What is my religion Your Honour: A letter to CJI that I could not post

Former CJI Dipak Misra with journalists on his last working day at the Supreme Court. (Photo: Prabhakar Mishra)


To

The Chief Justice of India

The Supreme Court, New Delhi

Subject: My Lord, please tell me my religion

Honourable My Lord,

What has reached your desk honourable CJI is a quest with the fundamental hope of finding the answer. I am searching for my religion. Since religion gives identity to an individual in our country, it is absolutely essential for me to know my religion.

The Constitution, though itself secular, recognizes and validates religion, castes and sub-castes. I have been filling up forms from the age of 13 or 14 myself for various purposes – first for registration for pre-board examination, board examination, college admission, pre-medical tests, civil services examinations conducted by UPSC and state commissions, then for jobs and interviews, for PAN, for Aadhaar and now repeating the same for my daughter. In every single form that I have filled in for some meaningful, as considered by the government, purpose, I have been asked to mention my religion.

It was always easy for my siblings, friends and colleagues to fill that column – some of them filling that particular box with pride – I always struggled. My name is Prabhash Kumar Dutta, s/o Sitakant Dutta (not giving further details here w.r.t. address etc).

My name gives away what people usually perceive as my religion. I did not choose my name. It could easily have been Parvez but for an accident we call birth in a particular family. Owing to that accident, I have been told and hence ticking up the boxes in forms that read Hindu or Hinduism. Things were not in so much of conflict always. Conflict began with my failures and grew along. Now, I seek help from the Custodian of the Indian Constitution. I don’t trust the governments because they change every five years, rather people’s will changes every five years. Religion is permanent.

Around the age of 18, when my father struggled to get me enrolled in the voter’s list – it would then provide us the “real identity card” -- I first turned to the Constitution of India. Before that I had been reading cricket books, Bal Krishna stories, tales of Rama, Shiva, Vishnu, Shakti or Durga. I believed Lord Rama, Lord Krishna, Shiva, Vishnu and Durga were all from the same family of religion. But, if someone like my elder brother said “No” to some non-vegetarian food, my mummy would snap back saying, “Tu baishnab chhihi ki? Apan parivaar mein keyo baishnab nai chhai. Tu baishnab nai bha sakati chhihi. Tu maus, maachh aa anda khenai nai chhodi sakati chhihi. (Are you a Vaishnav? No one in our family is a Vaishnav. You can’t be a Vaishnav. You can’t stop eating meat, fish or egg).”

There were loads of devotion among people. As a child, I visited Siwan Gandhi Maidan during Ram Navami celebrations to do circumambulation of a makeshift temple there. Seers from “all over the country” would come and enlighten the masses with their interpretation of dharma, shastra, religious texts and the changing world. In one of those gatherings a seer/saint, perhaps Sant Parashar (I don’t know who he was), explained to people that Sumitra was the wisest politician in the Ramayan age. She had 50 per cent of King Dashratha’s sons but was not destined to be treated as the Queen Mother. She partnered one of her sons with Rama and the other with Bharata as she was well aware that one of them would succeed to the throne after Dashrarath. Lakshamana and Shatrughna stood no chance. With this arrangement, she ensured that one of her sons would enjoy power by proxy and she would be Queen Mother by proxy. The saint explained the situation thus or my elders told me that the saint explained the situation thus. And, he was still considered a saint and an ardent devotee of Lord Rama.

I waited for Mahashivaratri, Janmashtami and also Durga Puja and Diwali. But, when there was a cricket match, I would skip everything else. Cricket manuals were the ultimate gospels for me. But, then that was “not my religion”.

When I read the Constitution for the first time, I did not gather anything. I had heard that Constitution was law. It was legal. It had to be a legal grammar. But what I read was plain grammar and a lot more commonsense. It was a set of dos and (in variance) don’ts. How the Constitution can be so simple and explanatory, I wondered. My failure in understanding the Constitution continued. It still continues. But, what I understood after a few readings – some time in the late 1990s, when I contracted chicken pox for the first time and rendered immobile – was that the Constitution was a brilliant work of a bunch of intellectuals, who decided how the country would be governed and how people were expected to get their dues. Even in the matters of religion.

The Preamble to the Constitution proclaims on the behalf of the nation that the State would be secular.With this began another search, Your Honour, to understand the meaning of “secular”. Hindi version of the Constitution uses word, “Panthanirapeksha”. This was a discovery for me as politicians had told us secular meant Dharmanirpeksha and a former prime minister redefined it as Sarva Dharma Sambhava. Dictionary meaning of the word roughly defined secular assomething not related to religion.

