Will Supreme Court also come forward to end legally-sanctioned segregation on religious lines in Gujarat?

By Rajiv Shah 
My Vadodara-based activist-friend, Jagdish Patel, who has long championed the cause of the victims of silicosis, a deadly occupational disease, has forwarded to me an interesting blog by the executive editor of Pulitzer Center, Marina Walker Guevara, written in the context of the U.S. election results, in which Donald Trump has won.

“I have been thinking about my colleagues in places like India, Venezuela, Hungary, Philippines, and even Argentina, my own birth country, who have a thing or two to teach us about how to produce world-changing journalism amid insults, persecution, harassment, and worse”, the blog says, adding, “It’s hard to predict exactly how much press freedom will deteriorate in the U.S. in a second Trump presidency, but the fact that we are even contemplating and bracing ourselves for such a scenario shows how profoundly abnormal and dangerous this moment is.”
The blog raises some apprehensions:

• Might the legal definition of libel change in U.S. courts to open the door to frivolous lawsuits against journalists who hold powerful individuals and organizations to account?
• Might TV broadcasters lose their licenses lest they provide favorable coverage to those in power? 
• Will reporters covering demonstrations and other events be thrown into jail for threatening public order? Might partisan outlets masquerading as journalism be legitimized or even subsidized with public funds? 
• Will freedom of information laws that guarantee citizens’ fundamental right to learn how government business is conducted be crippled and made useless?
  

Pointing out that “all of this is already happening in many countries around the world as autocratic regimes—to the right and the left—settle in or perpetuate themselves in power”, the blog says, the Pulitzer Center has “journalists to look up to and learn from.”
The blog mentions the names of “Russian colleague Roman Anin and my Venezuelan colleague Joseph Poliszuk, both journalists in exile”, from whom one learns “the importance of holding to account the businessmen and corporations that thrive in an authoritarian regime.”
Then, the blog mentions Maria Ressa, a Nobel laureate and Filipina journalist, who “has been warning us for years that what happens in the Philippines has a way of making it sooner or later to the U.S.” Ressa her outlet Rappler have “battled multiple court cases on invented charges initiated by a government led by strongman Rodrigo Duterte” and “personally endured cruel and dehumanizing insults and attacks magnified by organized disinformation networks.”
An important mention in the blog is that of Pulitzer colleague Sukanya Shantha from India, which the blog calls “a shrinking democracy”, where “even in an unforgiving context, rigorous and independent journalism can upend an entire unjust system.” It points to how “Shantha’s reporting on caste-based labor in Indian prisons for The Wire recently resulted in a historic ruling by India’s Supreme Court that banned the centuries-old practice across the country. The head judge thanked the reporter for her work.”
About the “historic ruling” itself, the blog takes one to a Pulitzer story, “India Supreme court sides with Pulitzer Center grantee, bans caste-based prison work”. The ruling, on October 3, particularly said, "Segregating prisoners on the basis of caste would reinforce caste differences or animosity that ought to be prevented at the first place.” It added, “Segregation would not lead to rehabilitation”, declaring “that provisions relating to caste-based discriminatory practices in prison manuals are unconstitutional”, directing “all states and Union Territories to revise their Prison Manuals.”
“The order comes on a petition filed by a journalist with The Wire, Sukanya Shantha, whose 2020 Pulitzer Center-supported report "From segregation to labour, Manu’s caste law governs the Indian prison system" formed the basis of the plea”, the Pulitzer story reads, adding, “Reading out the judgment, D.Y. Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India (CJI), heading a bench also of Justices Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, congratulated the journalist and said that had it not been for Sukanya Shantha’s report, the injustice may have never come to light.”
Indeed, The Wire’s 2020 Pulitzer-supported story is an excellent of investigative journalism. It extensively quotes from prison manuals which legitimise “caste-based labour” in many states. “The colonial texts of the late 19th century have barely seen any amendments, and caste-based labour remains an untouched part of these manuals”, the story says, adding, “While every state has its own unique prison manual, they are mostly based on The Prisons Act, 1894”.
For instance, the Rajasthan Jail Manual says that “While cooking and handling medical care in the prison is considered high-caste work, sweeping and cleaning is straightaway assigned to the lower castes.” Thus, the Rajasthan prison manual states: “Any Brahmin or sufficiently high caste Hindu prisoner from his class if eligible for appointment as cook”.
Then there is the Bihar manual, which under the section “Preparation of food” opens with this line: “Of equal importance is the quality, proper preparation, and cooking of the food and its issue in full quantity”, adding, “Any ‘A class’ Brahmin or sufficiently high caste Hindu prisoner is eligible for appointment as a cook.”
The Wire story, an excellent investigation, doesn’t stop here. It notes, segregation is not just confined to “mere words printed in an official book and forgotten”. In fact, “Several prisoners who were approached shared their experiences of being segregated and pushed into doing menial jobs purely on the basis of the caste they were born into. While Brahmins and other high caste prisoners considered their exemption to be a matter of pride and privilege, the rest had only the caste system to blame for their condition.”
While the Supreme Court ruling on officially-sanctioned caste-based discrimination in Indian prisons is a significant step forward, I am left wondering why little is being done to end such caste and religion-based segregation doesn’t exist in every day life.
Also, what about officially-supported (legally, I should say, as there is a law in Gujarat on this) religion-based segregation? The law, Disturbed Areas Act, “mandates that property deals must be approved by the district collector in areas marked as ‘disturbed’. It’s a tool to segregate Hindus and Muslims”, to quote from The Print story, published early this year.
In fact, it’s not a new law. “A unique three-decade-old state law mandates that property deals must be approved by the district collector in areas marked as ‘disturbed’, and while it does not expressly mention religion, it is usually invoked in cases of Muslim-Hindu transactions”, The Print Story adds.
Will the Supreme Court take it up suo motu, and see that such official sanction of segregation, which is one major reason why Hindus and Muslims don’t interact socially whether it’s Ahmedabad of Vadodara, any time, perpetuating a suspicious atmosphere about each other, leading to heightened tensions during communal riots.