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The court has spoken. The highest court of the land, that is. And it is music to the ears of anyone who believes in the equality of law. And does not pander to the sectional interests of the populace only to hoodwink them out of the votes every election. The entire secularist class, which has made a mockery of the Constitution only in order to fool the minorities into believing that it is their only well-wisher, ought pore over the Supreme Court verdict in the John Vallamattom case. The three-member bench, comprising Chief Justice V. N. Khare, Justice S. B. Sinha and Justice A. R. Lakshmanan, has once again stressed that " a common civil code would help the cause of national integration by removing contradictions based on ideologies." The court regretted the lack of a uniform civil code and went on to say that " Parliament is still to step in for framing a common civil code even after 50 years of independence.
The court was hearing a petition challenging the tenability of a provision in the Christian personal law which bars a person from bequeathing his property and other assets to a religious or charitable trust. The said provision under Section 118 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, was held irrational and arbitrary and therefore violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. Article 14 consecrates the principles of equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the Union of India. Section 118 of the ISA was applicable only to Christians and provided that "no man having a nephew or niece or any nearer relative shall have power to bequeath any property to religious or charitable uses, except by a will executed not less than 12 months before his death and deposited within six months from its execution in some place provided by law for safe custody of the will of living persons." The Christian priest, Vallamattom, had challenged the constitutionality of the said Section of the ISA.
The apex court pointed out that Article 44 specifically enjoined upon the State to " secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India." Articles 25 and 26 guaranteed freedoms of conscience and profession and trade and practice and propagation of religion, but these could not be employed to protect laws like the one enshrined in Section 118. " Any legislation which brings succession and like matters of secular character within the ambit of Articles 25 and 26 is a suspect legislation", their lordships asserted. Further, the bench pointed out that India being a signatory to the Declaration on the Right to Development adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights and being a party to the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it could not justify differential treatment for any religious group. Thus, Section 118 of the ISA was irrational, arbitrary and violative of Article 14. In sum, the highest court in the land has yet again panned the legislature and the executive for failing to frame a common civil code dealing with marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession, etc.
Admittedly, this was the first time the court had expressed itself so clearly in favour of a uniform civil code. Back in 1985 in the Shah Bano case too the court had said that such a code would " help the cause of national integration by removing disparate loyalties to law which have conflicting ideologies." Then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had undone the effect of the verdict through legislation, leading to an outcry by the BJP and other like-minded groups which saw in the move the pseudo secularist ploy to appease the communal minority groups. However from the early reactions of the politicians to Wednesday's verdict it seems that they have not learnt any lessons from their faux pas over the Shah Bano case. ( Rajiv Gandhi opened the gates of the disputed mosque in Ayodhya leading eventually to its destruction a few years later but failed to undo the damage he had done to the nation's secular fabric by reversing the SC verdict in the Shah Bano case.)
That Marxist loudspeaker, Somnath
Chatterjee, has accused the apex court of interfering in "every matter"
and has expressed his disagreement with the court's verdict. Enlightened
Muslims in their heart of hearts are bound to be in full agreement with
the Supreme Court, regardless of what the mullahmadrasa network shouts
from the housetops. As for the Congress Party, it is undecided as to how
to react, for the petitioner was a Christian priest who had challenged
Section 118 of the ISA and the verdict was in favour of a uniform civil
code which is a red rag to the fundamentalist Muslims. Predictably, the
BJP was happy that its long-time demand had yet again been endorsed by
the highest court in the land. That should see the secularists gang up
and raise a shindy against any move to deny the minorities a special footing
in the law for in the lexicon of our secularists minority appeasement is
the name of the electoral game.
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