{"id":7589,"date":"2017-01-09T13:04:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=7589"},"modified":"2017-01-09T13:04:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T19:04:09","slug":"advantaging-the-advantaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/01\/09\/advantaging-the-advantaged\/","title":{"rendered":"Advantaging the Advantaged"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noah Feldman writes<\/a> in Bloomberg\/Politics<\/strong> <\/em>about a recent Indian Supreme Court decision regarding what speech by candidates for office may contain:<\/p>\n

The decision by the seven-member panel of the court was an interpretation of India\u2019s Corrupt Practices and Electoral Offenses law, first enacted in 1951 and amended subsequently. Section 123(3) of the law<\/a> makes it a corrupt practice for a candidate to make an appeal \u201cto vote or refrain from voting for any person on the ground of his religion, race, caste, community or language.\u201d<\/p>\n

The central legal issue was whether the law only bans the candidate from appealing to his own religion or community, or whether it extends to cover references to the voters\u2019 identities, too. …<\/p>\n

The court split 4-3, with the majority adopting the broader reading and the dissenters the narrower one. The leading opinion<\/a> of the majority<\/sup>\u00a0emphasized that India\u2019s founders \u201cintended a secular democratic republic where differences should not be permitted to be exploited.\u201d Treating this as the law\u2019s purpose, the majority rejected the narrow reading of the word \u201chis\u201d as referring to the candidate\u2019s identity as inappropriately literal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what, you say – that sounds reasonable, no? Turns out context is everything<\/em>:<\/p>\n

On the surface, the decision looks like a close legal case with a defensible conclusion. But the reality is otherwise — for a concrete legal reason. In 1995, a three-judge panel of the court issued a famous judgment<\/a> colloquially known as the Hindutva or Hinduism decision. In it, the court said that because Hinduism didn\u2019t subscribe to a single dogma or worship a single God, it did not satisfy the traditional definition of religion. It was therefore \u201ca way of life and nothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, according the 1995 precedent, Hinduism isn\u2019t a religion for purposes of the election law. The result is that the broad reading of the statute doesn\u2019t equally disadvantage all appeals to religion \u2013 it disadvantages only minority religions. Thus Muslim candidates can’t invoke their creed to win votes, but Hindu candidates can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Infamous might be a better word for it. But it’s interesting that in a country where the Hindus outnumber the Muslims 5-1, the majority just found another way to oppress the minority – even if it was by accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noah Feldman writes in Bloomberg\/Politics about a recent Indian Supreme Court decision regarding what speech by candidates for office may contain: The decision by the seven-member panel of the court was an interpretation of India\u2019s Corrupt Practices and Electoral Offenses law, first enacted in 1951 and amended subsequently. Section 123(3) \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7590,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions\/7590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}