who joined the BJP only on August 23, 2015!

‘Uniform Civil Code or Gender Justice?’ was the question raised around thirty-two years ago by the 1994 cover story of Communalism Combat. Teesta Seetalvad wrote:

“Through its constant argument that enacting a uniform civil code will bring about national integration, the Sangh Parivar has succeeded in making many Hindus believe that, one, only “separatist-minded” Muslims are opposed to a uniform law, and, two, the uniform civil code will only affect Muslims.”

Remarkably, that observation remains just as germane today. What this narrative however ignores is one, the call to do away with several practices, including polygamy, have come from Muslim women themselves (all while the BJP has adopted this issue as one of its own), and, two, all personal laws irrespective of religion have an-anti woman bias. Reported the Hindustan Times. Practices such as restitution of conjugal rights and the absence of no-fault divorce have existed in many religious communities. The broad powers granted to testators to will away property have long enabled the disinheritance of vulnerable family members across many faiths. The 2018 Law Commission report suggested that the legislature first consider guaranteeing equality within communities‘ between men and women, rather than equality between communities while suggesting that personal law reform over a UCC is recommended.

“Various aspects of prevailing personal laws disprivilege women. This Commission is of the view that it is discrimination and not difference which lies at the root of inequality,” the report read.

What the Bill changes 

The Bill aims to unify all personal family laws, including issues related to marriage, divorce, intestate and testamentary succession, and live-in relationships within the State of Assam. It applies to all residents of the state; including those living outside its territories, but it specifically excludes members of any Scheduled Tribes.

It sets uniform conditions for a valid marriage, including a minimum age of 21 for men and 18 for women, replacing the varying thresholds that existed under some personal laws. The religious ceremony through which a marriage is solemnised (whether a Saptapadi, Nikah, Holy Union, Anand Karaj, or any other recognised rite) remains valid and untouched.

The Bill explicitly prohibits polygamy; however, this is not a novel change as only last year, Assam had passed a law banning polygamy across the state. The UCC also standardises the list of prohibited relationships. This has an impact on Muslim personal law, which permitted marriage between first cousins.

Compulsory registration of all marriages within sixty days of the ceremony is introduced for the first time as a uniform requirement though several states, notably Maharashtra had introduced a separate law for this in 1999 while retaining personal laws (Maharashtra Regulation of Marriage Bureaus and Registration of Marriages Act, 1998). Failure to register attracts penalties, though importantly the UCC clarifies that non-registration does not by itself render a marriage invalid. The Bill also establishes procedures for judicial separation and the restitution of conjugal rights. The framework provides standardised grounds for divorce (such as cruelty, desertion, or mutual consent) and extrajudicial methods of dissolving a marriage or unilateral divorce are no longer legally recognised for any community. Maintenance during the pendency of proceedings and permanent alimony after a decree are available to either spouse, again, without any community-specific distinction.

The UCC’s most far-reaching provisions concern succession, where it departs most sharply from the existing personal laws of several communities. It defines a clear ‘Order of Preference’ for how property is distributed when a person dies without a Will. Class-1 heirs (including the spouse, children, and parents) generally succeed simultaneously and take equal shares. For a detailed understanding of this, read a previous analysis by Citizens for Justice and Peace here

Lack of stakeholder consultation 

Hasina Khan and Mridul Kaintura writing for Sabrang India in 2024 noted that conservative and orthodox religious leaders had failed their community as they sought to control their bodies under the guise of protecting the religion. However, they also wrote, “Despite spearheading the movement to bring reforms within our own communities, including the formulation of Nikah-Nama, protesting against fatwas and advocating reforms in discriminatory personal laws, the state has never taken any steps to hear our concerns and protect our rights effectively,” they added.

The UCC Bill was cleared without con­sult­ing any minor­ity organ­isa­tions who had demanded further consultations before the Bill was passed. Beyond the absence of consultations, even the text of the Bill was not placed in the public domain, despite the 2014 circular mandating that draft legislation be made publicly available for at least thirty days to invite comments and feedback. The Bill was vetted by the Assam Cabinet only May 12 before it was introduced on May 25 in the State Assembly and passed on May 27 after about five hours of discussion and debate. As per reports in both The Hindu and The Shillong Times.

The manner in which the Assam government pushed through the UCC Bill is not an isolated instance but reflective of a growing pattern across India where major legislative changes are introduced with little transparency and minimal consultation with those most affected. Similar criticisms accompanied the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, and the Delimitation Bill.

CM Sarma in fact went on record to say that Congress’s opposition does not matter because except one Congress MLA, rest of the 18 MLAs represent a particular religion.  He was referring to eighteen of the 19 MLAs of Congress, the largest opposition party, who are Muslims. This brazen vocal exclusion and segregation of elected representatives of the religious minorities bodes ill for any representative and participative democracy. Reported in The Times of India.

Dr Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, had said last December that her organisation had twenty-five points specifically relating to Muslims that must be included in any UCC, among them the preservation of mehr (the compulsory payment by the husband to the wife upon marriage, which provides a measure of financial security). The Bill does not incorporate any of the positive and progressive aspects of Muslim personal law. The mehr, nikahnama (which allows spouses to negotiate mutually agreed and legally enforceable conditions in the marriage contract) have completely omitted or left out, as has the one-third limit rule on willing away property for the first spouse and children, which served as a protection against complete disinheritance. The practice of khula, through which a Muslim woman may initiate divorce on grounds such as irreconcilable differences, neglect, or lack of financial support, has not been codified and extended to all women representing a missed opportunity to give every woman a meaningful right to exit a marriage independently. Such legislative exclusion is reflective of a majoritarian bias through exclusion that fails to introduce or include cultural-religious norms from varied communities that are or maybe progressive. As per a report in reddif.com.

The restitution of conjugal rights, which legally compels an unwilling spouse to return to cohabitation, and in the case of a wife could expose her to the risk of rape and forcible pregnancy, has also been retained at a time when its constitutional validity is actively challenged before the Supreme Court and the 21st Law Commission Report recommended its removal. The Bill is entirely silent on custody, and guardianship which are the areas in which Hindu law and Mohammedan law (after seven years of age) gender-based discrimination has been extensively commented upon as the guardianship of a minor boy or unmarried girl vests in the father before the mother.

Had the government followed stakeholder consultations and the Law Commission’s recommendations, would a Bill ostensibly rooted in gender justice have overlooked such regressive practices?

“Instead of maintaining a silence on all these anti-women and pro-men or pro-Hindu provisions of family laws, should not the debate on reforms in family laws be re-framed by secularists incorporating all these arguments with a correct perspective?” had asked Setalvad in 1994.

Exclusion of Scheduled Tribes

In a report in The Times of India, the most glaring contradiction in a supposedly uniform code is the blanket exemption granted to Scheduled Tribes. As per the last census (which was over 15 years ago!), 12.4 per cent of Assam’s population constitute of scheduled tribes meaning their exclusion removes a significant section of the state’s residents from the scope of legislation. When asked to justify this, CM Sarma reportedly stated that,

“Medicine will be given where there is illness… UCC will give radiotherapy, chemotherapy where there is cancer. Where there is no cancer, there is no necessity of giving radiotherapy.”

“Whether we bring UCC or not, our tribal people never accept polygamy … Our tribal people give equal rights to girls, they do not accept live-in relations. Self regulation is the best regulation. If Hindu and Muslim societies also had customary rights like tribals and our society would have been tied together with equal rights like them, maybe a UCC would not have been required for anyone,” he added.

In his speech in the House, he also stated that the society rarely sees distressed or neglected women within tribal societies, like that of the Shah Bano case because through their customary rights and customary courts, these communities had already been regulating their social systems.

This stance is perhaps ignorant of first, the socio-economic status of tribal women and how that could affect their access to courts and second, the available data and judicial record! Were consultations with tribal women held for the State to arrive at this conclusion?

According to the International Institute for Population Sciences, compared to the national average of 1.4 per cent (NFHS-5), the rate of polygamy was 2.4 among STs. Tribal communities have also historically opposed women’s inheritance rights on the grounds that recognising such rights would result in land being alienated to non-tribals through inter-community marriage. As per reports in The Print and the Hindustan Times.

There are also cases where tribal women have knocked on the doors of courts! In Gopal Singh Bhumij v. Giribala Bhumij (1990), a ST woman who sought the partition of her father’s property, was denied the same by the Patna High Court as she was bound by tribal custom, which excluded daughters from inheritance. In Smt. Butaki Bai v. Sukhbati (2005), a daughter of the Halba tribe similarly failed to obtain inheritance rights because she could not provide sufficient evidence of Hinduisation. In Ram Dev Ram v. Dhani Ram (2016), a daughter of the Uraon tribe was denied inheritance rights because she did not follow the tribal custom. All of this demonstrates that customary tribal law is neither beyond scrutiny nor inherently gender-just.

“What does uniform mean?… The content of this large Bill does not align with its title. Because to be uniform, it has to be the same for everyone staying in this state. I have no objection with someone being left out from it, I respect all tribes and communities, but the name should be changed… The CM and the other MLAs have been talking about ‘rights’ being secured by the Bill, but in that case, aren’t the women of those who are being left out being deprived of their rights?” said MLA Jakir Sikdar. As per a report in the Indian Express.

Mandatory registration of live-in relationships

One of the most controversial features of the recent UCC framework is its mandatory registration framework for live-in relationships which is a significant expansion of state and community oversight into intimate relationships. This applies even if the partners are residents of Assam living outside the state territories. Partners in such a relationship are obligated to submit a statement to the Sub-Registrar; who then conducts a summary inquiry, and must either register the relationship and issue a certificate or refuse to register with written reasons within thirty days. If either partner is below twenty-one years of age, the Sub-Registrar is legally obligated to inform their parents or guardians. In all cases, a copy of the statement is forwarded to the officer-in-charge of the local police station. Third parties are also permitted to provide information or file complaints regarding unregistered live-in relationships.

This means that a woman may marry at eighteen without parental consent, but must wait until twenty-one to enter a live-in relationship without triggering mandatory parental notification. This inconsistency is difficult to justify on any coherent principle of personal autonomy, nor has the State done its bit to explain the reason behind it.

“These are also matters concerning Muslim women, who may once again find themselves subjected to suffering at the hands of the institution of family, the state, and third parties. Here, the third party could be the involvement of any institution, from community Khaps, Jamaats to even Fatwa-judgements. The punitive measures after being unable to register the live-in relationships are in no way a protective measure but to further surveil the relationships that challenge the institution of marriage,” wrote Khan and Kaintura for Sabrang.

