Recently, there was an article in the newspaper (April 9th, 2024. The Hans India) titled Kanyadaan not essential under Hindu Marriage Act, saptapadi is: HC about an Allahabad court judgement. This raises many issues in the country concerning law, the judiciary, and the nature of Indian traditions. Indian cultural notions of law and judiciary have suffered severe distortions due to the imposition of a corrupt and inefficient British law system. Our cultural understanding of the judge’s power allows us to accept their arbitrary commandments without much resistance. In his essays, Balagangadhara Rao points out that the corruption in the Indian judicial systems ultimately stems from the extreme importance Indian culture places on the judge.
Previously, the church and missionaries played an important role in assessing pagan rituals and traditions and deciding what was “true,” “secular,” and “idolatry.” The last was fit to be condemned and destroyed while retaining “true” and “secular” practices. The “caste system” was one such idolatrous practice, and thus, efforts continued during the entire colonial period to dismantle the entire social fabric of India. Post-independent India, seeped in colonial consciousness, wants to do the same without understanding the social systems of Varna and Jati and how they can differ from caste descriptions of the western world. Past missionaries and present left-liberals believe that a few evils, such as untouchability, subjected to internal reform anyway, are reasons sufficient to dismantle the entire structure of Hinduism.
Similarly, India is a land of traditions rather than religions, where rituals and not doctrines form the foundation. Rituals unite people. Traditional practices may not have an “intelligent explanation,” except for the fact that they have been ongoing since ancestral times. Traditions and its attached rituals are simultaneously both fixed and flexible. Some elements can be absent from a tradition, but the latter remains intact. There are no “essential” or “non-essential” elements in rituals and traditions, like the unchangeable doctrines of religions. The judges today take on the role of previous missionaries and church fathers to decide the “essential” and “non-essential” practices in Hindu practices like marriage, temple entry, and so on. The judiciary lacks serious knowledge of Indian culture and traditions, and they will continue to disrupt India’s social fabric in the future by judgements of this nature.
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