Monday, December 4, 2006

Indian Constitution

Indian constitution's preamble that preaches democracy, sovereignty and secularist society is getting diluted day by day.

a) By introducing a ban on cow slaughter, the politicians are trying to directly affect the beef eaters’ right to live and their LIBERTY of thought & expression. How can a government control what people can and can not eat? Slaughtering of animals in general should be welcome but not a particular animal. In my purview, drinking cow's milk and using dairy products is crueler than eating beef. How good can it make to use cow’s secretion than eating its meat? At least the animal is dead when people eat it. Is this a political gimmick to attract Hindu votes, or the pressure from a specific Hindu group, or to respect a specific religion? In any of the cases, it pacifies a specific set of people in the name of a religion, which violates our constitution. Can these politicians give a single reason for banning “cow slaughtering alone” that does not have an explicit impact to a religion?

b) Our forefathers invented reservation to uplift a specific set of people. But now it is the biggest tool to exploit people by the political parties. In my opinion the generic intent of "Right to equality” negates the provision of "Reservation". If an Indian citizen has a specific set of rights as prescribed by the constitution, the same constitution can not give additional rights to another set of people because of their social/economic status. The watchword “Everyone is equal in the eyes of law”, is explicitly overridden by providing reservation. Most of the political parties have their business enclosed with an eye on reservation. Otherwise we would not have seen an extension to the reservation system every 10 years after the initial provision expired. As per our constitution, at one point the reservation has to come to a full stop. Will any political party talk about that? Moreover, the US constitution, which is far older and much considerate than ours, does not provide a special right in form of "Reservation". Even after the civil war, US did not introduce a special right to a specific set of people and recently the US Supreme Court struck down a guideline by a university that gave additional points in its grading system for African American citizens.

c) “Right to freedom of religion & worship” is again misused by the society. Most schools/colleges in our country still conducts a "prayer" session which violates the right to worship for a specific set of students, who does not belong to the religion to which the prayer session is conducted. These institutions not only can force the students to attend a prayer session, but they don't even have the basic right to "initiate" a prayer session in an education environment. Certain schools in our country even enforce a religious dress code to its students. And some schools have in-built temples, churches and mosques within the school campus. Contrary to this, in TamilNadu there are certain educational institutions that are affiliated to self-respect groups (who does not believe in god and religion) forces students not to perform/enjoy any religious activity by not providing holidays on gazette holidays. Religious activities should be left alone to the religious institutions and educational institutions should not preach religion. Again, I have to take a note from the US constitution; none of the educational institutions in the US have the basic right to “initiate” a minimal religious activity, even if they are affiliated to a religious institution.

1 comment:

Driver said...

I am not sure that you are completely correct in quoting US schools not initiating religion in education.
Note the mission statement of Catholic Schools in the US.