The Uttarakhand UCC Rules also require individuals seeking registration of a live-in relationship to furnish certification from a religious leader or community representative. In January 2025, CJP raised concerns that such rules “make it practically impossible for interfaith or inter–caste individuals to be in a live-in relationship. The requirement of religious sanction for two consenting adults to enter a live-in relationship defeats the principle of secularism provided in the Preamble of the Constitution of India.”

The UCC Rules for Assam are expected to be formulated within six months of Presidential assent. One will have to wait and see whether such draconian provisions are a part of the Assam UCC Rules too. On his X, Biswa has already linked the UCC as a panacea from ‘Love Jihad’ signaling the intent to regulate and restrict inter-faith relationships.

This is consistent with a rising trend across India where anti-conversion laws along with the mandatory public notice provisions of the Special Marriage Act, and now the UCC, create records that right-wing and Hindutva vigilante groups use to track and harass interfaith couples. Reports of young couples being attacked, or forcibly separated have become disturbingly common. Read weaponisation of laws to prevent interfaith marriages in Uttrakhand here. Stated a report in The Polis Project.

This was precisely what CJP tried to address when it challenged the constitutional validity of various State enactments regulating religious conversion. Read detailed reports here and here. By forwarding relationship data directly to police stations and permitting third-party complaints, has arguably created a fresh infrastructure for exactly this kind of extra-legal intimidation.

The Bill also maintains a complete silence on the rights of queer and transgender persons within the family, their rights to marry, and their inheritance and succession rights. In a country where the legal recognition of same-sex relationships remains contested and transgender persons continue to face pervasive discrimination, the UCC’s failure to even acknowledge their existence within the family law framework is a profound omission that no claim to progressiveness can easily paper over.

Conclusion

Women across every community have demanded reforms in personal law for decades. That is not the contention here. The concern, however, is that the UCC in name of reform is plausibly being deployed as a selective intervention that leaves comparable inequalities untouched and exempts a portion of the population on grounds it refuses to apply consistently. By introducing registration of live-in relationships, surveillance mechanisms are introduced that go against the right to privacy and dignity guaranteed by the Constitution and judgments by the Supreme Court.

Reports indicate that Madhya Pradesh is next in line and consultations have already begun. A law that is serious about gender justice would incorporate the best practices from every community and also address the silences around queer persons, HUFs, guardianship, and resist the temptation to use intimate relationships as a theatre for communal politics. By these measures, the Assam, Gujarat and Uttrakhand UCCs as passed have already fallen significantly short. Reported The Hindu.

The full draft of The Uniform Civil Code, Assam, 2026 can be accessed here

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Tanishka Shah)

Related:

The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) of Uttarakhand: Advancement in gender justice or violating individual liberties?

Calls for Uniform Civil Code, Population Control Bill by Right-Wing groups amplified with divisive rhetoric

Destroying the basic standards of legislation- the Uttarakhand Model of UCC

The post Assam Becomes Third State to Adopt UCC: Reform for Gender Justice or Communal Politics? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Upon receiving the award, Jean Drèze said: “This recognition is not something I achieved on my own. All the work I do is in collaboration with people and collectives working for change. I live and work in India, which was rightly described as a ‘museum of inequality’ by Dr B. R. Ambedkar.

India has all possible varieties of inequality—not only astronomical economic inequality, but also the caste system, huge gender disparities, massive disparities in access to education, and so forth. The silver lining is that India also has a rich history of resistance to inequality. I’ve been very fortunate to be associated with some of these movements.

My contribution consists mainly of research for public action. I’m very pleased to be associated through this award with the World Inequality Lab, a like-minded team striving in the same direction.”

In recent decades, the study of global inequalities has experienced a remarkable boom: economic, social and environmental inequalities have been the subject of a growing body of theoretical and empirical work, visible and influential throughout the world.

The World Inequality Lab (WIL) and Sciences Po’s Centre for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS) have joined forces to establish a Global Inequality Research Award (or GiRA), which aims to recognize every two years researchers from all disciplines who have made a significant contribution to the understanding of global inequalities.

Six years ago, on April 19, 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we had a conversation with Drèze that bears a listen and watch today:

Related:

‘Self-reliance for Poor and State Support for Business is the New Motto’—Jean Dreze

Silger police firing: Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze stopped from meeting survivors

Economist Jean Drèze among three activists detained in Jharkhand, released

The post A soldier of grassroots research & action: Jean Drèze awarded the Global Inequality Research Award appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Uma Jadhav, social worker and photographer Joya Lobo also received a similar appreciation certificate and citation. The social media handle of the publication linked to the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) intimated the wider public about these awards.

For his association with the Dalit Panthers since their foundation and his continued dedication to social work, Dalit rights and the human rights movement in general, Sumedhbhau Jadhav was felicitated.

पँथर, विविध दलित चळवळीतील आंबेडकरवादी कार्यकर्ते सुमेध जाधव यांना वंचित बहुजन आघाडीचे युवा नेते सुजात आंबेडकर यांच्या हस्ते ‘VBA सन्मान पुरस्कार – २०२६’ देऊन गौरवण्यात आले.#VBASammanPuraskar2026#VBASammanAward2026#SumedhJadhav#SujatAmbedkar#AmbedkariteMovement pic.twitter.com/vL4ZK9d1EQ

— Prabuddh Bharat (@eprabuddhbharat) June 4, 2026

अभिनेते गौरव मोरे यांच्या अभिनय क्षेत्रातील कार्याबद्दल त्यांचा वंचित बहुजन आघाडीचे युवा नेते सुजात आंबेडकर यांच्या हस्ते ‘VBA सन्मान पुरस्कार – २०२६’ देऊन गौरवण्यात आले.#VBASammanPuraskar2026#VBASammanAwards2026#GauravMore #SujatAmbedkar#VanchitBahujanAghadi#VBAAwards pic.twitter.com/hvLMCiC5tS

— Prabuddh Bharat (@eprabuddhbharat) June 4, 2026

सामाजिक कार्यकर्त्या उमा जाधव यांना वंचित बहुजन आघाडीचे युवा नेते सुजात आंबेडकर यांच्या हस्ते ‘VBA सन्मान पुरस्कार – २०२६’ देऊन गौरवण्यात आले.#VBASammanPuraskar2026 #UmaJadhav #SocialWorker #WomenEmpowerment #CommunityLeadership #VanchitBahujanAghadi #SujatAmbedkar pic.twitter.com/ho4xlJwK5i

— Prabuddh Bharat (@eprabuddhbharat) June 4, 2026

The post Sumedh Jadhav and Others receive VBA’s Certificate of Honour 2026  appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, Reddy was not completely off the mark in how he was indeed referring to the Nazis, in one way. The comic-book organisation Hydra is shown to have links with Nazi Germany and is associated with characters including Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, a former Nazi officer. This fictional construction matches CM Reddy’s description of an elite squad that could “assassinate anyone”. Hitler’s actual state-terror apparatus and paramilitary organisations consisted primarily of the SS (Schutzstaffel), the Gestapo (Secret State Police), and the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units).

In actual World War 2 history, the use of the word ‘Hydra’ was for Operation Hydra, a 1943 bombing raid carried out by the British Royal Air Force against a German rocket research facility.

Reddy comments spark fury

The remarks by Reddy were made during a public event in Bengaluru on Sunday. He was asked about the success and methods of the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA), a specialised task force established in July 2024 to clear illegal encroachments from the city’s lakes, parks, and storm water channels.

While defending the agency’s aggressive demolition drives, Reddy provided an explanation for its name. “Hydra, the word, is Hitler’s favourite word. His core team was called Hydra, which could assassinate anyone. So, I took inspiration from Hitler and named it HYDRAA,” the CM stated, mixing up history with movies.

He further justified the scale of the demolitions by drawing parallels to war zones: “I have demolished like anything. If you see the visuals from Iran, you can compare them with Israel or any such demolitions caused by war, and compare them with these demolitions carried out by HYDRAA.” Israel recently flattened the Palestinian territory of Gaza after its military actions killed over 60,000 people there — an action CM Reddy’s party Congress has pointedly criticised, while the BJP-led NDA government has also called for peace in the region.

As for Reddy’s HYDRAA, it was established in 2024 and is headed by an IPS officer. It is the designated Telangana government agency responsible for protecting government assets, lakes, and public land in Hyderabad from encroachments, as well as managing urban disaster response.

The CM’s comments drew severe criticism from all ‘opposition parties’ including the ruling BJP regime, who seized on the invocation of the German dictator and war-zone destruction to condemn the Congress-led state government’s governance style. Union minister G Kishan Reddy, who is the BJP’s Secunderabad MP, said the Congress’s “dangerous Hitler-Emergency mind-set” was “out in the open.” Reddy’s remarks are particularly ironic given the fact that the BJP, and its parent ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have open admiration for the ideology of both Hitler and Mussolini.

Read The Ideology of the RSS is both Hate-Driven & Supremacist here.

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) also launched a scathing attack, describing Revanth Reddy as the “new Hitler”.  Worse, the party that gave birth to the Telanga state after years of agitation alleged that the homes of lakhs of poor and middle-class people have been demolished under his administration. The state government says HYDRAA has successfully reclaimed land worth over ₹1 lakh crore from “wealthy” encroachers alone.

Working president of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) K.T. Rama Rao has criticised Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy for his comments linking HYDRAA’s functioning to the actions of German dictator Adolf Hitler, adding that the statement reveals the ideological foundation behind the Congress Government’s demolition-driven governance model.

Reacting to the remarks made at The Hindu Huddle in Bengaluru, Mr. Rama Rao alleged that the Chief Minister’s comments had exposed his authoritarian and fascist mind-set. Hitler is clearly Mr. Revanth Reddy’s inspiration. HYDRAA reflects a style of governance that glorifies force, intimidation and demolitions. The people of Telangana have experienced these authoritarian tendencies first-hand and now the Chief Minister has openly acknowledged the inspiration behind them,” KTR remarked.

Alleging that the HYDRAA (Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency) established by the Congress Government was functioning like an “assassination agency”, the BRS leader said Telangana people were aware of CM’s “authoritarian nature”.

Related:

Why is Adolf Hitler Hindutva’s chosen mascot in India?

