Daily The Hindu Analysis

16th March 2022

 ‘Ban in schools constitutionally
permissible’
 The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday
upheld the ban on the wearing of hijab
(head scarf) by students in schools and
colleges in the State.
 It held that wearing the hijab is not an
essential religious practice in Islam and
is not, therefore, protected under by the
right to freedom of religion guaranteed
by Article 25 of the Constitution.
 The court said it was a reasonable
restriction that was constitutionally
permissible.
 In its 129-page judgement, Bench also spoke about the
possibility of some “unseen hands” behind the hijab row
to engineer social unrest and disharmony, and expressed
dismay over the issue being blown out of proportion by
the powers that be.
 The court said that school uniform will cease to be a
uniform if hijab is also allowed.
 “Hijab is a veil ordinarily worn by Muslim women. Its origin
in the Arabic verb hajaba has etymological similarities
with the verb ‘to hide.’... This way, the hijab hides, marks
the difference, protects, and arguably affirms the
religious identity of Muslim women,” the Bench said.
 Article 25 (1) of the Indian
Constitution states, "Subject to
public order, morality and health
and to the other provisions of
this Part, all persons are equally
entitled to freedom of
conscience and the right freely
to profess, practise and
propagate religion."
Article 14. Equality before law The State shall not deny to any
person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws
within the territory of India Prohibition of discrimination on
grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth
Article 28
 Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious
worship in certain educational institutions
 (1) No religion instruction shall be provided in any educational
institution wholly maintained out of State funds
 (2) Nothing in clause ( 1 ) shall apply to an educational institution
which is administered by the State but has been established under
any endowment or trust which requires that religious instruction
shall be imparted in such institution
 Remedies for enforcement of rights conferred by this Part
 (1) The right to move the Supreme Court by appropriate
proceedings for the enforcement of the rights conferred by this
Part is guaranteed
 (2) The Supreme Court shall have power to issue directions or
orders or writs, including writs in the nature of habeas corpus,
mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari, whichever
may be appropriate, for the enforcement of any of the rights
conferred by this Part
 44. Uniform civil code for the citizens The State shall endeavour
to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the
territory of India
 The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Central
government’s decision to revoke the security
clearance of Kerala-based news and current affairs
TV channel MediaOne “on the basis of intelligence
inputs which are sensitive and secretive in nature”.
 Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, heading a three-judge
Bench, said the Centre’s decision had effectively
shut down the business of media house
Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited, which runs
MediaOne, in the name of “national security and
public order” without fully disclosing the specific
reasons for revoking its security clearance.
 if the court allowed this to happen “no media or
publication is safe. Everybody can be shut down
anytime”.
 it is nowhere mentioned in the
law of the land and is hence
simply put as murder since it has
not been yet incorporated under
the Indian Penal Code.
In July 2017, the Supreme Court in the case of Tahseen s.
Poonawala v. UOI had laid down several preventive,
remedial and punitive measures to deal with lynching and
mob violence.
The Supreme Court in this case aptly referred to mob
lynching as a ‘horrendous act of mobocracy.’
Designated Fast Track Courts:
States were directed to set up designated fast track
courts in every district to exclusively deal with cases
involving mob lynchings.
 India’s missile incident
has underlined the sorry
state of bilateral
mechanisms it has with
Pakistan for crisis
management
 The accidental firing of an Indian missile into Pakistan on
March 9 calls for serious introspection by the two nuclear-
armed adversaries about the perils of living under the
shadow of nuclear weapons.
 The unfortunate incident also casts a shadow on the
standards of the storage, maintenance, the handling and
even the engineering of high-technology weapon systems in
India.
 But, more pertinently, the incident highlights the sorry state
of bilateral mechanisms for crisis management between the
two nuclear adversaries where there is a missile flight time
of barely a few minutes.
 The two sides do not have high commissioners on the
other side, there is no structured bilateral dialogue, and,
most importantly, the two sides have not held ‘Expert
Level Talks on Nuclear Confidence Building Measures’ or
‘Expert Level Talks on Conventional Confidence Building
Measures’ for several years now.
 What if this had happened during trouble between the
two sides such as the Balakot crisis of 2019? What if this
missile had hit a target of strategic value inside Pakistani
territory, in turn forcing Pakistan to retaliate which may
or may not have led to an Indian response?
 What if such a Pakistani response had come when the
Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections were still going on? One
could think of a number of scenarios wherein the
accidental firing could have spiralled into a major crisis
between India and Pakistan.
 There are at least four reasons why the strategic stability
regime in South Asia is hardly prepared for dealing with
accidents such as the one that just happened, or
enhancing effective crisis management and deterrence
stability.
