Flawed Governance & Painful Prejudices

27.2.2022

BY R.K. MISRA?????

Isolated incidents look obscure.??Strung together, every sequence has a consequence.

On November 12, newspapers in Gujarat front-paged news of the “verbal” directives issued by two key municipal corporations of the state, Vadodara and Rajkot, to ensure that non-vegetarian street food-carts remain invisible to human eye. The stated reason: It hurts religious sensibilities ; an unstated fact: a fair share of these in urban agglomerations are minority owned.

Soon Junagadh and Bhavnagar municipal corporations??chimed in with??their own version of the verbal orders and Ahmedabad sought to raise the pitch as well.

The revenue minister Rajendra Trivedi, a legislator from Vadodara waded into the turbulence equating these food carts on??footpaths with land grabbing and creating issues of health.

The timing of the concerted “drive” seemed to have gone woefully??wrong as the ante was??upped at a time when the enrolment drive under the PM Street Vendor’s Atma Nirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) which covers vendors of??food items was underway. The??whiplash from the top was quick and sharp.

As the heat from the street sizzled the ruling party dithered . The??Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson termed it a decision by individual civic bodies with the party having no role??to play . Realising the damage potential , Gujarat BJP chief C. R. Paatil moved in to negate the minister’s statement. ” He has been told not to make such statements again.The civic bodies too shall not??touch carts which are not an obstruction”. Chimed in chief minister Bhupendra Patel” people are free to eat vegetarian or non-vegetarian food. The state government has nothing to say in the matter”.

All municipal corporations are BJP controlled and Vidhan Sabha elections are due in Gujarat next year. Besides, Gujarat is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home minister Amit Shah where no move can??evade their hawk-eyed gaze.

“If the issue is merely hygiene, why differentiate”, questions??Arvind Sindha, state president of the National Association of Street vendors in India adding that it should apply across the board. Lost in the welter of??disguised zealotry deputizing for civic responsibility is the fact that the converging clientele which keeps these non-vegetarian??handcarts humming late into the night is predominantly hindu .

Ahmedabad alone consumes an estimated 150 tonnes of meat and fish and 15 lakh eggs a day.

There is disquiet within the ruling party . Enlightened opinion believes that such half - wit measures will hurt rather than help. ” Jains and upper castes for long remained the face of??Gujarati society but nearly half of the population does not subscribe to vegetarianism and these include OBCs, kshatriyas, tribals, dalits and kolis , to name a few”, points out noted social scientist??Dr Gaurang Jani.

?Seen singly, such burst of coordinated civic activism may seem an??exception, but when viewed in sequence, over time, the whiff of an agenda emerges.

?Take the case of the Disturbed Areas Act which was first enacted in??1986 for a temporary period and replaced with a new Act in 1991, which also has been substantially amended by the BJP government in July 2019 , turning the original objective on its head .The Presidential assent came in 2020.

??In the aftermath of the 1985 communal riots in Ahmedabad, it was observed that people who were in numerical minority in a particular area??were being coerced to sell their properties at throwaway prices to move to the security of their own communities. To prevent such segregation through distress sale, the Act was brought in.

?It empowers the government to declare riot-prone areas as ‘disturbed’, thus requiring additional permission of free consent from the district collector. The aim was to prevent distress sale of properties between communities to change the mixed character of societal co-existence. With a compliant bureaucracy playing footsie with the political leadership, the objective stood turned around on its head leading to minority residents being driven away from areas that had a mixed population.

?It was no wonder that the Gujarat High Court moved??on a PIL in January 2021 and stopped the state??government??from declaring any locality a ‘disturbed area’ under the law on the ground that it could lead to “improper clustering” of persons from “one community”.

?Authorities function in?insidious ways, preaching one thing , practicing quite the opposite. We have a strange?analogy in Gujarat that even foreigners can buy properties in neighbourhoods where?Muslims cannot ; such is the fact of this Act. Interestingly, every BJP leader from the Prime?Minister to the lowly municipal corporator of the ruling pyramid, all take pride that the state has largely been free of communal violence . Yet the area under the disturbed areas Act goes on increasing. According to published reports as of August 2019, there were 770 parts of Ahmedabad alone that?were declared?disturbed areas. Many other areas of the state with minority agglomerations also figure similarly.