Demolitions of homes of Gujjar Bakerwals in Jammu unconstitutional & violation of FRA 2006: AIUFWP

Rebuild or Compensate: Nagpur HC confronts NMC over ‘bulldozer’ demolition in riot case

The post Telangana: A Congress Chief Minister inspired by Hitler; justifying forcible evictions & demolitions? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Today, a new challenge stands before the state: the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

For some, it is merely an administrative exercise. For many ordinary citizens, however, it has become a source of anxiety, confusion, and sleepless nights.

The Election Commission’s exercise will cover approximately 2.64 crore voters in Jharkhand. On paper, the objective appears straightforward—clean electoral rolls by identifying deceased, shifted, duplicate, or ineligible voters. Yet the question being asked in villages, towns, and migrant settlements is different: will genuine voters be able to navigate the process without difficulty?

A State Built on Migration, Forests and Margins

Jharkhand is not just another state.

More than a quarter of its population is tribal. According to Census figures, Scheduled Tribes constitute over 26 percent of the state’s population. Nearly one in five residents belongs to a religious minority community, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains. The state is also home to several lakh forest-dependent households spread across districts such as West Singhbhum, Gumla, Simdega, Khunti, and Latehar.

Many of these communities have historically lived at the margins of state institutions. Their relationship with government paperwork is often more complicated than that of urban middle-class citizens.

A voter in Ranchi may have a file full of documents neatly stored in a cupboard. A migrant worker from Pakur or Godda, working at a construction site in Surat, may not have the same luxury. An Adivasi family in a remote village may find that names are spelled differently across various records. A forest-dwelling household may possess deep roots in a place but limited formal documentation to prove it.

This is what makes Jharkhand different.

The state’s economy depends heavily on migration. Every year, lakhs of workers leave for employment outside Jharkhand. Entire villages in districts such as Dumka, Deoghar, Sahibganj, Pakur, and Giridih have family members working in distant states. When verification teams visit, many of these workers may be hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away from home.

The concern is not merely about documentation. It is about accessibility. Can an absent worker easily respond to verification requirements? Will every family understand the procedures? Will genuine voters be able to challenge mistakes quickly and effectively? These questions deserve attention long before the final electoral rolls are published. There is another dimension that often goes unnoticed.

Jharkhand’s history is also a history of displacement. Researchers and social activists have long argued that development projects—whether mines, dams, factories, or industrial corridors—have displaced well over a million people since Independence. Many of those affected continue to struggle with rehabilitation, land rights, and documentation issues. An exercise that demands accurate records inevitably places additional pressure on populations already burdened by decades of uncertainty.

The overwhelming majority of Jharkhand’s workforce also remains part of the informal economy. Construction workers, agricultural labourers, domestic workers, daily wage earners, transport workers, and countless others survive without the stability enjoyed by the formal sector. For them, losing a day’s work can mean losing a day’s meal. Participating in administrative processes is rarely as simple as filling out a form.

Beyond Electoral Rolls, A Test of Democratic Inclusion

This is why the debate around SIR cannot be reduced to politics alone.

The issue is fundamentally about democratic inclusion.

Supporters argue that clean electoral rolls are essential for free and fair elections. They are right. A credible democracy requires accurate voter lists.

But democracy also requires that no eligible citizen feels intimidated, excluded, or burdened while exercising the right to vote.

That is the balance Jharkhand must achieve.

The real test of the SIR will not be how many names are identified, verified, or removed. Its success will be judged by a more important question: whether the poorest worker, the migrant labourer, the forest dweller, the displaced family, the Adivasi villager, and the religious minority citizen emerge from the process with their faith in democracy strengthened rather than shaken.

In that sense, Jharkhand is not merely undergoing another electoral revision. It is becoming a test case for the future of democratic participation in India. And that is precisely why Jharkhand’s SIR deserves to be watched more closely than ever before.

Courtesy: https://enewsroom.in

The post Jharkhand’s Biggest Democratic Test Yet: The SIR Challenge appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I run a boutique vintage woodcraft gig in Colaba. While I live alone, these days, three brats have been camping at my place. Two of them, my nephews Percy and Hormuz, both self-proclaimed tech geniuses, had to scramble back from the US as a result of the H1B crisis. A niece, Dilshan, has just received the shock of her NEET results being cancelled due to a paper leak! My business has slowed a bit, though there are enough moneyed SoBo folks who love their colonial era teak and rosewood antiques. My nephews have already joined the Cockroach Janata Party on the strength of their credentials of being unemployed, chronically online and constantly complaining. The niece is threatening to do the same.

In this fraught atmosphere, I was mighty pleased to see your article in Scroll.in taking Rahul Gandhi to the cleaners. It filled me with unbridled joy and pride to see that I share sentiments with a great public intellectual like you.

You started in your article, by holding Priyanka Gandhi accountable for the Emergency that was executed by her grandmother in the 70s. My father, the late Behramji Puranafurniturewala would be celebrating in his grave now. He would say frequently that the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi post Emergency was insufficient penance for the havoc it caused. I thank you on his behalf.

You have with great insight and evidence pointed out that Rahul Gandhi is surrounded by sycophants. You will no doubt reveal their names soon. I personally prefer the approach of our Beloved Supreme (BS) Leader. He surrounds himself by folks who remain invisible and inaccessible and that ensures that all the halo remains on the BS Leader. In fact, most of the time, one even struggles to recall their names and their job descriptions. Of course, now, thanks to my niece whose NEET exam had paper leaks, and her friends whose CBSE results came out crooked, I now know of one Dharmendra Pradhan. A fine bloke. Super cool in this extraordinary situation. I simply love how he ignores all the naysayers and marches on to his own beat. If only Rahul Gandhi had such Pradhans by his side!

Or that other chap, Gyanendra Kumar. I simply adore him. He executed the electoral roll exercise with the artistic precision of a Leonardo da Vinci, enrolling who he liked and dismissing the others. I tell my nephews, who are IIT alumni themselves, to regard him as their role model. Being independent minded cockroaches, they have treated this advice with contempt.

You have pointed out the organisational weakness of the Congress Party under Rahul Gandhi and its rapid decline. No doubt, in your next article, you will provide a role model that he should emulate. Here are my suggestions. Most importantly, he needs a taskmaster at his side. One who can ensure that all institutions such as Media and the various custodians of democracy work in tandem to support the leader – a Conductor of an Orchestra as it were. Then of course, one needs Big Capital. One or two oligarchs who will bankroll the Dance of Democracy while taking good care of our infrastructure – the ports, the mines, the oil, the airports et al.

You have acknowledged that Rahul Gandhi is a decent bloke. Why should I care? Am I looking for a groom for my niece, Dilshan? Leaders must be ruthless, crafty, parochial and greedy for power. Willing to ring in a demonetisation or call a lockdown at whim. A full 56 inches, in our local parlance.

You have further claimed that many are looking at him as a principal source of hope to push back against the regime and that they should stop doing so. Not so, not so, not so. I can assure you that in my circle of friends and clients in SoBo, there is nobody who fits that description. All of them including me are quite happy with the way things are. Our kids (except my burdensome nephews) are abroad living a good life. We live in our well-guarded gated communities where there is no stench of poverty or disillusionment. Our kitty parties, musical soirees, champagne challenges, keep us busy. Even the dug up roads, the pot holes, the fallen trees and the encroached mangroves don’t bother us anymore. Our quarrels, if any, are often about parking spaces and gymkhana privileges. Never about the Opposition. While it may be a necessary evil of Democracy, it’s not on our radar!

You have spoken of a hate filled environment. Most of us enjoy our Biryanis and Kebabs. Even the veggie folks enjoy it on the sly. So what’s the problem?

Now this Rahul Gandhi, you say, goes abroad frequently. Is he trying to emulate the BS Leader? He would have to work hard at perfecting the beaming smile, the raucous laugh and the bear hugs. Some experience with gifting confectionary will also be useful.

You say he lacks gravitas and job experience. That hits the nail on its head. I could never dig his frequent mingling with the hoi polloi – the rickshaw drivers, the cobblers, the farmers, the cooks and the fisher folk – what kind of politics is this? Nature ordered that there be two people. The Ruler and the Ruled. This fellow wants to blur these sacred lines. Blasphemy! In sharp contrast, one can see the unadulterated joy on the face of the BS Leader when he consorts with the global elite.

Rahul Gandhi, to my utter surprise, does not have a well-chronicled curriculum vitae. He has never sold tea, not begged for alms, not gone on self-discovery yatras to the mountains, never discovered technologies to extract energy from a nalla, never discovered the hidden potential of clouds in escaping radar detection during war, and never issued a decree for demonetarization or a lockdown. He does not even have a unique degree. Could he have found us a new friend like Israel? And strategically ignored old ones like Iran, Russia and Palestine? Could he have nurtured the bonhomie we now enjoy with US? Makes one ponder.

I have also wondered why he personally attacks the BS Leader. The government is run by many people, not one individual. There must be well laid out processes and thoroughly discussed plans in the cabinet and in the Parliament before they are rolled out. To single out one person in a democracy is undermining its very roots. Tut, tut!

You remain hopeful of some phoenix rising from the ruins. My nephews, Percy and Hormuz, newly established cockroaches are firing meme after meme on social media on L’affaires NEET and CBSE. My daily diet has changed from Dhansak and Patra Ni Machi to Pasta and Pizza to accommodate these creepy crawlies. I have even had to surrender my master bedroom to them. Dilshan, my niece, is planning to take the NEETwallahs to court. Are you pinning your hopes on such people?

With affection,

Cyrus Behramji Puranafurniturewala

Model Citizen

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The post The ‘Unfit’ Gandhi Siblings – A SoBo boy to Ramchandra Guha appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, only time can answer whether this was merely a display of rivalry between the two competing power centres within the Congress government — Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar — or a sign of the emergence of a new one. Likewise, the criticisms made by the opposition BJP regarding the Congress government’s three-year rule carry neither genuine public concern nor sincerity.

All these are discussions and critiques driven by the ruling circles’ own power interests. They attempt to portray their class interests as public interest. Therefore, these mainstream discussions should not overshadow the real questions concerning the people — namely, whether the Congress government has brought real winds of change into the lives of the people of Karnataka in the past three years.

Should not this be the fundamental question?

In 2023, the people of Karnataka, who had been distressed by the continuous attacks carried out by the Bommai-led Sangh-affiliated BJP government against Muslims, Dalits, and the poor of this land, brought the Congress government to power with a clear majority. Compared to the BJP, Congress received 7% more votes (43%) and won 70 more seats (136 seats).

In its manifesto and budget speeches, the Congress party had promised to provide a genuine alternative to the BJP government. In particular, it assured communal harmony, punishment for divisive forces, social justice, welfare, guarantees, and people-oriented development.

