Constitution Bench declines to go into Hindutva verdict

The Supreme Court has declined social activist Teesta Setalvad’s plea to check the “devastating consequences” of its 1995 judgment that Hindutva or Hinduism is a “way of life” and has nothing to do with “narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry”.

Court Observations:

• A seven-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur, clarified that the Supreme Court is now examining only what constitutes corrupt electoral practice under Section 123 (3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
• The court said it would not be going into the larger issue of whether Hindutva meant the Hindu religion.

What is in the Plea?

Ms. Setalvad; theatre activist and author Shamsul Islam; and senior journalist Dilip Mandal appealed to the Bench that the interpretation given in the December 11, 1995 judgment by Justice J.S. Verma had led to “Hindutva becoming a mark of nationalism and citizenship”.

Previous Judgement on Hindutva:

Justice Verma had concluded in 1995 that “no precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Hinduism’; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian culture and heritage”.

• Classifying Hindutva as a way of life of the people in the sub-continent, he dismissed the idea of equating the abstract terms Hindutva or Hinduism with the “narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry”.