Sequencing further, shift the scene to August 2021 when the Gujarat High Court stayed key provisions of the Gujarat Freedom of Religion(Amendment)Act 2021 pertaining to marriages involving religious conversion. Though a larger constitutional challenge still remains pending, the interim stay provides relief to inter-faith couples.

The Gujarat freedom of Religion Act, 2003 was??first enacted during chief minister Narendra Modi’s tenure in the aftermath of the 2002 communal riots. It was on the same lines as some other states, except under section 5 of this Act, where a person wanting to convert must??seek prior permission from the district magistrate. In 2006, an amendment was passed??by the ruling BJP government which sought to redefine ‘conversions’ to not include “inter-denomination conversion of the same religion. “The amendment said that Jains and Buddhists would be construed as denominations of Hindu religion; Shias and Sunnis shall be construed as denominations of the muslim religion; and Catholics and Protestants of Christianity. The amendment was however withdrawn after Buddhists and Jains raised objections at being bunched as part of the Hindu religion.

Nevertheless, the Vijay Rupani - led BJP government amended the Act, over-riding??Congress opposition,??on April 1,2021 , making it operational after the Governor’s assent, from June 15. The law ostensibly seeks to end conversion through unlawful means, specifically prohibiting any conversion for marriage, even if it is with the consent of the individual except when prior sanction is obtained from the state. Many BJP ruled states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh have enacted such laws, making the pattern clear.

The amended law shifts the burden of proof of what is a lawful religious conversion from the converted to his or her partner and legitimates the intrusion of family and society at large to oppose inter-faith marriages. The state government then sought rectification of Section 5 of the amended Act which penalises forcible or fraudulent conversion through marriage which the High Court??had stayed but was turned down.

The section mandates that religious priests take prior permission from the district magistrate before converting any person from one religion to another. The one who got converted also needs to intimate the district magistrate in a prescribed form. ”We do not find any reason to make any changes in our order” a division bench of??chief justice Vikram Nath and Justice Biren Vaishnav ruled. The State government has made known its intention to challenge the order in the Supreme Court.

Another sequence with another consequence :In April??2019??the High Court quashed three notifications of the Gujarat government aimed at stopping export of livestock from Tuna port in Kutch, terming it a ‘colourable exercise of powers”, to do something which cannot be done directly.

A division bench of Justices Harsha Devani and Bhargav Karia termed the decision as “grossly illegal, unconstitutional and violative of the petitioners’ fundamental rights ”. Several livestock exporters had sought judicial redressal after the state government issued??orders up to December??2018 which banned the export of livestock, principally sheep and goat, from Tuna .

The sequence of events makes for interesting reading. On December 14, 2018 Chief Minister Vijay Rupani announced that the government will not allow livestock exports from the port. On the same day, the agriculture department issued a notification under the Gujarat Essential Commodities and Cattle(Control) Act, prohibiting movement of cattle from outside into any drought-affected area. Kutch had already been declared drought affected .

?Soon after, the director of animal husbandry informed the collector of customs that the state government has decided to withdraw the services provided for health check-ups of animals to be exported and would not??allow export of live animals until the specified(check-up) facility was established. On the same day, the home department??directed the Kutch police to set up check-posts to keep a watch on transportation of animals, the High Court noted.

“What cannot be done directly by the state government is sought to be done indirectly under the guise of exercise of powers under section 4(1)(b) of the (Cattle Protection)Act…notification therefore ,clearly has been issued in colourable exercise of powers and deserves to be struck down”, the court ruled. It added that ” the intention was to prohibit export which is otherwise not a state subject”. The state government requested a stay of the order so that it could move the Supreme Court but no stay was granted.

Note that livestock exports from Tuna in 2016-2017 and 2017-18 had crossed seven lakh heads and therefore the BJP helmed Rupani government must have been well aware of the heavy economic loss that the ban??around Eid would cause the exporters besides the loss of face and yet it nonchalantly went ahead. Why ???

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