Although politically aware sections and large parts of the public may not have had very high expectations regarding these promises, the disappointments and betrayals committed by the Siddaramaiah government over the past three years have exceeded expectations.

In fact, when the Siddaramaiah government completed two and a half years, several scholars under the leadership of a Bengaluru civic organization conducted a detailed study of the government’s budget promises and their implementation and released a comprehensive report. According to that report, even after half the government’s tenure had passed, only 6% of the budget promises had been fulfilled. The remaining 94% were categorised as promises that had either not yet begun, had begun but were limping along, or had still not been fully implemented. The report identified lack of resources, lack of political will, and administrative negligence as the primary reasons.

Recently, the Karnataka Muslim Federation also conducted an in-depth study on the promises made by the Congress government to the Muslim community during the last three years and the manner of their implementation, and released its report through a massive convention.

The report mainly exposed the immense political irresponsibility shown by the government in failing to curb Hindutva oppressive forces that continue targeting the Muslim community even after three years, in not repealing laws introduced by the BJP government specifically to harass Muslims, in failing to provide adequate representation to Muslims within the party and government, and in protecting the state from the SIR measures currently being implemented by the Modi government allegedly to further marginalise Muslims. The organisation also warned of massive resistance if time-bound solutions were not provided.

Read reports on this initiative here and here.

In addition, various farmers’, workers’, Dalit, student-youth, women’s, transgender, slum dwellers’, and minority organizations have individually and collectively criticised several policies implemented by the Congress government over the last three years through their struggles and protests.

Taken together, all these constitute a public review of the Congress government’s three years in power.

At a time when the Congress government is celebrating its third anniversary with self-deception and self-indulgence, these public reviews must be used to examine the government’s promises. In particular, there is a need to remind people of the disillusionments experienced over the past three years regarding communal harmony, social justice, welfare of the poor, and development.

Communal Harmony or Soft Hindutva?

As soon as the Congress came to power, it had promised to consider banning the Bajrang Dal. But immediately after assuming office, the respected Home Minister performed a ceremonial foot worship (Padapooja) of Pejawar Swamiji, regarded as a spiritual patron of the Bajrang Dal, at  his  residence and declared that there was no proposal to ban the organization. According to studies, such organisations have been responsible for 270 communal incidents over the last three years. Whenever public pressure increased, the government merely registered FIRs and washed its hands of the matter.

On the other hand, in support of the saffronisation of the Baba Budan Dargah — considered one of the root causes for the BJP’s rise in Karnataka — the Congress government also agreed to appoint Vedic priests at the dargah! The anti-cow slaughter law and anti-conversion law introduced by the BJP government have still not been repealed. Only after suffering setbacks in the Davanagere by-election and realising that Muslims were prepared to organise warning conventions against the Congress despite all pressure, did the government reluctantly withdraw the hijab order.

Furthermore, as the West Bengal elections have reportedly made clear, the Election Commission’s implementation of SIR under Modi’s direction is primarily aimed at denying citizenship rights to Muslims. SIR is set to begin in Karnataka from June. Yet even on this issue, the Congress government’s stance appears mute indirectly helping SIR. After repeated perusal by the civil society organisations and protest movement on the streets, the cabinet met recently and deliberated about the SIR problems. Even though a larger meeting of the leaders of the Congress party and Minsiters has been scheduled to discuss the way in which it could intervene, it has been clubbed with the agenda of discussing upcoming Greater Bangalore Authority (GBA) and other local body elections. The Government is not even thinking of approaching the SC pleading to postpone the Third Phase of SIR until it settles the question of Unconstitutionality of the SIR or the question ill-intentioned Logical Discrepancy or the SC;s own promise of looking into specific issues where the SIR deletions is more than the margin of victory, which has happened in at least 83 constituencies all favouring BJP!

Behind all this lies not a commitment to communal harmony, but rather “soft Hindutva” — the fear that taking a stand for truth and justice may invite accusations of being anti-Hindu and result in losing Hindu votes.

Thus, the Congress government is not defeating the BJP. Instead, by continuing the BJP’s policies, it is helping the BJP to further its agenda. The Congress government is implementing BJP-style policies to such an extent that people may begin to wonder whether they elected Congress or BJP to power.

Social Justice or Injustice?

The deliberate delay in implementing the internal reservation policy, along with the manner of its implementation that allegedly harms the most oppressed communities, both serve as evidence that the Siddaramaiah government is continuing social injustice in much the same way as the BJP.

In particular, nomadic communities categorized as extremely backward were grouped within “Group C” alongside socially advanced touchable castes among Scheduled Castes, and allocated only 4.5% reservation, resulting in severe injustice. Although the law passed with BJP support during the Belagavi session created an additional internal reservation within Group C — reserving the fifth of the first five positions for nomadic castes — it also provided that if eligible candidates from nomadic communities were unavailable, those positions could be filled by touchable Scheduled Castes, thereby creating yet another layer of injustice.

Additionally, in the response prepared for submission to the court, the government reportedly argued that nomadic communities are socially as advanced as Lambani-Bhovi groups and therefore were included in Group C — a position described here as deeply unjust.

Beyond this, there continues to be neglect regarding implementing the much-needed internal reservation within the ST community and increasing the existing 17% reservation for Dalits to 24% along with constitutional protection for the same.

Although the Congress manifesto promised that resources for the guarantee schemes would be generated through development and administrative efficiency, none of this was done. Instead, every year ₹12,000–14,000 crore is being diverted from the SCSP-TSP fund — which was meant to reduce welfare and development disparities affecting SC and ST communities and the wider society — thereby worsening social injustice.

The Kantharaj Commission report, which was specifically constituted to ensure social justice, was withdrawn under pressure from socially dominant groups. Likewise, the newly constituted Nayak report has allegedly been prevented from being published.

All this, according to the writer, proves that the Congress government too is continuing the BJP’s deceptive policies regarding social justice.

Congress Government – BJP Bulldozer?

The demolition of the huts of the economically marginalised in both Kogilu and Thanisandra was carried out by the Congress government’s bulldozer. Across the country, it is BJP bulldozers that are rendering lakhs of poor people homeless, but in Karnataka the Congress has taken up that contract. Is there then really any difference between the BJP and Congress in this regard?

The bulldozer has become a symbol of the oppressive and anti-poor development model followed in this country. BJP governments use bulldozers treating people as though they are not even citizens, then classify the displaced as Hindu or Muslim to carry out communal politics. That is social injustice — uncivilised and inhuman.

However, even the Siddaramaiah government, which makes claims commitment to social justice, is running bulldozers overnight and pushing poor slum dwellers onto the streets. Street vendors are displaced to make way for luxury malls. Though slums lack drinking water, tunnel roads costing ₹24,000 crore are being built for car users. Through the Greater Bengaluru Authority, a city for the privileged is being created. For this, thousands of acres of farmers’ land in Devanahalli, Anekal, and Bidadi are sought to be forcibly acquired.

Even though lands acquired from farmers in Devanahalli were reportedly returned after protests, several deceptive and corporate-friendly conditions were imposed so that farmers would not remain complete owners of their land.

What difference exists between Modi’s corporate-driven “Developed India,” which legalizes encroachments by builders occupying over 25,000 acres in Bengaluru while criminalizing the poor living in tin sheds and huts, and Siddaramaiah’s “Greater Bengaluru” project for builders — apart from chanting the mantra of social justice?

Likewise, just as the BJP-led central government uses the NEP bulldozer to close down the government schools serving poor children in the remote villages in the name of ensuring excellence in few centres,  the Congress government in Karnataka is using the KPS (Karnataka Public Schools) as a  bulldozer to close down all government primary schools in the vicinity of 5-6 kms to act as feeder to the KPS schools.

If depriving children in remote villages of even basic literacy through the BJP’s NEP is injustice, does the same act become justice when the Congress government follows the same policy in the name of KPS?

A Socialist Land Grab?

On one hand, the Congress government has continued the BJP’s practice of forcibly acquiring fertile agricultural land from farmers for corporate interests. On the other hand, like the BJP, it has remained deaf for over a decade to the demands of landless and homeless people in this state.

Yesterday in Tumakuru, ministers proudly spoke about providing e-Pauti and land survey (darakhastu podi) records to farmers across the state. It is true that those who already possess at least some documentation may benefit from this scheme. But the Siddaramaiah government has rejected 3.4 million applications submitted by poor peasants and agricultural workers — many of whom have survived through bonded labour and tenant farming since Independence — seeking legal rights over the lands they cultivate and sites to build homes.

Despite the Karnataka government owning 1.11 crore acres of land, it refuses the demand to enact a law that would guarantee even one acre of land to landless farmers. Additionally, the Congress government has still not repealed the corporate-friendly APMC Amendment Act introduced by the BJP government.

How, then, is all this any different from the BJP’s position of “land to the wealthy instead of land to the tiller”?

Dissent Mukt Karnataka?

There is little doubt that the Modi government at the Centre seeks not merely a Congress-free India, but an opposition-free India by suppressing dissent. Even though the BJP currently rules at the Centre, it uses UAPA laws originally introduced during the UPA regime to imprison or eliminate dissenters.

But how is the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka fundamentally different?

While the Congress government grants permission to Sangh Parivar groups to conduct hate speeches and marches in every neighbourhood, lane, and street of Bengaluru, it tells protesting farmers in Devanahalli — because the area falls under the Bengaluru Commissionerate — that they cannot protest there and must instead demonstrate only at Freedom Park in Bengaluru, 40 kilometers away.

Even though the Congress party itself has taken a stand against Israel’s attacks on Palestine, the government denies permission even for peaceful protests demanding “No War, We Want Peace.”

During the Naxal surrender process, the Siddaramaiah government assured surrendered Naxals and the civil society groups mediating the process that it was committed to granting them immediate bail and livelihood support, claiming that the Congress government was different from the BJP. But even after one and a half years following this surrender, not only has bail not been granted, even a single case trial has not begun, and all of them continue to languish in prison.

Meanwhile, it is reported that in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, BJP governments have reportedly not continued cases against surrendered Naxals. Most of those who surrendered there have either been released without charges or are out on bail.

Similarly, the Congress government has not conducted the necessary investigation into the alleged inhuman killing of unarmed Naxal leader Vikram Gowda, nor punished those responsible. In effect, the Karnataka Congress government too is assisting the BJP’s project of creating a “Naxal-free India.” Furthermore, it is cooperating in body, speech, and spirit with the BJP’s dream of turning India into an authoritarian nation free of dissent.

