NC Top Opinions: Engaging with Mr Imran Khan, Time To Disrupt Modi’s Moral Preening, And More

• The Adultery Challenge – Three Roads Ahead

Abhinav Sekhri says in his article for Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy that The Supreme Court of India is currently hearing a petition filed by Joseph Shine questioning whether the offence of “adultery”, defined and punished under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 [IPC], and associated procedural rules under Section 198(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code 1973 [Cr.P.C.], are constitutional. The hearings are in full swing, and recent media coverage suggests that the Court is keen on definitely doing something, unlike the previous occasions when the offence was challenged and its validity upheld. The question then is, what might the Court do?

Having seen what the law on adultery says, it’s time to turn to what are the problems it seemingly poses. There are different ways to frame this problem, and broadly one could frame the question thus:

Type I:Is Section 497 IPC illegal because adultery shouldn’t be a crime at all?
Type II: Are Section 497 IPC and Section 198(2) Cr.P.C. illegal because they perpetuate unconstitutional gender-based discrimination?
Type III: Is Section 497 IPC illegal because it differentiates within adulterous relationships without any rational basis for that classification?

By inviting the Court to widen its range of targets, litigants run a risk that the Court is not going to stick to the identified targets. It will pick and choose which ones it wants to address, how to address them, and whether it wants to bring in new targets which you only find out while reading the judgment.

• Across the aisle: Engaging with Mr Imran Khan

In his column for The Indian Express, P. Chidambaram writes that Mr Imran Khan, former captain of Pakistan’s cricket team, will take guard as the next Prime Minister of Pakistan on August 11, 2018. In India, there are some quarters that have great expectations from the new government. There are others who have dismissed the election as a non-event and warn the government to remain vigilant. Both are wrong.

The new government will start with a certain goodwill. The government of Mr Imran Khan will talk — and has started talking — about peace, development, growth, outreach to its neighbours, international acceptance, and finding a solution to, in Mr Khan’s words, the “core issue” of Kashmir. India must seize the limited opportunity that may be available in the first six to 12 months. Both countries stand to reap small gains by moving towards normalising relations on a wide range of matters that any two neighbours ought to regard as routine.

Beyond that, India does have a vital interest in stopping infiltration on the border, eliminating terrorists and finding an honourable solution to the dispute over the Kashmir Valley. The memory of the Mumbai terror attack still haunts us. Unless the perpetrators, who have been identified and who live in Pakistan, are punished, there will be no closure to the Mumbai outrage that took 166 lives.

Impulsive moves do not constitute policy. Flip-flop is not policy. After the Mumbai terror attack, India did not declare war on Pakistan. Nor did India declare ‘no talks’ with Pakistan. Those positions — unpopular in the beginning — did bring small gains. Mr Khan has absolutely no experience of government. He too may want modest improvements. That’s the key word: modest. Modest initiatives, modest expectations and modest results — those may yet be the result of engaging with Mr Imran Khan and his government.

• An Atlas among men

Mukul Kesavan writes in his column for The Telegraph that bowling at Kohli must feel like hurling yourself against a grinning Mephistopheles. Science fantasy novels are full of cod-feudal warriors transported by combat into a state of battling joy; in the real world (if Test cricket qualifies as the real world), Kohli is the closest that we’re likely to get to that breed.

Kohli’s defining characteristic is that at no point does he rein himself in for fear that failure might show him up. Take the infamous ‘mic-drop’ send-off that he gave his opposite number, Joe Root. There’s a great word in Hindi for winding up the enemy: lalkarna. ‘Taunting’ is a serviceable English equivalent, but it lacks the ‘come-get-me’ provocation of the original.

Kohli understands that while cricket is a team sport, its set-piece action – batsman vs bowler- is an individual contest. The whole point of being a great batsman is to win these contests. What redeems him is his ability to walk the talk. If he hadn’t scored runs or spurred the team on, he’d just be a punk, but there is a Boy’s Own Paper quality to his performances that sucks you in to the action and has you shouting him on. Kohli combines aggression with calculation. He plays the situation as, say, Dravid did, without (seemingly at least) being inhibited by the fear of failing. To see Kohli bantering with his batting partners in between balls, all grinning camaraderie after a stolen run or close call, is to recognize this fearlessness.

• Time to Disrupt Modi’s Moral Preening

Harish Khare, in his column for The Wire says that it is deeply disappointing that no one has taken Prime Minister Narendra Modi to task for his entirely self-serving assertion that he need not apologize for the corporate company he keeps because his neeyat was saaf. This is pure, 24-carat humbug. The opposition has for too long allowed him to get away with this kind of moral ostentation. It is about time an end was put to the prime minister’s moral preening.

The interesting part is that while politicians hesitate, ordinary citizens have, in their own way, asserted that they are no longer willing to give this kind of moral licence to this government. Democratic voices have already been raised all over the land against the government. The Modi government has been made to retreat on its dubious project of creating a social media hub; the idea is anchored in absolutist impulses, the kind of thinking that can be discerned in the UIDAI hierarchy. The middle classes are no longer inclined to trust the government just because there is a prime minister with a ‘saaf niyat’.

As the country moves towards a general election, it is about time the principles and practices of democratic contestation were vigorously put to good use against a deeply flawed regime. All that is needed is to remind one and all that the Modi-Amit Shah establishment is not a collection of saints; it consists mostly of a bunch of the ruthless power operatives. The BJP political elite is enamoured of the same dubious virtues and vices as the non-BJP crowd.

• Mainstreaming Adivasis?

Fellow Adivasis are competing against each other assuming that the well-being of Adivasis is their individual responsibility, writes Vahru Sonawane in his column for The Indian Express. He says that in this competition, Adivasis themselves are getting killed. Today, among Adivasis, a certain one claims to be a Hindu; the other says he is a Christian; and someone else has adopted Islam.

They also talk about political preferences, some have become Congressmen, some have chosen the BJP and others claim to be Communists. In this struggle, Adivasi brotherhood has been broken.The people who work for the betterment of Adivasis are also the ones seeding politics and religion among the community. It is seen that instead of making Adivasis self-dependent, these people are taking away their independence and establishing their own dominance.

They say we need to bring Adivasis into the mainstream. One wonders, are Adivasis the only people left out from the mainstream? Has everybody else become part of the mainstream? And if that is the case, why do farmers commit suicide? Why do we hear of rape crimes every other day? Then why must Adivasis become part of this mainstream, which fosters exploitation, oppression, dominance and inequality?

The attempts to make Adivasis part of the mainstream are attempts to destroy the their culture, that is driven by hard work, collective action and cooperation. Therefore, it is necessary to define ‘mainstream’. Do they who are building this so-called mainstream feel the need for Adivasi participation in the building process?