Authoritarian movements depend on political religions — not least in America

(RNS) — On Election Day 2024, one is on offer.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Rocky Mount Event Center, Oct. 30, 2024, in Rocky Mount, N.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Mark Silk
October 31, 2024


(RNS) — From Russia and Hungary to Turkey and India to the U.S. of A., actual and wannabe authoritarians make a practice of imbuing their movements with religious significance, in a way that identifies them with the sacred dimension of their nations.

All nation-states sacralize themselves to some degree. In the U.S., texts from the Declaration of Independence to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” are treated as holy, and Washington is littered with temples and shrines, from the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and the U.S. Supreme Court to the various war memorials. Not to mention our military sites — the battlefield at Gettysburg, the Valley Forge camp and above all the burial grounds for those who served in the armed forces such as Arlington National Cemetery.

We have come to call this civil religion, defined by the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile as “the conceptual category that contains the forms of sacralization of a political system that guarantee a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power, and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods.” In Gentile’s view, “civil religion respects individual freedom, coexists with other ideologies, and does not impose obligatory and unconditional support for its commandments.”


This civil religious inclusivity helps explain why we ban partisan political activity in U.S. military cemeteries — a ban Donald Trump was widely regarded as having violated in August, when he visited Arlington with family members of military personnel killed in the United States’ 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The headline on a column by USA Today’s Marla Bautista read, “Trump’s appalling desecration of Arlington National Cemetery shows he still can’t be trusted.”

Only something sacred can be desecrated.

The opposite of civil religion is what Gentile calls “political religion”: “the sacralization of a political system founded on an unchallengeable monopoly of power, ideological monism, and the obligatory and unconditional subordination of the individual and the collectivity to its code of commandments.” Political religion is therefore “intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and it wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life.”

A historian of fascist Italy, Gentile is above all interested in the expressly secular totalitarianisms of the mid-20th century. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, he argues, constructed fascism, Nazism and communism as national political religions to some extent modeled on familiar religious beliefs and forms.

Civil religion and political religion à la Gentile are, to be sure, ideal types. A civil religion can have aspects of a political religion, and a political religion may likewise incorporate civil religious forms.

Thus, with the onset of the Cold War, American civil religion was expressed so as to exclude atheistic communists. The addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 was explicitly intended to differentiate the U.S. from the Soviet Union and its godless supporters, as was the designation of “In God We Trust” as the national motto two years later.

The Air Force Academy chapel in Colorado Springs, Colo. 

(Photo by Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

A quintessential expression of that moment is the Air Force cadet chapel in Colorado Springs, Colorado, built in 1959. It is, in form, a militarized version of a Christian church — an apparent expression of political religion. But it is very much an expression of the civil religion of the times in featuring separate Protestant, Catholic and Jewish chapels inside.

Contrast this with the cathedral of the Russian military, consecrated in 2020: a Russian Orthodox church with no nod to religious inclusion in a country that is only 40% Russian Orthodox and where fewer than half the citizens consider themselves Christians of any sort. It perfectly expresses the alliance Russian President Vladimir Putin has made with Russian Patriarch Kirill, harking all the way back to the linkage of church and state in the Byzantine Empire.

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, center, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, at the consecration of the Cathedral of Russian Armed Forces outside Moscow, June 14, 2020. (Oleg Varov, Russian Orthodox Church Press Service via AP)

A mini-me version of Putin’s political religion has been cooked up by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who governs with the idea of “illiberal democracy” — a nice term for populist authoritarianism. Presenting Orbán with the “gold degree” of the Order of St. Sava, Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije praised him for “defending Christianity.” Orbán “fights for the soul of Europe,” the patriarch said. Replied the prime minister, “We are peaceful people, we want peace, but there is indeed a war for the soul of Europe, and without Christian unity – including Orthodoxy – we cannot win this battle.”

Such use of religion can look like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s incorporation of Islam into his own authoritarian regime. The difference is that where Erdogan’s Islamism serves to appeal to Turkey’s sizable conservative Muslim population, the Christianism (to put it that way) of Putin and Orbán has no significant religious grassroots constituency, but seems all about rebuilding a postcommunist authoritarian ideology. In the case of Hungary, it resists at once immigration (from Muslim countries) and the pluralistic liberal culture of Western Europe.