This does not mean that the BJP is better than the Congress. Certainly not.

The BJP is the Nations’ Menace.
The Congress is Indians’ disappointment.

The BJP is the problem.
The Congress has so far not been the solution but a continuation of the problem.

Even when Siddaramaiah is Chief Minister,
the Congress government softly continues the BJP’s capitalist and Brahminical policies.

The BJP implements the same policies more aggressively.

So, in summary:

Congress and BJP are not One and the same.
But…
the difference is too narrow to pin people’s hopes on.

Therefore, merely changing parties in power will not improve people’s lives.

The illusion that fascism can be defeated through the Congress will not succeed.

At the very least, the past three years of the Siddaramaiah government should dispel that illusion.

To realise the constitutional ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the country needs another freedom struggle.

Without that, there will be no escape from fascism.

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The post Three Years of the Congress Government appeared first on SabrangIndia.

That belief is fragile. It can endure for generations and yet weaken quietly, not through dramatic rupture but through gradual shifts in political culture. Institutions may survive, elections may continue, constitutions may remain unchanged, yet the moral foundations of citizenship can erode. The outward form of democracy remains while its inner ethic changes. Secularism is often the first casualty of that transformation, because it is the principle that prevents the majority from confusing its cultural identity with the nation itself.

Secularism is often misunderstood as hostility to religion. In many plural societies, it has meant something more demanding: not the exclusion of religion from public life, but the refusal of the state to privilege one faith as the defining essence of the nation. Religious traditions may shape festivals, language, and collective memory. Public life may remain visibly religious. Yet the political order must preserve equal standing among communities. The state may engage with religions, but it cannot derive its legitimacy from any one of them.

The secular state did not emerge solely from abstract philosophy. It was born from historical exhaustion. Across Europe, centuries of confessional conflict taught societies that political order could not survive if sovereignty belonged to a single religious truth. The memory of the Thirty Years’ War, sectarian massacres, and religious empire produced a practical conviction: citizenship had to supersede creed. Secularism was therefore not conceived as irreligion, but as a political settlement after the discovery that sacred certainty could destroy civil peace.

In India, this insight emerged through a different tragedy. The Partition of India revealed that when religion became the basis of statehood, centuries of coexistence could collapse into mass displacement and violence. The republic that followed chose a radically different path. It refused to define the nation through a single faith despite the overwhelming numerical presence of one religious majority. Citizenship, not belief, became the formal basis of belonging.

That choice was historically remarkable. India was not a homogeneous nation-state but a civilizational mosaic of languages, castes, sects, tribes, and regions. The republic’s founders wagered that diversity could endure not by assimilation but by constitutional equality. Secularism in India, therefore, differed from the Western model of strict separation between church and state. Religion remained visible in public life, and the state often engaged with religious institutions. The principle was not exclusion but equal dignity among communities within a common civic order.

A Shared Inheritance

Indian Muslims are not a peripheral chapter in the story of India; they are among its principal authors. Across centuries, they have helped shape the country’s civilizational fabric through architecture, language, music, governance, scholarship, and commerce. The plural culture that defines much of the subcontinent emerged through sustained exchange among communities, and Muslims were central to that process. To narrate India without this inheritance is to tell only part of its story.

In independent India, this legacy evolved into nation-building. In science and public life, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam embodied the aspirations of a modern republic, shaping India’s missile and space programmes while inspiring generations. In education, Abul Kalam Azad laid the foundations of modern higher learning, while Zakir Husain deepened that vision through scholarship and public service. Leaders such as Rafi Ahmed Kidwai strengthened the early administrative and political architecture of the republic.

In business and industry, Azim Premji transformed Wipro into a global enterprise while redefining corporate philanthropy through education. Yusuf Hamied expanded access to affordable medicine through Cipla, making life-saving drugs widely available and reshaping public health equity.

The republic’s constitutional and institutional foundations also bear this imprint. M. Hidayatullah upheld constitutional continuity during uncertain times, while jurists such as A. M. Ahmadi and M. C. Chagla strengthened the judiciary and the republic’s legal philosophy. Fathima Beevi broke historic barriers as the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court judge. In diplomacy and public life, Asaf Ali represented India in its formative years, while Idris Hasan Latif rose to the highest ranks of national defence.

The symbolic and political foundations of the nation also reflect this shared authorship. Surayya Tyabji contributed to the design of India’s national flag, while her husband, Badaruddin Tyabji, belonged to a distinguished constitutional tradition. The freedom movement was shaped by powerful voices such as Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali, whose activism was deeply shaped by their mother, Abadi Bano Begum—one of the earliest and most forceful women’s voices of anti-colonial resistance. Alongside them, the reformist and aristocratic legacy associated with the Begum of Awadh represents another important strand of India’s layered political history.

Regional Muslim polities also contributed significantly to institutional and social development. The Nizam of Hyderabad presided over one of the most influential princely states. At the same time, the Begums of Bhopal created an enduring legacy of education, reform, and public welfare that shaped modern institutional culture.

In arts and culture, A. R. Rahman carried Indian music to global audiences, while Bismillah Khan elevated the shehnai into a classical concert instrument. Mohammed Rafi defined the emotional grammar of Hindi film music across generations. In cinema, Dilip Kumar redefined screen acting, while Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Salman Khan became defining figures of modern popular culture. Shabana Azmi, Waheeda Rehman, Naseeruddin Shah, and M. F. Husain further enriched India’s artistic imagination.

In literature and journalism, Qurratulain Hyder explored memory and migration; Khwaja Ahmad Abbas bridged journalism and cinema; M. J. Akbar shaped political commentary; while Rahi Masoom Raza, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, and Javed Akhtar expanded the moral and literary imagination of modern India.

Sport reflects the same shared legacy. Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Mohammad Azharuddin, Zaheer Khan, Mohammed Kaif, and Syed Mushtaq Ali shaped Indian cricket across generations. In hockey, Aslam Sher Khan, Mohammad Shahid, and Zafar Iqbal strengthened India’s global standing. Sania Mirza and Syed Modi extended that excellence into international sport.

The significance of these contributions lies not in isolated achievement but in their cumulative pattern—stretching across institutions, disciplines, and generations. Taken together, they show how Indian Muslims have helped build the republic’s scientific capacity, strengthen its democratic institutions, and enrich its cultural and intellectual life. Their presence is not episodic but structural, running through the very architecture of modern India.

The Slow Erosion of Equality

The crisis begins when the majority community ceases to see itself as one part of the nation and comes to regard itself as the nation’s authentic owner. At that point, the distinction between citizenship and cultural inheritance collapses. The nation is no longer understood as a legal community of equals but as the historical possession of one tradition. Minorities retain formal rights, yet their belonging becomes conditional. They are tolerated as residents rather than recognised as equal co-authors of the republic.

This process rarely announces itself as a rejection of democracy. It often advances through democratic means. Elections provide legitimacy. Popular majorities empower governments that claim to restore the historical rights of the majority community. Electoral success is then invoked as proof that the state should reflect the majority’s civilisational identity. Political disagreement becomes cultural betrayal. Opposition is framed not as dissent from government but as disloyalty to the nation itself.

The challenge in India lies less in formal dismantling than in a shift of national self-understanding. Public ceremonies, educational narratives, historical memory, and political rhetoric increasingly align the state with one civilisational story. The constitutional framework remains, yet its symbolic centre changes. A republic founded on equal citizenship risks becoming culturally graded.

Democratic decline seldom begins with the destruction of institutions; it begins with their moral repurposing. Courts may continue to function, universities may continue to teach, and elections may continue to be held. Yet the ethos that animates them shifts. Institutions begin to internalise the assumptions of majoritarian power. Bureaucracies enforce selectively. Public media amplify one narrative. Silence becomes political, because institutions that should resist instead learn to accommodate.

This transformation is not only legal but atmospheric. A society need not revoke rights to alter belonging. It can create insecurity through rhetoric, targeted policing, selective prosecution, and vigilante enforcement. Citizens remain equal before the law on paper, yet feel perpetually scrutinised. Their citizenship remains legal, but no longer emotionally secure. Fear becomes ambient, shaping how people move, speak, worship, and participate.

Memory, Myth, and Majoritarian Power

Such transformations affect institutions beyond minority rights. Universities, media, courts, and civil society depend on the principle that criticism is compatible with citizenship. When the majority’s identity fuses with the nation, dissent becomes suspect. Journalists are portrayed as enemies, scholars as subversive, activists as foreign agents. Institutions survive but lose independence because they are measured against loyalty to the majority’s historical self-image.

A central mechanism of this shift is the rewriting of memory. The majority is encouraged to see itself as historically wronged even while politically dominant. Ancient invasions, medieval empires, colonial humiliation, and modern political contests are woven into one narrative of civilisational injury. Historical complexity gives way to moral drama. The majority becomes the eternal victim whose dominance appears as delayed justice.

This politics of grievance is powerful because it converts dominance into victimhood. Once the majority believes itself threatened, measures that weaken minorities appear defensive. Restriction becomes protection. Exclusion becomes restoration. Citizens are invited to feel simultaneously powerful and aggrieved—heirs to greatness and victims of history.

Majoritarian politics thrives on mythic time. It collapses centuries into a single emotional present. Old conquests become current injuries. Long-dead rulers become contemporary enemies. Memory is mobilised not to understand the past but to authorise the present. In such narratives, reconciliation appears as surrender and pluralism as weakness.

Economic and technological changes intensify this dynamic. Urbanisation dissolves traditional forms of belonging. Economic inequality produces resentment. Social media accelerates the spread of rumours and symbolic conflicts. Political movements fuse cultural nationalism with development, welfare, and strong leadership. Citizens are offered not only economic aspiration but a story of civilisational recovery. The nation becomes an emotional project, and secular restraint begins to appear rootless or unpatriotic.

India and the Global Future of Plural Democracy

What makes secular decline especially dangerous is normalisation. It proceeds through repetition. What once provoked outrage gradually becomes ordinary. Inflammatory speech, selective policing, communal targeting, and symbolic exclusion cease to shock. Citizens adapt. Institutions accommodate the acceptable range of shifts. Democracy may preserve elections while losing the plural ethos that confers moral legitimacy on elections.

This crisis extends far beyond India. Across Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, majoritarian identities increasingly seek political expression as cultural entitlement. Immigration, demographic change, and economic anxiety create fertile ground for narratives of belonging and exclusion. The stranger becomes a political symbol. Citizenship becomes conditional on cultural conformity.

