Will not deal with 'Hindutva', its meaning, says apex court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday clarified that it would not deal with “Hindutva” and its meaning for the moment and would confine itself to reference concerning provision of Representation of the People Act barring candidates from seeking votes in the name of religion and others in polls.

Hearing a matter relating to electoral malpractices arising out of its 1995 judgement, popularly known as the ‘Hindutva verdict’, a seven-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice T S Thakur made it categorical that the court would not examine the issue of religion at this stage. “We will not go into the larger debate as to what is Hindutva or what is its meaning. We will not reconsider the 1995 judgement and also not examine Hindutva or religion at this stage,” the bench said.

“At this stage, we will confine ourselves to the issue raised before us in the reference. In the reference, there is no mention of the word ‘Hindutva’. If anybody shows that there is a reference to the word ‘Hindutva’, we will hear him,” the bench, also comprising Justices M B Lokur, S A Bobde, Adarsh K Goel, U U Lalit, D Y Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao, said.

The court made its oral observations when senior advocate K K Venugopal and others sought to intervene in the ongoing hearing, contending that if the court was examining the meaning of ‘Hindutva’, then they would also like to make their arguments. Notably, activist Teesta Setalvad, author Shamsul Islam and Dilip Mandal had last week sought to intervene in the matter with an application stating that religion and politics should not be mixed and a direction be passed to de-link religion from politics.

The court, while considering a batch of petitions relating to electoral malpractices, said that for now, it would not touch on its 1995 judgement stating “Hindutva is a way of life and not a religion”.