The true test of a constitutional democracy is not how the law operates in ordinary circumstances, but whether the State has the courage and institutional integrity to apply the same law when confronted with political influence, religious sentiment, numerical strength, social pressure or electoral considerations.
This is therefore a respectful but unequivocal appeal to the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Media to uphold the Constitution of India without fear, favour, selective accommodation or institutional silence.
India guarantees freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. That freedom is fundamental and must be protected. But Article 25 itself makes religious freedom subject to public order, morality, health and the other provisions of Part III of the Constitution.
Religious freedom is therefore a constitutional liberty. It is not immunity from law.
No religious denomination, congregation, procession, pilgrimage, festival, organisation or individual, irrespective of faith, numbers, antiquity or political influence, can legitimately claim a sphere in which the ordinary law of the Republic ceases to operate.
If an act constitutes an offence outside a religious gathering, its religious context cannot, by itself, convert it into a lawful act. Criminal law, narcotics law, traffic and road-safety regulations, environmental requirements, municipal regulations, public-health provisions and other statutory obligations must apply according to law and on constitutionally defensible principles.
The foundational guarantee is Article 14: equality before the law and equal protection of the laws.
That guarantee loses its meaning if enforcement depends upon the identity, religion, political influence or numerical strength of those concerned.
Selective enforcement is not tolerance.
Selective non-enforcement is not secularism.
And constitutional neutrality cannot mean that the State becomes firm before the individual but hesitant before an organised constituency.
The same constitutional discipline must govern the expenditure of public money.
Article 27 expressly protects citizens against being compelled to pay taxes whose proceeds are specifically appropriated for the payment of expenses for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion or religious denomination. This constitutional principle must be read together with equality, secularism and the obligation of the State to act for legitimate public purposes.
Public funds are held by government in constitutional trust for the people. They are not a discretionary reservoir for religious patronage.
There is, of course, an important distinction. Legitimate expenditure on policing, public safety, emergency services, sanitation, traffic management, infrastructure of general public utility, preservation of protected heritage, or other demonstrably secular governmental functions does not become unconstitutional merely because a religious event or institution is incidentally involved.
But expenditure whose real and predominant purpose is the promotion, sponsorship, preferential subsidisation or maintenance of one particular religion demands the highest constitutional scrutiny.
Where the State uses common public resources to confer religious advantage without an objective, neutral and constitutionally sustainable public purpose, it risks converting democratic government into selective patronage. Such preferential deployment of public money is not generosity by government: the money belongs to the people. If public resources are used to purchase religious favour, political goodwill or electoral accommodation, it becomes a profound deceit upon democratic accountability and may offend the constitutional architecture of equality, secularism and fiscal neutrality.
A secular Republic must neither be hostile to religion nor become the patron of a religion.
The constitutional obligation is principled neutrality.
The Executive therefore has a duty to enforce the law impartially. Administrative convenience, apprehension of political consequences or sensitivity surrounding a particular community cannot become a permanent justification for unequal enforcement.
The Legislature has an equally serious responsibility. Public money must be authorised and appropriated for legitimate constitutional and public purposes. Fiscal policy should never become an instrument through which the State signals that one religious constituency enjoys a preferred relationship with government.
The Judiciary remains the constitutional sentinel. Its responsibility is particularly significant when executive expediency, legislative majorities or majoritarian and minority pressures threaten equality before law. Constitutional rights acquire their real value precisely when their enforcement is inconvenient.
The Media too carries a profound democratic responsibility. Facts cannot acquire different standards of scrutiny depending upon the religion, ideology or political identity of those involved. Selective outrage and selective silence are equally corrosive. Journalism serves democracy when identical conduct is examined by identical standards.
The central question, therefore, is not religion.
The question is governance.
The issue is not whether Indians are free to practise their faith. They unquestionably are, and that freedom must be defended.
The issue is whether an activity undertaken in the name of religion can acquire immunity from laws applicable to everybody else; whether the State may selectively overlook statutory violations because enforcement is politically inconvenient; whether ordinary citizens may be subjected to disproportionate restrictions so that another constituency may exercise its freedoms without corresponding responsibility; and whether the public exchequer may be deployed for sectarian patronage rather than legitimate secular public purposes.
The answer of a constitutional Republic must be clear.
There cannot be one standard of law for an individual and another for a multitude.
There cannot be one standard for the politically influential and another for the politically insignificant.
There cannot be one standard for one faith and another for another.
There cannot be rigorous enforcement in ordinary circumstances and discretionary suspension of the same law when enforcement becomes socially or electorally inconvenient.
And there cannot be a constitutional democracy in which equality exists in the text of the Constitution but disappears in its administration.
India’s civilisational conception of Dharma provides an important moral complement to this constitutional principle. Dharma, properly understood, is not the assertion of privilege or numerical power. It represents righteousness, restraint, justice, responsibility and duty.
Raj Dharma therefore demands something higher from the State than accommodation of competing pressures. It demands justice without discrimination.
When the law is administered impartially, genuine religious freedom is strengthened because every faith enjoys protection under the same constitutional order. When law becomes selective, both religion and the Republic are diminished.
This appeal is consequently neither against a religion nor against religious practice. It seeks no curtailment of any community’s legitimate constitutional freedoms.
It asks for something far more fundamental:
One Constitution.
One standard of legality.
Equal protection.
Equal accountability.
Institutional impartiality.
And constitutional discipline in the expenditure of every rupee of public money.
The Executive must administer without appeasement or prejudice.
The Legislature must legislate and appropriate public resources without sectarian preference.
The Judiciary must ensure that constitutional guarantees remain substantive rather than ceremonial.
The Media must question identical conduct by identical standards and every citizen and institution, regardless of faith, status, influence or numbers, must remain equally subject to the law of the land.
A Republic does not prove its secular character by accommodating every demand made in the name of religion. It proves it by protecting every person’s freedom of conscience while refusing to privilege or prejudice anyone on account of religion.
That is constitutional secularism.
That is equality before law.
That is institutional justice.
And that is the Raj Dharma of a constitutional Republic
Umakant Lakhera is a Senior Journalist and Political Commentator