Another sub-search began. What is religion? I tried referring to books, read a few Upanishadas, which I could not understand properly, read Shrimadbhagwatgita, Holy Bible, Holy Quran, Holy Guru Granth Sahib, also tried reading Rigveda, books on Buddhism and Jainism, devotion poetries of Kabir, Tulsidas, Surdas and the like. I did not understand a thing about religion. I knew nothing of it.

What I understood was that a religion was an institution. It was founded by someone. The founders set rules – usually very strict and any deviation was met with punishment, which could extend to death. All founders spoke on the behalf of God – usually calling them by a different name, and these names stood in conflict with one another so that if these founders were to be correct, there must be different gods running different religions. Another thing I understood was that a religion was meant to be campaigned for, to propagate and convert people into. Religions originating in India, I found, were generally weak in propagation with the excellent exceptions of Buddhism and Jainism.

Meanwhile, a lesser known Professor of Hindi in Patna, Javed Akhtar Khan told me during an interaction (in 1999) that neither Dharmanirpeksha nor Sarva Dharma Sambhava could be the correct explanation of the word, secular. He told me that “Ihalaukik” could be the correct Hindi word for secular. Ihalaukik means relating to this world. Religion essentially deals with the realm of the other world. I believe this is the closest definition of secular I have come across so far.

I was among the lot who did not establish a religion, did not set rules for others, and did not follow the rules set by religions. I failed to identify my religion as the word that I had been filling in the box for religion in forms did not meet the criteria. I don’t know who established Hindu religion or Hinduism. I don’t know who set rules on behalf of which god. And, who propagated it. And, also if Vaishnavas were not like Shaktas or Shaivas as my family would tell me, why they were all clubbed as one religion giving impression that Hindus (I don’t want to use this word but I don’t know which word should be used in its stead) are the majority in India? What is my religion then? Is the birth (I don’t want to go into what circumstances may lead to this) sole criterion to judge my religion?

This is the question I need to know the answer to today. The government has never told me or issued a certificate to me classifying my religion. I am not convinced with my own answer I gave for every census record. This becomes all the more pertinent to know because I hear some cleric (I think, a cleric is the person who has some supernatural abilities to comprehend the Will of God) today saying “The courts and Parliament don’t have the right to form any law that goes against Islamic Law.” Another one was saying, “Right or wrong, we will always go by the Shariat, and not any court order. The Shariat is above all courts,” while yet another person declared, “No court is above our law.” (Indian Express dated August 22, 2017 – the day after the triple talaq judgment of the Supreme Court). Also, there are people who declare that irrespective of what judiciary adjudicates, mandir wahin banayenge (we will build temple there only).

If someone else’s law can be above the law of the land, the Constitution, the judiciary or Parliament established by the Constitution, I need to know, do I fall under the jurisdiction of that person or some other person’s law? Which law is governing me? What is my religion which could be above the laws defined by you, My Lord, sitting in the highest court of law in the country?

I do not have hope from the government, as I have already clarified, and I don’t know what my institutional religion is. My Lord, I don’t expect a convenient answer from you. That is already filled in numerous boxes in the forms I have submitted to various institutions, government or private. I have serious objection to using a geographical term to define a religion.

My Lord must have perused that Hindu is a corrupt version of the word Sindhu – name of a river, which flows but for only a small distance in India on its journey to the sea. Some stupid (pardon my language My Lord) people could not pronounce the word correctly and called it Hindu. Some other nincompoops (pardon me again My Lord) could not pronounce H in Hindu and made it up by adding a suffix to it to make it Indus and called the people living around and across the river as Indian. But, for some unexplained reasons, the second stream of imbeciles (pardon me one more time) too used their predecessors’ term for defining the religious practices of a composite people, who – we are told now – believed that religion was personal. But, that is now an archaic concept.

The institutional religion is a modern concept. Otherwise the Constitution would not have guaranteed its practice and propagation, and one of the learned judges on the Constitution Bench in the triple talaq case would not have underlined Freedom of Religion as an absolute fundamental right under a secular Constitution. As a citizen of the country, I need to know my religion to enjoy my absolute Right to Freedom of Religion. I find no better institution to seek the answer from than the Supreme Court whose motto is यतो धर्मस्ततो जयः (Yato Dharmastato Jayah).

So, will My Lord be kind enough to tell me what is my religion under the Constitution of India and also, is my “would be” religion be above all other laws? After all, right to equality – equality before law and equal protection of law – is absolute under the Constitution, the supreme tenet of the country. And, My Lord, you are heading the institution that is the custodian of the Constitution.

With eternal (because we, Indians take long, really long to settle our matters of adjudication) hope, I will be waiting for your decision and judgment on my (and millions others’) religion,

Prabhash K Dutta (Deleted my phone and Aadhaar numbers mentioned in the original letter.)