The global significance of India lies in scale and example. It is the world’s largest democracy and among its most diverse societies. If such a polity can sustain equal citizenship across profound civilizational differences, it strengthens the case for plural democracy everywhere. If it yields to cultural majoritarianism, it reinforces a darker proposition: that deep diversity ultimately requires one dominant identity to govern all others.

This pattern can be seen elsewhere. In Hungary, Turkey, Israel, and the United States, democratic legitimacy has increasingly been invoked to narrow constitutional pluralism. The challenge is no longer whether people can vote. It is whether majorities, after winning, can remain faithful to equality.

Secularism, therefore, matters not as a technical doctrine but as an ethical discipline. It asks the majority to accept restraint. It demands that numerical power not become moral entitlement. It insists that the stranger, the minority, and the dissenter are not outsiders but co-owners of the nation. That discipline is difficult because majoritarian politics offers emotional rewards: belonging, grievance, pride, and historical redemption.

The deeper crisis is moral. Secular democracy depends on a simple but demanding idea: that people can share a political future without sharing a single faith. It asks citizens to value equal rights above inherited hierarchy. It requires the state to treat difference not as a threat but as a condition of freedom.

A secular republic is not secured by courts alone, nor by constitutions, nor by ceremonial declarations of tolerance. It survives only when citizens accept a discipline more difficult than victory: the discipline of sharing power with those they did not choose, do not resemble, and may not fully understand.

When that ethic erodes, democracy may continue procedurally, but its soul changes. Citizenship survives in law but weakens in experience. Belonging becomes graded. The republic becomes a homeland for some and a conditional residence for others.

The siege of secularism is therefore not merely the rise of religious politics. Religion has always shaped public life. The deeper transformation occurs when the state ceases to mediate among communities and begins to embody one community’s historical self-image. At that point, the republic no longer belongs equally to its citizens. It becomes the inheritance of the majority, while others inhabit it by permission.

That is why the future of secularism remains a central question of the twenty-first century. It determines whether democracy can truly sustain equality amid big differences, or whether every plural society eventually yields to the oldest political instinct: that the majority alone owns the nation, and the rest belong only by grace.

…

Moin Qazi is an Indian author and development leader who advanced dignity-centred, community-led change. A pioneer of microfinance and grassroots institutions, he fused ethics with social innovation. With deep interdisciplinary scholarship, he bridged policy, justice, and lived realities. His legacy affirms ethical leadership and people’s agency as drivers of India’s progress…

Courtesy: The New Age Islam

The post The Faultlines In Secularism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

From the moment C. Joseph Vijay assumed power in Tamil Nadu, a well-oiled machinery of disinformation has been in overdrive. What distinguishes this particular misinformation wave from routine political spin is its structural character— it is not merely spontaneous enthusiasm from supporters, but an organised, multi-layered ecosystem comprising TVK-aligned influencer pages, meme networks, WhatsApp forwards, and, most alarmingly, mainstream commercial media houses that appear to have abdicated their basic editorial responsibility.

This is not simply a first-time entrant indulging in political cheerleading. This is a calculated attempt and systematic erasure of the DMK government’s policy legacy and its reattribution to a new administration that has, in many cases, not issued a single order, notification, or Government Order to justify the credit it is claiming. Interestingly, when the Modi 1.0 government came to power, a similar tool-kit was used by the Union government to appropriate previous government schemes through re-naming!

Case 1: The Phantom Government Order — Chairs in Revenue Offices

On May 16, 2026, a story swept across Tamil Nadu’s commercial media landscape: the Vijay-led TVK government had, in an act of compassionate governance, directed revenue department offices across the state to place chairs for citizens — so that the public would be made to sit before being attended to by officials. The story was framed as a landmark humanising reform, a signal of a “people’s government” in action.

TVK’s social media network amplified this with characteristic efficiency. Influencer pages shared it. Meme pages celebrated it. The news channels carried it.

There was one problem. The Government Order (GO) cited carried a date of May 15, 2025 — a full year before the TVK government came to power. It was a GO passed by the MK Stalin-led DMK government.

No correction was issued by most outlets. No clarification trended. The narrative had already done its work — lodging itself in public memory as a Vijay government initiative. The commercial media, which holds fact-checking as its foundational professional obligation, did not merely fail in that duty — it actively participated in the misattribution. Whether by editorial negligence or deliberate complicity, the outcome is the same: the public was deceived.

This is a textbook case of policy laundering — taking a prior government’s documented action, stripping it of its original context and authorship, and presenting it as fresh governance by a new regime.

Case 2: The TNPSC/SSC/IBPS Coaching Claim — Erasing the Naan Mudhalvan Legacy

The second case follows an identical pattern, and is arguably more egregious given the scale of the scheme being misappropriated.

Within days of the new government’s formation, news began circulating — again across both commercial channels and TVK’s social media architecture — that CM C. Joseph Vijay had directed the government to provide free coaching and training for competitive examinations including TNPSC, SSC, IBPS, and related government job entrance tests. The story was framed as a bold initiative to support Tamil Nadu’s youth in their aspirations for public sector employment.

The truth, however, is not merely different — it is extensively documented.

Naan Mudhalvan, launched under former Chief Minister MK Stalin, is one of the most significant skilling and career development schemes in Tamil Nadu’s recent history. Under this flagship programme, students have been receiving structured coaching for UPSC Civil Services, TNPSC, SSC, IBPS, and other competitive examinations for over three years. The results are not anecdotal — students trained under the Naan Mudhalvan Scheme have successfully cleared Civil Services examinations, with selections to the IAS, IPS, and allied services standing as verifiable testimony to the programme’s reach and effectiveness.

Naan Mudhalvan, a flagship skill development and competitive examination coaching scheme, was launched by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on March 1, 2022, implemented jointly by the Department of School Education and the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC), with the goal of skilling 10 lakh students annually by bridging the gap between academic learning and industry requirements. The scheme is not a vague or symbolic initiative — it has a dedicated institutional vertical for civil services aspirants. Under the Naan Mudhalvan Competitive Exams Vertical, 1,000 candidates are shortlisted every year through a screening test, receiving ₹7,500 per month for 10 months, along with access to full-time residential coaching at the All India Civil Services Coaching Center in Chennai and the Anna Centenary Civil Services Coaching Academies in Coimbatore and Madurai. The scheme also supports candidates beyond the preliminary stage: those who clear the UPSC Mains receive a financial assistance of ₹25,000, and those who advance to the Interview stage receive ₹50,000.

The results of this sustained, three-year institutional investment are not anecdotal. They are on public record. In the UPSC Civil Services Examination 2024, three Tamil Nadu candidates figured in the national top 50 ranks — B. Sivachandran at AIR 23, S. Subash Karthik at AIR 29, and R. Monica at AIR 39 — all three of whom were trained under the Naan Mudhalvan Competitive Exams Vertical. In total, 50 aspirants cleared the UPSC that year through the scheme, of whom 18 underwent full-time residential coaching and two cleared the examination in Tamil medium. Monica, who secured AIR 39, spoke directly about the scheme’s role in her success: “I first got trained in the Naan Mudhalvan scheme. They gave me an incentive, which was very useful. They also promised me financial assistance for attending the interview.” Sivachandran, who became Tamil Nadu’s state topper, was one of 19 candidates from the scheme to clear UPSC CSE 2024, with his success under the initiative making him a role model for future aspirants in the state. As per a report in DT Next.

The Naan Mudhalvan scheme, managed by the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation under IAS officer Innocent Divya, has so far impacted over 28 lakh students across the state. The scheme’s official portal — naanmudhalvan.tn.gov.in — carries all selection lists, scholarship notifications, and programme documentation publicly, with official PDFs dated and verifiable going back to 2023. As per a report in OneIndia.

None of this infrastructure, institutional memory, financial commitment, or track record was created after May 2026. It belongs, in its entirety, to the MK Stalin government’s tenure. To attribute it to a new administration that has yet to issue a single Government Order or policy notification on the matter is not a compliment to the new government — it is a theft of credit from the old one, executed in broad daylight, with the media as a willing accomplice.

CM C. Joseph Vijay has issued no Government Order, no Executive Directive, no administrative notification, and no new policy framework for any such initiative. The infrastructure, the funding, the institutional arrangements, and the track record all belong to the DMK government’s tenure.

Yet the story was spread — relentlessly, as the pattern demands — without a single outlet pausing to ask: Where is the GO? What is the budget allocation? Which new institutions have been created? What is the implementation timeline?

These are not difficult questions. They are the minimum threshold of journalism. Their absence reveals something important about the current media environment in Tamil Nadu.

Case 3: The Bus Driver Mobile Ban — 2022 Law, 2026 Headlines

On May 19, 2026, established commercial media outlets ran a breaking news graphic announcing that the Tamil Nadu government had ordered a ban on government bus drivers using mobile phones while on duty. Drivers keeping phones in their uniform pockets was prohibited. Violations would attract strict disciplinary action. It was presented as a fresh government directive.

The order is real. The government that passed it is not the current one.

This is a law that came into force in February 2022 — under Chief Minister MK Stalin’s government. Asianet News Tamil reported it in full on 7 February 2022, with identical content: a ban on government bus drivers using mobile phones while on duty, strict action for violations, issued by the Transport Department. The order is over four years old.

Established media outlets broadcast it on 19 May 2026 as current news — without a date check, without source verification, without the basic editorial step of asking whether this directive already existed. Whether this was careless journalism or deliberate reattribution is a question these outlets owe their audiences an answer to. Either way, the effect is the same: a four-year-old Stalin-era public safety order is laundered into the TVK government’s early governance record.

This is not an isolated lapse. It is the third documented instance — within the first two weeks of the TVK government — of existing policy being stripped of its origin and recycled as new. The chairs in revenue offices. The Naan Mudhalvan coaching scheme. And now, a bus driver mobile ban from 2022.

When media outlets with state-wide reach operate this way, are they making errors or making choices?

A Note on Responsible Journalism: The Hindu’s Intervention

When most regional commercial channels were either actively spreading or uncritically amplifying this misinformation flood, The Hindu chose a different path. Their video analysis titled “Vijay, TVK and the rise of fake political narratives | Focus Tamil Nadu” — presented by D. Suresh Kumar, Deputy Resident Editor, Tamil Nadu — directly examined the surge of viral claims, AI-generated images, recycled government schemes, and fake “historic firsts” being attributed to the new administration. Within 19 hours it had crossed 55,000 views and 3,745 likes — proof that a substantial audience in Tamil Nadu is actively hungry for honest journalism. They simply cannot find it when the overwhelming weight of commercial media is pointed in the opposite direction. Responsible journalism in this environment is a choice. The outlets that did not make that choice made a different one.

