The claim to civilisation of any state should be measured by the treatment meted out to its minorities. The recent spate of attacks on Christians in Gujarat and Orissa in particular is shameful. The pretext for these attacks is that missionaries are effecting conversions with the aim of making India a Christian state. This is ludicrous. Statistics establish that against Orissa’s 3.47 crore Hindus, there are only 8,97,861 Christians. There has been no steep increase in the number of converted Christians. Right of conversion is implicit in the guarantee of freedom of religion in our Constitution. No doubt this right is not absolute, but can be reasonably restricted on the heads specified in the Constitution. There is a law in Orissa that prohibits and punishes conversions made by force or allurement. If any person violates the law, prosecute him or her by all means. But remember that conversions do take place because of the degrading treatment meted out to the ‘untouchables’ and the prospect of a life of dignity by embracing Christianity. Besides, the law cannot be selectively applied and must be enforced also against Hindus who reconvert Christians by force and intimidation. Indiscriminate attacks on peaceable Christians, disrupting their church services and burning their churches, especially during Christmas, is barbarous. It is hoped that Orissa Governor Murli Bhandare will put in place initiatives to restore the confidence of the Christians and to ensure adequate protection to them. Poets and judgments Citing poets and their verses in a judgment is a refreshing change. In the case of Plaut vs. Spendthrift Farm Inc. the US Supreme Court had to determine whether invalidation by Congress of judgments that had attained finality breached the wall of separation between the judicial and legislative wings of the state. The majority held that the legislation was unconstitutional because it violated the doctrine of separation of powers. In reaching this conclusion, Justice Scalia mentions the advice offered by an American poet: ‘Good fences make good neighbours’. He did not mention the poet by name, who is Robert Frost. The response of Justice Stephen Breyer in his partly concurring judgment was that “as the majority invokes the advice of an American poet, one might consider as well that poet’s caution for he not only notes that ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ but also writes, ‘Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out’. R. Frost, Mending Wall.” The heap of rambling and repetitive SLPs dumped on our Supreme Court judges every week leaves them little time for literary allusions. The late Justice R.S. Sarkaria was an exception. Dismissing a writ petition challenging the imposition of tax under a Punjab Act he concludes the judgment by reproducing famous lines of the poet Arthur Hugh Clough: ‘And not by eastern windows only,/ When daylight comes, comes in the light;/ In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!/ But westward, look, the land is bright!’ No New Year resolutions In view of frustrating past experience, I have resolved, or rather decided, not to make any resolutions, like a brisk daily walk, avoiding rice, potatoes and alas, Swiss liqueur chocolates, no addition to my library of new books and CDs and DVDs, to resume playing the clarinet, to complete my anthology of literary gems and so on and so forth.My fervent desire is to undertake a five-day cruise with a trunk full of books, old ones whose company I constantly seek and the new additions waiting to be read and digested. Thereafter, another cruise with my favourite music, jazz and classical, and recitation of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets by Alec Guinness and Hamlet by Laurence Olivier. The snag is that after the exhilarating experience of the world of literature and music it will be a terrible wrench to get back to Section 43A of the Income Tax Act or Article 301 of the Constitution and the lengthy Supreme Court judgments cluttered with numerous citations of well-established principles. But, Inshallah, I shall not falter.