How religious constituencies function under authoritarian regimes depends, of course, on how they view those regimes, and vice versa. A half-century ago, Shiite Muslims protested against the authoritarian Shah of Iran, who sought a connection to the glory days of the pre-Islamic Persian Empire. In 1979, these turned into parades supporting the authoritarian regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which promoted Islamic legal authority as the basis for a theocratic political religion.

A different kind of switching sides occurred in Myanmar, where religious power resides in the community of Buddhist monks. In 2007, the monks denied legitimacy to the military regime by refusing to accept its alms — symbolically represented by “turning over” their begging bowls. The regime yielded but reestablished its power via a genocidal campaign to rid the country of the Muslim minority Rohingya, in which anti-Muslim monks played an ideological role.

Meanwhile, hostility to Islam has been at the center of the Hindu nationalism successfully advanced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Its ideology of Hindutva has generated a postsecular political religion that builds on hostility to Muslims in India dating to the Moghuls.

In America, meanwhile, Donald Trump’s incorporation of a form of Christianity into his MAGA movement is personified by his principal spiritual adviser Paula White, a Pentecostal pastor who has praised Trump as “chosen by God to protect religious values.”

White has been strongly influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation, a politically ambitious collection of charismatic Christians who are the subject of “The Violent Take It by Force,” an important new book by Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. Credited with providing Christian nationalists with their marching orders, the NAR should be understood as promoting a political religion based on Christian supremacy summed up in the so-called Seven Mountains Mandate.

The mandate holds that Christians should ascend to dominion over the “mountains” of contemporary culture: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. As Taylor puts it in describing one of the movement’s leaders, while he “speaks the language of democracy and justice and constitutional rights, his ultimate vision is a retrenchment from democracy in the church and society.”

I don’t want to suggest that the MAGA movement is all about establishing the NAR political religion. But there’s no question that NAR ideas have spread through MAGA world.

As for Trump himself, it’s anything but clear that he knows or grasps the Seven Mountains Mandate. But like other authoritarian leaders, he is driven inexorably toward the exclusivism of a political religion. And it’s the NAR’s political religion that’s on offer from the Republican Party this Election Day.\\

Opinion

The ‘Courage Tour’ is attempting to get Christians to vote for Trump − and focused on defeating ‘demons’

(The Conversation) — The ‘Courage Tour,’ a religio-political rally, is going around battleground states. It is focused on defeating Democrats, but also on defeating ‘demonic forces.’

Michael E. Heyes
October 30, 2024

(The Conversation) — As a scholar of religion, I attended the “Courage Tour,” a series of religious-political rallies, when it made a stop in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, from Sept. 27-28, 2024.

From what I observed, the various speakers on the tour used conservative talking points – such as the threat of communism and LGBTQ+ “ideologies” taking over education – and gave them a demonic twist. They told people that diabolical forces had overtaken America, and they needed to expel them by ensuring Donald Trump was elected.

The tour is attempting to get those Christians to vote for Trump. The tour has moved through several battleground states such as Arizona, Michigan and Georgia, drawing several thousand people at every site.

The tour is not only focused on defeating Democrats but also on defeating demons. The idea that demons exert a hold over the material world is a key feature of the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, worldview. The NAR is a loose group of like-minded charismatic Christian churches and religious leaders – sometimes termed “prophets” – who want to see Christians dominate all walks of life.

As someone who recently finished a book on the intersection of demons and politics, “Demons in the USA: From the Anti-Spiritualists to QAnon,” I was eager to see this combination for myself. I believe it would be a mistake to think that the New Apostolic Reformation is a fringe group with no real influence.
The influence and reach

The group has an associated nonprofit organization known as Ziklag – named for a town in the Hebrew Bible that is an important site associated with David’s kingship – with deep pockets for the movement’s goals. A ProPublica investigation found that the group had already spent US$12 million “to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the New Apostolic Reformation “the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.”

The diffuse nature of NAR membership and its rapid growth make it difficult to gauge followers: Estimates have placed the number of NAR adherents between 3 million and 33 million, but individuals who may not label themselves as part of the NAR might nevertheless agree with the group’s theology.