The PhD MLAs Claim

A statistic went viral claiming that the TVK legislature party includes 6 PhD holders and numerous engineers — presented as proof of an exceptionally educated, meritocratic legislature. The claim was shared widely and celebrated across TVK’s online network.

The nomination affidavit data filed with the Election Commission tells a completely different story. Of TVK’s 108 total winners, these are the official figures from their own affidavits:

In other words, 33% – 35% of TVK’s elected MLAs — more than one in three — have HSC or below as their educational qualification. This is not a criticism of those MLAs. Educational qualification is not the sole measure of a legislator’s worth, and many capable public representatives have risen from humble educational backgrounds. The criticism here is directed entirely at the TVK online network that fabricated a flattering but false picture — inflating PhD holders six-fold, and claiming 126 MLAs when the actual number is 108.

The affidavits are public documents. The data is freely available. The viral claim required only a basic check to disprove. Nobody in the TVK ecosystem bothered — or wanted — to make that check.

SC Candidates in General Constituencies

It was widely claimed that TVK fielded as many as 28 SC candidates in general constituencies — presented as a historic gesture of social justice. Election Commission data tells a different story. Only one SC candidate was fielded in a general constituency — in Shankarapuram — and that candidate did not win. The gap between 28 and 1 is not a rounding error. It is a fabrication.

Tamil Nadu’s “First Woman Minister”

Among the most brazenly false claims circulating is that the Vijay government has given Tamil Nadu its first woman minister. Tamil Nadu has had two women Chief Ministers — J. Jayalalithaa and Janaki Ramachandran. Women ministers have served in Tamil Nadu’s cabinet since before Independence — including Rukmani Lakshmipathi and Jothi Venkatachalam. Sathiyavani Muthu aka Annai Sathiyavani Muthu have been in the cabinets of Arignar Anna and Kalaignar Karunanidhi. Even in the 16th LA led by MK Stalin, had Geetha Jeevan, Kayalvizhi Selvaraj in the cabinet. To claim a “first” here is not ignorance. It is an erasure of women who actually broke those barriers, decades before the TVK government existed.

SC Ministers and the “First” Portfolio Claim

It has been claimed that for the first time, a key portfolio like Education has been assigned to a Dalit Minister under Vijay’s government. This erases an entire history. Kakkan held the Home Ministry under Karmaveer Kamaraj’s cabinet. Parithi Ilamvazhuthi served as Deputy Speaker in Kalignar Karuanidhi’s regime. Dhanabal served as Speaker in J Jayalalitha’s regime. Kovi Chezhian, Madhivendhan held Higher Education and Forest & Tourism in MK Stalin’s government. Dalit leaders have held some of Tamil Nadu’s most consequential portfolios across multiple governments. Presenting this as a TVK first is not a celebration of Dalit representation — it is a falsification of the very history that Dalit political leaders fought to create.

The Chief Minister’s Grievance Portal — 25 Years Old

The CM’s helpline and online grievance portal has been presented as a Vijay government innovation. In reality, the Chief Minister’s Special Cell portal has been operational for over 25 years — serving citizens through DMK, AIADMK, and DMK governments alike. It predates TVK as a political organisation.

The Panic Button in Buses

The installation of panic buttons in buses for women’s safety has been projected as the fulfilment of a Vijay election promise — a new initiative, a new protection. Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) buses already have this facility operational. It was not invented by this government. It was inherited by it.

Still there are many more cases of such misinformation flooding, these are just examples.

The Structural Problem: When Media Becomes a Propaganda Relay

What we are witnessing is not a series of isolated errors. It is the normalisation of a post-verification media culture — one in which the virality of a claim, and its alignment with a dominant political mood, substitutes for the basic act of checking.

Several dynamics are at work here:

The Influencer-to-Mainstream Pipeline: Stories originate or are seeded — often without sourcing, often without documents — published by commercial media outlets looking for content that will generate engagement. By the time a GO is checked (if it ever is), the story has already circulated widely.

The Asymmetry of Correction: Misinformation spreads at the speed of sharing. Corrections, when they come, travel far slower and reach far fewer people. Media organisations that run false stories without correction are effectively choosing which version of reality reaches the public.

The Erasure of the DMK Record: Taken together, these stories form a coherent — if dishonest — narrative project: the systematic de-legitimisation of MK Stalin’s governance legacy and its absorption into the political identity of his successor. This is not incidental. Tamil Nadu has real, substantive policy achievements from the DMK years — in health, education, skilling, and social welfare — that deserve accurate attribution, both as a matter of historical record and democratic accountability.

A Note on Methodology

The cases documented here are not drawn from partisan counter-claims. They are verifiable through publicly available Government Orders on the Tamil Nadu government’s official portal, scheme documentation for Naan Mudhalvan, and the dates on the documents that the media itself published without reading carefully enough to notice the year.

Fact-checking in this context requires nothing more than reading the date on a document before broadcasting its contents. That this basic step was skipped — repeatedly, across multiple outlets — tells us everything we need to know about the current state of accountability journalism in Tamil Nadu.

Conclusion: The Chaos

The cases documented in this article are not exhaustive. They are representative. In the first two weeks of the TVK government alone, the recycled orders, misattributed schemes, unverified claims, and prematurely declared victories flooding Tamil Nadu’s media and social media landscape has been relentless. For every case fact-checked here, dozens more circulated unchallenged. So the question must be asked: is this a pattern? And if it is a pattern, who benefits from it?

In the digital era, misinformation is no longer merely a by-product of poor journalism. When a four-year-old GO becomes today’s headline, when a circular becomes a solved problem, when an announcement becomes a delivered promise — is that carelessness? Or is it architecture? When the same type of misattribution repeats itself across multiple issues, across multiple platforms, within the same two-week window, can we still call it coincidence?

The chaos that this kind of information flooding creates is worth examining carefully. When citizens cannot reliably distinguish what is real from what is recycled, what is new from what is four years old, what is promised from what is delivered — what happens to their ability to hold a government accountable? If the information environment is engineered to confuse rather than clarify, is democratic accountability even possible? Can you demand delivery on a promise if you have already been told, by a thousand voices simultaneously, that it has been delivered?

And here is the question that must be asked without flinching: have we not seen this playbook before? The systematic flooding of the information space with noise, the weaponisation of digital networks to manufacture consent, the deliberate blurring of the real and the fabricated — is this not precisely the strategy that the RSS-BJP machinery has deployed at the national level? Is this not how a government presiding over real failures continues to project an image of historic achievement? Is this not how legitimate criticism gets drowned, how democratic accountability gets quietly suffocated while the forms of democracy are preserved?

If the answer is yes — and the evidence increasingly points that way — then the next question is perhaps the most uncomfortable of all. A party that carries the intellectual and moral inheritance of Periyar and Ambedkar: is this the tradition it intends to honour? Periyar’s foundational demand was simple — think for yourself. Question authority. Refuse to be deceived. Ambedkar’s constitutional vision rested entirely on an informed, critically conscious citizenry as the only real safeguard of democracy. A political culture that actively works to prevent people from thinking clearly — is that carrying their legacy forward? Or is it dismantling it from within?

Democracy requires an informed public. When the distance between citizens and truth is deliberately widened, when people are kept away from what their government has actually done and not done — how can we expect any government to remain ideologically moral and accountable? And if we cannot expect accountability, what exactly are we left with?

The people of Tamil Nadu — and the democratic forces that wish to raise real issues, real failures, real demands — deserve an information environment in which truth has room to stand. The question is: who is responsible for ensuring that it does? And are they doing their job?

(The author is an independent Tamil journalist with YouTube channels, Peralai, AranSei)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

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In this wider context, therefore, this attempt, “India Economic & Social Justice Report 2025”, authored by none less than Professor K S Chalam, former Vice Chancellor, Dravida University, Andhra Pradesh and former Member, Union Public Service Commission, Chairman, Institute for Economic and Social Justice, Vishakhapatnam, is both significant and path-breaking. This report analyses the historical, constitutional, and socio-economic landscape of justice in India, with a specific focus on marginalised communities. This report is first of its kind to measure and indicate where both the Union and State governments stand in providing constitutional guarantees of Justice –both economic and social— equally and to all citizens of the country. Inspired by Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), this report has examined several indictors to determine the Economic and Social Justice Index.

Finally, it has fixed following three dimensions.

1: MPCE (monthly per capita expenditure) per family, among Scheduled Castes to signify economic Justice. (The MPCE for ST is not produced because, states the author, it reflects the same trend).

2: Atrocities committed on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe population published by NCRBI

3. Human rights violations as recorded by NHRC are considered for estimating the Index.

The report has followed a statistical method on the lines of UNDP’s HDI. The report presents data for two periods 2011 and 2023. It is surprising to find states that are economically proactive are socially regressive in protecting the SC and ST populations; as a result, the overall ranks of ESJI are getting depressed over a period of time for such states. The report provides data and information on castes, sub castes of SC, ST and OBC population by states with caste wise data on education, economic status, reservations etc given in the Appendix. This analytical appraisal under pioneering concepts reviewing 75 years of the implementation of the Constitution is both profoundly innovative and also, bold.

The text begins with highlighting the concept of “Justice” in the Indian Constitution noting that it was heavily influenced by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who served as the Chairman of the Drafting Committee.  The report cited how Ambedkar argued in the Constituent Assembly that social and economic justice could only be achieved through a socialistic economy, including the nationalisation of land and industry. The Preamble places “Justice—social, economic, and political” as its first element, signalling its role as the ultimate goal of the Republic.  The report emphasises that democracy in India is a “top dressing” on an undemocratic soil, requiring the cultivation of constitutional morality to overcome historical cultures of inequality as its back drop.

The report contrasts Western theories of justice with the Indian social reality of the caste system.  It discusses John Rawls’s “Justice as Fairness” and Amartya Sen’s critique, which utilises the Indian concepts of niti (organizational propriety) and nyaya (realized justice). The text argues that Western libertarian and liberal theories often fail to account for the “caste mode of production” and the “Composite Index of Discrimination” (CID) inherent in Indian society. To assess the achievements and limitations of the Constitution during the last 75 years of its operation, the report identified the instruments and institutions of justice with which they can be interrogated the transactions both in the legislature and in the judiciary. Given the limitations of the scope of the study, it broadly discusses the instruments of justice as legal documents, including Acts, Rights, Rules, Property, Budget provisions, Atrocity rates, Gini Co-efficients etc.

