Unprecedented events are taking place in the name of sanatan dharma. A lawyer, Rakesh Kishore, threw a shoe at the chief justice of India, B.R. Gavai, while the Supreme Court was sitting. This was because of what the lawyer called an insult to sanatan dharma in a remark that the CJI had made about Vishnu in an earlier case. The petitioner in that case had asked the Supreme Court to arrange for the replacement of a damaged Vishnu idol in a temple; Mr Gavai, while dismissing the petition, had asked the petitioner to pray to Vishnu to do something about it. Later, the CJI had made it a point to say that he respected all religions.
The issue of religion has become predominant in all discourses: going to the Supreme Court for the replacement of an idol is perhaps no longer strange given the broader reality. The Bar Council of India has ordered the suspension of Mr Kishore from legal practice. His offensive act has been condemned by the prime minister in no uncertain terms. Rahul Gandhi has said that this was an attack on the dignity of the judiciary and the spirit of the Constitution, adding that such hatred has no place in this nation. Yet Mr Kishore has remained unrepentant. He has claimed — bizarrely — that he had acted to honour divine instructions. What is instructive, indeed revealing, is that
Mr Kishore’s shameful act has not been condemned universally: the right-wing ecosystem has made approving noises.
Hatred is a key term in today’s environment. By harping on religion, sanatan dharma and Manuvad, right-wing forces have bred hatred and, consequently, violence. Clashes of the majority religion with the largest minority community have become common — the very recent clash in Cuttack around the immersion of the Durga idol is a case in point. Serious unrest occurred in Bareilly and Murshidabad, and a number of incidents took place in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The Centre for Study of Society and Secularism reported that there was an increase from 32 communal incidents in 2023 to 59 in 2024. Most of these had to do with religious festivals and places of worship. There were 13 mob lynching incidents in 2024: of 11 deaths, nine were members of the minority community. The other kind of violence that has increased is casteist. Violence and physical attacks on Dalits have grown, allegedly most in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The intersection of majoritarian and casteist prejudice cannot be ignored in the case of the assault on the CJI, who has a Dalit and a Buddhist background. Taken together, this chain of disgraceful incidents is suggestive of the strain on civil co-existence; the shoe thrown at the CJI is symbolic of this breakdown.