 For one, although India and Pakistan signed a ‘Pre-
Notification of Flight Testing of Ballistic Missiles’
agreement in October 2005, it does not include cruise
missiles.
 Notably, the missile that was misfired by the Indian side
earlier this month, suspected to be the BrahMos, was a
cruise missile (even though it was a misfire, and not a
flight test).
 Given the many sophisticated cruise missiles that are now
a part of each side’s arsenal, it is important to include
them in the pre-notification regime.
 Given the nature of the India-Pakistan relationship
— adversarial, nuclear-armed, crisis prone, and
suffering from trust deficit — there is an urgent
need, especially in the wake of the recent incident,
to revive these two dialogue mechanisms.
 After all, even the ideologically-adversarial Cold
War rivals had such mechanisms in operation
especially in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis of
1962.
 what makes the regional strategic stability regime more
unstable is the fact that the third state with nuclear
weapons in the region, China, has so far refused to
engage in strategic stability discussions with India even
though China today is involved in the India-Pakistan
conflict more than ever before, apart from being in a
military standoff with India.
 India and Pakistan urgently require faster mechanisms
for communicating sensitive information during crisis
periods and peacetime given how quickly the two sides
are capable of transitioning from peacetime to a crisis.
 Therefore, India and Pakistan should consider setting
up mechanisms such as nuclear risk reduction centres
(NRRCs), established between the U.S. and the Soviet
Union during the Cold War.
 India’s stand in the
United Nations on the
Ukraine war is an apt
moment to reflect on
the much needed Dixit
principle
 Republics and Moscow
 Those were times of change. On December 25, 1991,
Soviet Union’s General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
resigned, the flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) was lowered for the last time at the
Kremlin and the following day, the USSR was formally
dissolved. In its place, 15 republics emerged.
 India accepted the challenge and set about opening new
embassies to build new relationships with these
countries in Central Asia, the South Caucasus and
Central Europe while maintaining its traditional ties with
Moscow.
 In January 1992, India and Israel established full
diplomatic relations,
 India US : leading to the path-breaking India-U.S. Civil
Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 2008.
 At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
summit on January 27, 1992, Prime Minister Rao’s ‘Look
East’ policy began to take shape as India and ASEAN
embarked on a sectoral-dialogue partnership.
 By the end of 1995, this had matured into a full-dialogue
partnership and in 1996, India joined the security dialogue
platform, the ASEAN Regional Forum.
 Since 2002, the relationship has strengthened further with
the annual India-ASEAN summit.
 On China and Taiwan
 Following intense negotiations, during Mr. Rao’s visit to
China in September 1993, the two sides initiated the
first of many confidence-building-measures, notably
the Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and
Tranquillity Along the Line of Actual Control in the
India-China Border Areas. It laid the foundation of the
relationship for two decades.
 Simultaneously, India and Taiwan negotiated to open
economic and cultural centres; Taiwan opened its
office first in Mumbai in 1992 before shifting to Delhi
while India established the India-Taipei Association
office in 1995.
The Afghan Taliban will be affected by
Imran Khan’s diplomatic manoeuvres in
the Ukraine minefield
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shifted
the global focus from Afghanistan. As
the refugee crisis in Ukraine gets more
acute, the Afghan Taliban will face huge
challenges in saving Afghanistan from
an economic catastrophe, financial
bankruptcy and a humanitarian crisis.
 The Afghan Taliban are now going to be affected by the
Pakistani Prime Minister’s diplomatic manoeuvres in the
Ukraine minefield.
 First, this will dampen the Taliban’s chances of getting
immediate international recognition as Pakistan’s turn
towards Russia seems to have further deepened the distrust
between Washington and Islamabad.
 Russia-Ukraine conflict is going to take a toll on Afghanistan
and its refugees. Afghan refugees living in Pakistan are likely
to receive little from the Western countries.
 As Pakistan continues to remain in the ‘grey list’ of the
Financial Action Task Force, the Paris-based global money
laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, it has become
difficult for the political leadership to keep the economy
stable and fend off the negative implications of an
unrecognised Taliban regime in its neighbourhood.
 Two separate Benches of the
Supreme Court on Tuesday tore into
the “sealed cover jurisprudence”
practised by the government in
courts.
 The court was critical about how
the government and its agencies
file reports in sealed envelopes
directly in court without sharing the
contents with the opposite party.
 This is usually done on the ground
that the contents are highly
sensitive in nature, and may injure
even national security or “public
order”.
 Being kept in the dark about the material contained in a sealed
cover report, the petitioners are crippled in mounting a defence,
not knowing what they are supposed to defend against.
 At times, their cases, mostly involving fundamental rights such as
personal liberty, are dismissed on the basis of the secret
contents ensconced in the sealed covers.