Exploring the limits of minority-majority framework through hijab judgment

Abstract

The evenly split verdict on hijab (veil) by the Supreme Court of India has elicited disparate commentary from different quarters. This article explores the judgment from the subjective universe of judges who delivered separate opinions. It considers respective fields of discursivity which animate the legal reasoning of both the judges. While the opinion of Justice Hemant Gupta is soaked in the right leaning upper caste nationalism which instinctively privileges discipline over freedom, Justice Himanshu Dhulia's liberalism fails to consider the imperatives of democratic politics. Justice Dhulia, like most left-liberals, ends up reinforcing minority-majority binary constructed around religion that undergirds upper caste universe of meaning. His liberalism is characteristically accommodative of religious conservatism which operates as a constitutive force for communal politics. Justice Dhulia's opinion proceeds with the assumption of hypothetical trust that exists among homogeneous but neatly divided religious groups. This article demonstrates how such an assumption coupled with neoliberal hegemony fuels the present antidemocratic upsurge across the board.