Socially regressive laws

THE Supreme Court had found itself short on judicial temper and rectitude when dealing with the judges’ bribery case. But it has retained its salience in correcting outmoded or misogynistic societal laws. Last week, the court asked the government to explain its stand on a raft of petitions challenging the Macaulaian law on adultery. The law in its current shape is patriarchal as it implies that women, like property, are incapable of rational thought. Besides being gender discriminatory in nature, it criminalises the offence which reflects a centuries-old mindset instead of the mores of today’s modern society. The court had earlier dealt with the question whether Parsi women lose their religious identity if they marry men from outside the fold. 

Following up the landmark triple talaq verdict in August, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Right to Privacy is a fundamental right: both judgments were seeking to redress the loss of control over one’s destiny: Muslim women in case of the former and the average citizen at wit’s end by the government’s Aadhaar-based incursion into his life. The Modi government had made political capital out of the triple talaq controversy. There was no surprise when it proactively followed up the apex court’s judgment with a draft law in double quick time. But the court was compelled to nudge the government into extending the deadline for mandatorily linking Aadhaar with a bouquet of schemes and services.

The Modi government had made reform of obsolete laws as one of its foremost governance priorities. But for triple talaq, which was a political positioning tool, most of the laws identified for the guillotine were of the ease-of-business genre aimed at improving credit ratings. Not long ago, Parliament used to take the lead to promulgate laws that curbed social evils such as dowry and sati. Some of them were no doubt politically uncomplicated. But it also took a stand on laws on abortion and widow rights despite active opposition from the patriarchal order. At a time when there seems to be a kind of consensus on political nonintervention on unjust but controversial social issues, the Supreme Court provides the sole encouragement.