Moreover, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s presence at the meeting I attended is also a tacit and significant endorsement for this group.


The ‘Seven Mountain Mandate’

According to NAR’s theology, there are “seven mountains” that govern areas of worldly influence, and Christians are destined to occupy all of them. These mountains are religion, government, family, education, media, entertainment and business.

Known as the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” this “prophecy” first rose to prominence in 2013 with the publication of “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate,” written by Bill Johnson, lead pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, and member of the NAR, and Lance Wallnau, NAR prophet and one of the founders of the Courage Tour. In the book, the Seven Mountain Mandate is trumpeted as a message received directly from God.

The NAR perceives the majority of these mountains as currently occupied by diabolical spiritual forces. To counter these forces, the NAR engages in “spiritual warfare,” which are acts of Christian prayer that are used to defeat or drive out demons.

As religion scholar Sean McCloud writes, these prayers can be taken from “handbooks, workshops and hands-on participation in deliverance sessions.” Deliverance sessions involve diagnosing and expelling demons from an individual.

Alternatively, it is not uncommon for pastors to incorporate spiritual warfare into church services. For example, in a much-reported sermon, Paula White-Cain, the former spiritual adviser to Trump, commanded all “satanic pregnancies to miscarry.” In the sermon’s context, satanic pregnancies were not literal pregnancies. Instead, White-Cain was praying for the failure of satanic plots “conceived” by the devil.

In NAR theology, all Christians are embattled by demons, and spiritual warfare is a necessary part of life. As scholar of religion André Gagné writes, the NAR sees spiritual warfare as happening on three “levels.”


The ground level occurs in a case of individual exorcism or deliverance, a kind of “one-on-one” battle with demons. The second level is the occult level, in which believers seek to counter what they believe to be demonic movements such as shamanism and New Age thought. Finally, there is the strategic level in which the movement does battle with powerful spirits whom they believe control geographic areas at the behest of Satan.


Friday night on the Courage Tour.

The Courage Tour

The Courage Tour is part of a strategic-level act of spiritual warfare: Stumping for Trump is really about exerting Christian influence over the “government mountain” that followers of the NAR believe to be occupied by the devil.

According to the speakers on the tour, America is in trouble: It is currently being run by “the Left,” or Democrats, a group that is slowly pushing the U.S. toward communism, a system of government in which private property ceases to exist and the means of production are communally owned.

It claims that the Left wants to see this shift occur because it is populated by “cultural Marxists.” This is part of a far-right conspiracy theory that suggests all progressive political movements are indebted to the ideas of Karl Marx, whose Communist Manifesto is most closely associated with communism.

In more extreme forms of communism, nation-states disappear – an idea reflected in speakers’ frequent criticism of “globalism,” which was generally defined as a single, worldwide governmental structure. The group rejects globalism on the grounds that God instituted nation-states as a divinely ordained form of government.

Wallnau described globalism as a sign of the beast and the end of days, and claimed that “the intent of that Marxist element in our country is to collapse our borders.”




Promotional sign on the Courage Tour for My Faith Votes, an organization that encourages voters to vote biblically.
Michael E. Heyes, CC BY

Demonizing queerness

The speakers further claimed that this demonic Marxism was perverting the educational system in the United States. For example, numerous speakers criticized schools for supposedly indoctrinating or “evangelizing” children with “LGBTQ ideologies.”

Wallnau even suggested that the “trans movement” began “in the days of Noah” when the fallen angels of Genesis 6 married human women and had hybrid children. This echoes a discussion Wallnau and Rick Renner had on the “Lance Wallnau Show,” linking such “ideologies” to fallen angels and the Apocalypse.

This negative view of nontraditional gender and sexual orientations is a long-lived feature of the group. John Weaver, a scholar of religion, notes in his book “The New Apostolic Reformation” that the group’s ideas are indebted to conservative theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, who supported the death penalty for homosexuals.

Likewise, religion scholar Damon T. Berry writes that members of the movement believe that “demonic spirits” are “acting to subvert the will of God through aspects of culture like the toleration of homosexuality, abortion, addiction, poverty and political correctness.”