The institutions of Justice in India can be identified as the judiciary, civil society, market, and state represented by the proceedings of Parliament/Assembly and not necessarily the private institutional structures, as the report is concerned here with public documents: the Constitution and Government Reports .The process of delivering or dispensing social justice through the passing of various Acts, such as the SC ST (prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, including the Protection of Civil Rights Act (prevention of Untouchability) 1955, 1976, and the judicial interpretations or interventions over a period of 70 years, is termed ‘a saga of social justice drama in India’. The report opines that the appointment of the SC, ST, Minorities and Backward Classes commissions indicate the government’s intentions and obligations as per the mandate of the Constitution. However, the imagined constitutional objectives of social justice seem to have not been realized due to litigation. The issue of social justice as part of the routine prevention of untouchability cases is not limited to the broad understanding of the term Dalit at the all-India level and goes beyond. The report brings out a significant fact that some of the untouchables of North India like in UP, Bihar etc are listed as Scheduled castes there and are recorded as Backward Classes (BCs) in South India. It is difficult; the report agrees to understand the social categories without looking at the evolution of each caste group in the social history of India. The report however, has not gone deep in to that dimension here.

The first part of the report examined various aspects of each dimension, namely the Economic and Social measures of justice. After identifying the dimensions, the data was normalised. In the second stage, the indicators for economic justice, consisting of monthly per capita expenditure are considered. The maximum and minimum values of each dimension were obtained from the internal dimensions of the factors considered. For example, the four categories of social groups SC, ST, OBC, and others for which data are made available have been tested as to which group was the most deprived in terms of their mean values, and the group with the least value was used for the calculation of the indicator (the data are given in the appendix Tables not in the text). As noted above, the economic dimension of MPCE adequately explains literacy; therefore, it is dropped at the stage of calculating the index. Finally, the ESJI is arrived at by combining the three dimensions and dividing it by 1 by 3 to arrive at the average and subtracting the value from 1 to arrive at the comprehensive index. The ESJI value indicates deprivation, with zero indicating absolute justice and one indicating Absolute Injustice or Deprivation.

The significant finding of the report is estimation of Wealth Stolen from Native Indians including ‘Untouchables and lower (depressed) castes’ who suffered the loss of lands cleared and cultivated by them. These were ultimately stolen by the traivarnikas[1] with the support of the state, argues the report Native Indians have remained landless and poor. Yet, they were the ones who were involved in the production process and created wealth. The report obtained data from the Madison study on the World GDP and GDP for India from the year 0 to 1973 as published by OECD. The data was used to arrive at the contribution of ‘lower (depressed) castes’ to India GDP and its proportion in the World economy. It is surprising to find that one fourth of the Wealth of the World was created by these ‘depressed’ castes of India amounting to around $ 25 billion in the year 0 and this figure could have reached $ 25 trillion cumulatively by the end of 1000 AD known as the age of conflicts and regional satraps. The Report notes (observes) that a vast portion of India’s historical wealth was created by depressed (lower) castes but appropriated by “non-productive groups”. The report has cited the Oxfam Report on India 2025 to show that the amount of colonial plunder of the British India is almost equal to the amount estimated to have been stolen by the upper castes from Dalits and Bahujans. This is a very important statistic that might, in future, lead to probing debates across activist groups.

A significant portion of the text is dedicated to the unequal distribution of assets and wealth.  Historically, Dalits (Scheduled Castes) were forbidden from owning land, gold, or weapons. As of 2015-16, the average land holdings of Scheduled Castes have dropped to 0.78 hectares, and roughly 58% of them remain landless at all India. The author of the report introduces the concept of “Caste-Based Cronyism,” arguing that modern economic liberalisation has primarily benefited the “Dvija” (upper-caste) groups through Multi-Caste Corporations (MCC), effectively recreating Varnashrama Dharma in the 21st century.

Social Injustice is measured in terms of the atrocities data for SC and ST obtained from the NCRB reports. It is noted that despite Article 17 of the Constitution, the report notes a sharp rise in atrocities. NCRB data shows atrocities on Dalits increased from 17,667 in 1990 to 53,886 in 2020, more than threefold raise.  In the context of women empowerment as part of Social Justice the text of the report recognizes the “Founding Mothers” of the Constitution (e.g., Sarojini Naidu, Amrit Kaur) who fought for women’s rights and the Hindu Code Bill against “blatant sexism” in the Assembly. The judiciary is critiqued for its “non-representative character,” with allegations that it remains influenced by a small number of elite families (as reported by Prof Mark Gallanter etc.), often leading to the acquittal of those accused of atrocities against Dalits implying that it did not result in reducing the intensity of injustice. Apart from the NCRB data, the report makes use of the NHRC data on human rights violations recorded by caste and state to arrive at the Economic and Social Justice Index.

The report proposes a new quantitative tool, the ESJI, inspired by the UNDP’s Human Development Index. This is calculated using the three dimensions: MPCE: Monthly Per Capita Expenditure of SC households, SC and ST Atrocities: Rates recorded by the NCRB per lakh of population and Human Rights Violations: Cases recorded by the NHRC.  The index aims to provide a measurable “deprivation index” where a value of zero indicates absolute justice and one indicates absolute injustice.  The report concludes that while the Constitution provides a mandate for justice, institutional structures—particularly the judiciary and the market have failed to gift justice to the victims and the same have largely helped to reinforce traditional caste-based inequalities rather than dismantling them.

The report notes that Justice is not quantifiable, but its impact can be envisaged in terms of the dimensions through which it affects the human condition. There are several measures developed and used to state the economic circumstances of the people like the PQLI (Physical Quality of Life) Index constructed by ODA in the 1970s. There are other indices that are now being used to quantify and analyse human quality of life, economic and social development indicators along with the aggregate concept of GDP, HDI etc. Against this background, the objective of this report as claimed by the author is to determine where Economic and Social Justice, as defined in the text, stands at different periods of time in India. The values are arranged such that the highest value indicates more deprivation and the lowest value nearing zero indicates perfect justice. The ESJI was 0.212 in 2011 and climbed to 0.305 in 2023. This means that economic and social justice deprivation has almost doubled over 12 years in India.

Economic and social justice are interdependent, complimentary and it is only a comprehensive approach that will tremendously help India grow. Such ‘growth’ is simply not possible unless the fruits of development reach the most marginalised sections. The report examines state wise indicators in terms of the above-mentioned dimensions and found the major former BIMARU states, Bihar, U.P, Rajasthan that are being touted now as improving in terms of economic indicators like per capita income or expenditure, are however consistent in getting higher ranks of deprivations except U.P that records minor change.

In 2011, the ESJI of Bihar was 0.141, M.P 0.184, Rajasthan 0.225 and U.P 0.510. The ESJI for 2023 for Bihar is 0.281, M.P 0.412, U.P 0.443 and Rajasthan 0.433. Uttar Pradesh (UP) that had an index of 0.443 in 2011 has the highest rank among the states now and has lowered its value to 0.470. Rajasthan with 0.480 has replaced U.P in the dubious position of highest rank in 2023.  These five states are listing as the better performing West Bengal 0.040, Assam 0.041, Chhattisgarh 0.074, Tamil Nadu 0.099, Punjab 0.101 and Maharashtra 0.107 in 2011. The same states remained as better though their ranks have altered. In 2023 Assam with 0.077, West Bengal 0.110, Chhattisgarh 0.112, Jharkhand 0.167 and Punjab 0.162 are found to be in a better position with lower ranks. Interestingly Jharkhand a predominantly tribal state joined the ranks of better performed states in 2023 and Maharashtra slid down one mark in its rank.

Among the South Indian states, the ranks of Andhra Pradesh in 2011 was 13 with 0.196, Kerala with 0.317 in 16^th rank were among the lowest five ranks. It is noted that in 2023 Telangana joined the ranks of lowest performing states with 0.380 at the 20th rank and Andhra Pradesh has improved its rank with a value of 0.285. The ranks and values of ESJI are given for all the states and Union Territories are given in the Appendix to the Report.

The author is very pragmatic in accepting the limitations of the study: restrictions in data and the inadequacies of reports of the government for an all-India study of this nature.   However, the estimated indices to quantify and explain how India is performing in terms of the Constitutional objectives of Economic and Social Justice is a first rigorous endeavour and commendable. With all these limitations, this is an excellent report with useful parameters and matrix on economic, social and other related issues. These tables and data are presented in the Appendix of Tables for reference to assist scholars and activists and lead them towards compiling more such indices.

The report is not a simple exercise of research and reflection. The exercise reveals the author’s commitment to the most marginalized peoples, Constitutional categories of persons that were promised justice, economic and social about 75 years ago and who have suffered betrayal for decades since. This section is also the major segment of our population.

The study is not just presentation of figures and statistical tables to substantiate the arguments, but the sheer writing —sentences with emotions carried through the paragraphs reflect the agony and despair the author experienced both as a scholar and perhaps as a silent worker. Frankly speaking, much has been talked about Human Development Reports but they fail to take into account Caste discrimination and other systematic deprivations that are both social as well as political.

Prof K.S.Chalam should be applauded for the effort of producing such a report despite acute hardships of access, especially because most of data relied upon is institutional data. It is also important that the publication of such/similar reports becomes an annual feature to assist and guide policy makers who frame policies for the widest sections of Indians.

We hope that NITI Ayog and other important institution both at the Centre as well as in the states will benefit from these reports and encourage each state to engage with such an approach to publish HDIs on social, economic and political justice. The Institute for Economic and Social justice along with Prof Chalam’s vast experience in socio-economic and political economy studies should continue this exercise and bring in greater nuances into the public debate. The report is an important step in that direction.

Pre-launch orders (before May 31, 2026 are discounted and the price for the single copy is at Rs 400 including postage charges during this period) Contact for copies: Email: Chalamks@hotmail.com

[1] Traivarnikas (or Traivarṇika) is a Sanskrit term referring to the members of the three upper classes (varnas) in traditional Hindu society: the Brahmins (priests/scholars), Kshatriyas (warriors/rulers), and Vaishyas (merchants/traders); the term translates directly to “those of the three colors” or “three classes.” It serves to group these three communities together and distinguish them from the Shudras (laborers) and Avarnas (those considered outside the traditional four-fold Varna system).

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