South Asia Citizens Web

Though atheism has been socially prevalent in India, it has remained a grey area in the legal context. There are no specific laws catering to atheists and they are considered as belonging to the religion of their birth. The Constitution provides for “freedom of conscience” under Article 25 since 1950, but constitutional rights of “non-believers” were never substantiated by courts until recently.

The Sangh Parivar is at war with India’s history, which is in no small measure aided by the British rulers’ interpretations and interventions. The Somnath temple and Babri Masjid controversies are cases in point.

In August [2018], Shrimant Kokate, a historian and one of the leaders of the Maratha movement for reservation in jobs and education, claimed a threat to his life from the Sanatan Sanstha, an extermist Hindutva group whose members have been linked with the murders of rationalist thinkers such as Narendra Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi, Gauri Lankesh and Govind Pansare.

In the wake of the cancellation of the scheduled meeting between the foreign minister of India, Sushma Swaraj, and her Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Quraishi, which was going to be held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly Session in New York, here’s a particularly relevant excerpt from my book, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Reflections on Kashmir (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

I wish to thank the majority and dissenting Justices of the Supreme Court for their judgment, which allowed us four weeks to seek relief in this matter, and the public-spirited citizens & lawyers of India for putting up a spirited fight on our behalf, whose memory I will cherish. I am humbled by the solidarity, which crossed borders, rallying in our support.