INDIA' SUPREME COURT'S DECISION - SACRIFICING TNDIVIDUAL RIGHTS FOR RELIGIOUS ONES?

It would appear that India's Supreme Court has either been taken over by the spirit of 'Islamic State' like evil, or have lost its head. 

It seems that India's Supreme Justice's have, for reasons which are not yet quite clear, have decided to piss on jurisprudence, and replace it with bad old religious and communal bigotry.

70 years after the nation's independence from Britain, the mother of parliamentary democracy, and we still have India's Supreme Court deciding that a woman and man from different religious affiliations cannot get married. 

That an adult woman is not capable of making that most crucial of decisions which they have a right to make; that of which man they should marry, unless it is a man who belongs to her religious and ethnic background. 

For prudence sake, how can this be? Has India's Supreme Court been taken over by Hindu Jihadists? Has its Judges loss their jurisprudence?

India was beset with  terrible inter-communal bigotry, which turned barbarous during the process of the separation of the Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other religious devotees, between India and the newly created Pakistan. 

And, as if the people of the sub-continent have an insatiable appetite for killing and other forms of brutality. East and West Pakistan repeated it all over again, during the secession of East Pakistan, in 1971. 

Something which would suggest that this contempt for human lives and human depravity, cannot simply be explained by way of religious enmity. 

So, is it something deeply imbued in the very psyche of the people of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India? Something deep in the soil, the air, the land and ancient histories of these countries?

India is often cited as the most populous democracy in the world, but, is India really a democracy, except for how it chooses its government? 

But of what value is a 'democracy', if it does not uphold the basic and reasonable rights and freedoms of its individual citizens.T o freely contract between themselves, who they choose to have a relationship with, marry and live with? 

Does this decision by India's Supreme Court, not mean that the country is still in the grip of ethnic and religious bigotry, and misogynistic precepts on which Indian society is founded?

In a free society, the rights of the individual is respected and carry equal weight to thosed of the family and/or the community. They are not relinquished to second or third place, i.e., after those of the family and the ethnic or religious sect.

The rights and freedoms of a society which has evolved into enlightenment, are a reflection and embodidment of the rights and freedoms of the individual. 

Thomas Paine did not speak about the 'right of the family, and the community', but of 'the right of man (and, for our purpose, of woman).' 

For freedom, equalite, and liberty, and these are, arguably it might be for some, people and societies, still probably high among the most virtuous of values.

And this is probably the biggest problem with India, as well as her biggest challenge. 

The fact that the country's ruling elites persist in suppressing the rights of the individual. 

In preference for the anachronistic and fossilised pre-eminence of the family and community over the freedom of the individual to manage his or her life.

It is with this mindset that India's Supreme Court, upon being asked by a young couple, Akhila Ashokan, a woman from a Hindu family, and Shafin Jahan, a Muslim.  

To set aside the annulment of their marriage by a lower court, passed a most injudicious judgement, by upholding the pernicious High Court's judgement.

Truly a very sad situation for the people of India, especially since their government is unlikely to pass the necessary laws which would prevent such glaring miscarriage of justice by the nation's highest court.

But the brave and courageous Indians who are struggling against this backward looking India, should not be deflected from doing so.