Wallnau encouraged the audience on the Courage Tour to “fight for your families because I don’t want to leave behind a demonic train wreck for my children.”

As hard as it is to believe, one of the most important questions of the election might well be – how many Americans believe in demons?

(Michael E. Heyes, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion, Lycoming College. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)


The Conversation religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The Conversation is solely responsible for this content.

INDIA

God-Willed Justice?

HINDU NATIONALISM, 

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM, 

ISRAELI NATIONALISM

Subhash Gatade | 29 Oct 2024

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Is the judiciary being internally hijacked to usher in Hindu Rashtra?

There are a very few legal scholars or advocates who have perceptively looked at the dynamics of India’s judiciary and cautioned us about the dangers that can come our way through those routes only.

Dr Mohan Gopal, is an exception.

This noted scholar who has been very clear about the worldview and strategies of the Hindutva Supremacist forces to achieve the goal of establishing Hindu Rashtra, explains their strategy of executing it “not by overthrowing the Constitution but by interpretation by the SC as a Hindu Document”

Speaking in a programme organised by Live Law, Gopal had explained its dynamic as a two-step process:

One, appointing judges who are ready to look beyond the Constitution.

Two, how with an increase in the number of theocratic judges who find the source of law in religion rather than the Constitution, it will be easy to declare India as a Hindu theocracy under the same Constitution.

This important speech was interspersed with facts related to appointments of judges under the earlier Congress-led United Progressive Alliance regime and later the Narendra Modi-led dispensation and how the various appointees had tried to stick to the Constitution or had attempted to look beyond in their different judgements.

For Gopal, the Hijab judgement by the highest court, where it delivered a split verdict was a significant milestone in this direction.

No doubt, the noted scholar would never have had a premonition that a day would arise when the Chief Justice of India (CJI) would admit publicly that it was not the Constitution but his individual faith and his own deity that dominated or decided or overwhelmed his crucial legal decisions.

Much has been commented upon by scholars, advocates and analysts about these utterances by the CJI in his native village and the controversy it has generated.

There is an interesting side-effect of this admission by the CJI.

The controversial Babri Mosque judgment, which not only underlined the 1948 act by Right-wing elements who placed the idol of Ram Lalla inside the Babri Masjid as ‘illegal’ and maintained that its demolition was “an egregious violation of the rule of law,” -- which was delivered by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi -- had till date lacked authorship. Nobody had signed it.

One could be wrong but, perhaps, it was the first judgment in the post- Independence history of India, which was not signed by anyone.

No one knows the reason, but looking at this admission by the CJI about his ‘communion with God’, could it be said that like the Vedas, which are called ‘Apourushey’ (not created by human, meaning created by God), perhaps this judgment could also be included in that category?

What is rather striking is that till date, most of the facts associated with the Bari Masjid judgement -- barring its authorship -- which can be considered a ‘milestone’ as far as the future of our Republic is concerned in recent times, have been documented. We even know that the then CJI Gogoi had, after this unanimous verdict, taken his colleagues for dinner in a five-star hotel and had even ordered their best wine.

Critics of the ruling dispensation can even draw a parallel between having a ‘non-biological’ Prime Minister and a Chief Justice who also claims direct communion with God, and the synergy of sorts they displayed together on occasions, especially during the recent Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. The ‘non biological’ PM’s own Twitter handle (now called ‘X’) had itself released photographs of the occasion when he visited the CJI’s house and they held Ganesh’s prayers together, which created enough political controversy.

Legal luminaries even underlined how with this invite the CJI had “[c]ompromised the separation of powers between the Executive and Judiciary.” or how it sent “[a] very bad signal to the judiciary which is tasked with the responsibility of protecting the fundamental rights of citizens from the executive and ensuring that the government acts within the bounds of the Constitution.”

It is said that a truly religious person loves to keep her/his communion with god as a private affair. The manner in which this private invite, which should have gone unannounced, was allowed to be publicised, also underlined one more commonality between PM Modi and the outgoing CJI.

Perhaps, both love to share their very private moments with the wider populace.

