As the rule of law recedes in India, a new majoritarian consensus emerges https://scroll.in/article/1037771/as-the-rule-of-law-recedes-in-india-a-new-majoritarian-consensus-emerges Why did the school apologise for promoting unity and harmony? Quite apparently because they feared local Hindu groups, who – if the rule of law functioned as the Constitution provides – should have faced police prosecution for intimidation.
Instead, as these groups have increasingly demonstrated, they feel emboldened and empowered enough to enforce their own views, as they threaten colleges, raid pubs and resorts in pursuit of their own definition of morality. Muslim groups and extremists, too, ignore the rule of law, murdering Hindu fundamentalists and enforcing their own rules of moral policing. The difference is the Muslim groups get no support from the state. The Hindu groups, as Article 14 reported, obviously do.
There are examples in India of majoritarian proclivities creeping and codified into the law itself, as my colleagues have extensively reported: from laws against cow slaughter, inter-faith love (here and here) and conversions, to often illegal and unconstitutional demolition of properties.