For example, one can recall how a few months ago, CJI DY Chandrachud had made a highly-publicised visit to Dwarkadhish Temple with his wife, where he was seen wearing saffron-tinged dress. This visit, too, had come under criticism because of the remarks he had shared while inaugurating the new court building at Rajkot, Gujarat.  What had irked even neutral people was that the CJI emphasised how he was inspired by the Dhwaja at Dwarkadhishji, which was similar to the Dhwaja at Jagannath Puri, and how these flags represented “universality of the tradition in our nation, which binds all of us together.”

It does not need great wisdom to comprehend that in a secular country like India, which believes and propagates Sarva Dharma Sambhav (all religions are same), where the Tiranga or the Tricolour is considered the only flag that binds all of us, this espousal of the flag of a particular religion by a Constitutional Authority does not sit well with the Constitutional mores.

The ‘frank’ confession by the honourable CJI about the Babri Mosque judgment and about its ‘authorship’ also raises few other queries that are related to his two-year plus reign at the helm of affairs of the judiciary. His ascent as CJI had initially raised a lot of hopes among the liberal fraternity. A CJI is seen not only as a master of the roster, but also as a leading light of the brother/sister judges in the highest courts as also the lower courts.

Close observers of the judiciary have noted how the Chief Justice has been very eloquent in his speeches, how he has always upheld the Constitution on public forums, time and again he has questioned the delay in granting bail by the courts, emphasising how ‘bail is a rule and not an exception’, but also how under his own eyes the ‘accused in say NE Delhi riots are rotting in jail’ for more than four years, which has come under scanner of the international human rights organisations.

The beginnings of this third decade of the 21st Century were also marked by what is called ‘bulldozer justice’, where much on the lines of Israel, various Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments, led by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, have initiated a campaign of ‘instant justice’, where houses of the accused have been demolished without following any due process, under the pretext of ‘building violations’ immediately after group conflicts or community tensions.

The main targets in these “bulldozer” demolitions have been the religious and social minorities. According to national and international human rights organisations, most of such demolitions have been executed without following due procedures.

History is a cruel judge and it will definitely note that many such vindictive actions targeting particular communities continued unabated during a period when the honourable CJI led the country’s highest court. Impartial critics would also like to see whether it was possible for the ‘master of the roster’ to do anything significant. But when the court led by him suo motu intervened in the R G Kar Hospital Rape Case in Kolkata, it was the height of innocence to presume that nothing significant could be done. Perhaps, he could have come forward to provide the necessary healing touch to religious and social minorities who were feeling abandoned under the onslaught of State-sponsored vigilante justice and the ‘religious assemblies’ giving an open call for genocide.

One agrees that at the fag-end of Chandrachud’s term, there are a few fresh initiatives in the highest judiciary on this issue, but one expects that the court will put a stop to such illegal demolitions, once for all.

The CJI's term is coming to a close and there are reports that he is anxious to know “how history will remember him.”

This task can be left to legal scholars or future historians, but what every democracy-loving person knows and deeply comprehends is the key importance of  the ‘guardrails of democracy’ – namely, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary - and how the weakening or sabotaging or hijacking of such institutions from within can occur before our own eyes and play havoc with democracy.

We have before us the example of the judiciary of the 'Strongest Democracy in the World', namely the US. It is a fact that today Republicans are dominant there. Out of the strength of eight judges, five owe allegiance to the Republican camp.

A few months ago, the US top court ruled that even a former President was presumptively immune from criminal liability for his official acts, thus effectively providing immunity for life to Trump -- if he returns as President

It was as if the “strongest democracy” was on the path of rediscovering ‘rule by Kings’ instead of the rule of law.

Perhaps at this juncture, it is important to underline the old dictum --'Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Democracy''.

The writer is a veteran independent journalist. The views are personal.

Gods Above the Constitution: A New Era For India’s Judiciary?

S.N. Sahu | 25 Oct 2024

Chief Justice of India’s prayers before a deity for a solution to the Babri Masjid–Ram Mandir dispute underlines an awful deficit of constitutional morality.

In a rare confession, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr D.Y. Chandrachud disclosed in a recent meeting in his village in Maharashtra that the Ayodhya (Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid) dispute was adjudicated in the Supreme Court and a solution was arrived at after he sat before a deity and prayed for it.

He said, “Very often we have cases (to adjudicate) but we do not arrive at a solution. Something similar happened during the Ayodhya dispute which was in front of me for three months. I sat before the deity and told him he needed to find a solution.”

Demolition of Babri Masjid an “egregious violation of rule of law”

It is worthwhile to recall that the judgment on the above dispute was delivered by a Supreme Court Bench consisting, among others, of the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Chandrachud. It sharply described the placement of the idol of Lord Ram inside Babri Masjid as illegal and held that its demolition and “the obliteration of the Islamic structure was an egregious violation of the rule of law”.

So the operative part of the judgment that the site of Babri Masjid should be used for building a Ram temple flowed, according to Chandrachud, from a deity.

It also allotted the site of the demolished mosque to those who destroyed it for the purpose of constructing a Ram temple and ordered to provide some five acres of land somewhere else to build a mosque.

Prayer to a deity superseded the Constitution

So the operative part of the judgment that the site of Babri Masjid should be used for building a Ram temple flowed, according to Chandrachud, from a deity whom he prayed for finding a judicial resolution of the Ayodhya (Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid) dispute.

It means that the principles of the Constitution, law and jurisprudence did not determine the process of adjudication, and a faith-based approach was adopted to invoke a divine figure to find a way out.

The Supreme Court in the judgment, allowing the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, clearly stated that the judiciary would not be guided by any theology to adjudicate the matter.

It is worthwhile to invoke that paragraph of the judgment: “This court, as a secular institution, set up under a constitutional regime, must steer clear from choosing one among many possible interpretations of theological doctrine and must defer to the safer course of accepting the faith and belief of the worshipper.”

D.Y. Chandrachud, as the CJI, is integral to the secular institution of the Supreme Court wedded to secular ideals to find solutions to any matter being adjudicated by it. The deference to accept the faith and belief of worshippers as laid out in the aforementioned paragraph, obviously meant the faith of those who moved the court for justice.

Being the head of a secular institution that avoids theological doctrines, how did Chandrachud find a solution by praying to a deity for the egregious blunder of the destruction of Babri Masjid and allow those who caused that destruction to build a temple?

Did not CJI Chandrachud provide an opening for retrogression by allowing that survey of Gyanvapi mosque even as assurances have been made that there would not be alterations to the structure?

Does the Constitution permit any judge, including the CJI, to find a judicial remedy to a dispute by praying to a deity who was a party to the dispute?

Ambedkar flagged the prejudices of a Chief Justice

The public confessions of a vastly experienced and learned CJI are indeed perplexing and disturbing, particularly when the issue of saving the Constitution has become a people’s issue and next month on November 26, the 75th anniversary of its adoption and enactment would commence.

On May 24, 1949, B.R. Ambedkar, while replying to the discussion in the Constituent Assembly on the Article concerning the Supreme Court, said something which is applicable to all those who are part of the judiciary and adjudicate matters.

But he very specifically referred to the exalted position of the CJI and stated, “I personally feel no doubt that the Chief Justice is a very eminent person. But after all the Chief Justice is a man with all the failings, all the sentiments and all the prejudices which we as common people have.”

While flagging the point that like common people, a CJI would have failings and prejudices, Ambedkar would never have anticipated that in the backdrop of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Constitution, a CJI would justify remedy provided in a judgment on the basis of prayer he offered to a deity.

Mahatma Gandhi on the hallucination of law courts

The judgment of the Supreme Court in the Babri Masjid–Ram temple issue clearly was in favour of the powerful ruling party at the Union level and its affiliates.

By permitting the construction of the Ram temple in the place where Babri Masjid stood, it provided no ground based on the Constitution, law and jurisprudence.

In this context, one is reminded of M.K. Gandhi’s 1920 article “The Hallucination of Law Courts”. In that searing piece, he indicted the law courts functioning during British rule over our country and wrote, “The worst is that they support the authority of a government.

“They are supposed to dispense justice and are therefore called the palladile of a nation’s liberty. But when they support the authority of an unrighteous government they are no longer palladile of liberty, they are crushing houses to crush a nation’s spirit.”

Adding further, Gandhi very presciently observed, “Let no one suppose that these things would be changed when Indian judges and Indian prosecutors take the place of Englishmen.”

It is indeed extraordinary that CJI Chandrachud has been fascinated by Hindu images which he thinks can be juxtaposed with the idea of justice.

Those articulations made in the context of colonial rule in India sadly reaffirm the hallucination of law courts in the context of CJI Chandrachud’s prayer to a deity to find the solution to the Babri Masjid–Ram Mandir dispute.

CJI Chandrachud allowed a survey of Gyanvapi mosque

CJI Chandrachud permitted a survey of the Gyanvapi mosque and other similar Islamic structures on the ground that it would not violate the Places of Worship Act, 1991 prohibiting change in the character of a place of worship from what it was on August 15, 1947.

Very tragically, such permissions bolster those who aspire to convert the Gyanvapi mosque and other places of worship meant for Muslims to temples.

Places of Worship Act, 1991

It is instructive that the Supreme Court Bench, comprising among others Justice Chandrachud, which adjudicated the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid dispute, observed in its judgment that the Places of Worship Act, which was enacted in 1991 by Parliament “protects and secures the fundamental values of the Constitution” and “furnishes a constitutional basis for healing the injustices of the past by providing the confidence to every religious community that their places of worship will be preserved and that their character will not be altered”.

It proceeded to outline the responsibility of people and all those mandated to govern the country to safeguard those shrines and stated, “The law addresses itself to the State as much as to every citizen of the nation. Its norms bind those who govern the affairs of the nation at every level.”

“The Places of Worship Act,” it asserted, “imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism under the Indian Constitution.” It further forcefully remarked, “The Places of Worship Act is thus a legislative intervention which preserves non-retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values.”

Did not CJI Chandrachud provide an opening for retrogression by allowing that survey of Gyanvapi mosque even as assurances have been made that there would not be alterations to the structure? We need to be mindful of the fact that the Babri Mosque was destroyed in spite of assurances not to cause any harm to it.

“Once a norm above the Constitution is created,” Indira Jaising remarked, “it is easy to see why there is no need to amend the Constitution.”

Siddharth Varadarajan, in his article published in The Wire, referred to CJI Chandrachud’s decision as CJI to allow a survey of the Gyanvapi mosque and wrote, “This is also a pointer to the kind of divinely-ordained solutions that will doubtless follow in our courtrooms as Hindutva groups mount claims on Muslim places of worship around the country.”

CJI Chandrachud equating temple flag with flag of Justice

It is indeed extraordinary that CJI Chandrachud has been fascinated by Hindu images which he thinks can be juxtaposed with the idea of justice.

For instance, on January 6 this year, after he visited several prominent temples in Gujarat in the full glare of the media, he told the district court judges in Rajkot that inspiration should be drawn from temple flags or dhwajas, binding “all of us together”, for flying high the “dhwaja of justice” on an enduring basis.

So his irresistible fascination to find a solution to a matter pending in court for judicial remedy by praying to a deity and his attempts to draw parallels between flags flying over Hindu temples with flags of justice are quite intriguing.

Ramachandra Guha, a well-acclaimed historian and author, sharply reacted by saying that CJI Chandrachud, in equating the temple dhwajas with flags of justice, deliberately disregards “a vast gap between the ideals of the orthodox Hindu tradition and the ideals that undergird our Constitution”.

Senior advocate Indira Jaisingh expressed her regret on the attempts to establish there is an “intrinsic dharma” of the people which is ancient and predates the Constitution. “Once a norm above the Constitution is created,” she remarked, “it is easy to see why there is no need to amend the Constitution.”

Cultivation of constitutional morality

CJI Chandrachud’s remark that he prayed to a deity to find a solution to an issue pending judicial remedy signals the pervasive deficit of constitutional morality so critically flagged by B.R. Ambedkar in his last speech in the Constituent Assembly.

He prescribed that the comprehensive cultivation of constitutional morality on a sustained basis is a sure step for the success of the Constitution at all levels. As we embark on celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Constitution, Babsaheb’s prescription assumes added significance.

The author was Press Secretary to President of India late KR Narayanan.

Courtesy: The Leaflet