The Irony of Intersectionality In Justice Nariman Speaking Against Ram Janmabhoomi Judgement

Justice Rohinton Nariman, a retired Supreme Court judge, recently criticised the Ayodhya judgement after more than half a decade. 

He termed it a mockery of justice and held it to be a violation of basic principles of secularism, without mentioning the fact that secularism was a forced addition to the Indian Preamble by the dictatorial regime of Indira Gandhi.

Nariman further expressed his unhappiness about Hindus being active to reclaim their right to worship on the land that actually belongs to them. He does not want people from the community to file cases for determining the actual religious character of places like mosques and dargahs.

“We find today, like hydra heads popping up all over the country, there is suit after suit filed all over the place. Now not only concerning mosques but also dargahs. All this can lead to communal tension and disharmony, contrary to what is envisaged in both our Constitution and the Places of Worship Act,” said Nariman.

Whether he likes it or not, Nariman’s support for the Places of Worship Act will definitely be seen as support for the causes of radical Islamists. It is radical Islamists who actively invoke support for the mosques which were built on Hindu’s Mandirs. Not coincidentally, this support is invoked in the name of protecting poor Muslims of India.

There is another aspect of this statement which he won’t like but will nevertheless be discussed, and that is of Nariman’s own identity of being a Parsi priest. History is laid with such examples. Judges from the religion or caste belonging to one of the parties are involved in judgements, supposedly to give a message of unison.

In the same way, Nariman belonging to a minority also holds a symbolic significance here. In the macro scheme of things prevalent in anti-India narratives at the doorsteps of Ivy League institutions and left-wing universities, it is the victory of Intersectionality.

Apparently, Intersectionality does not put much emphasis on academic credentials or judicial wisdom of an intellectual. It is a person’s identity which becomes the basis of his/her feeling for a particular cause. So, if a person belongs to a minority community, his/her opinion on the status of minorities in India is his own experience as well as a rational analysis of him.

In fact, Intersectionality actually began with such absurdity. Its foundational text is “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” by Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Notice how Crenshaw did not highlight her academic credentials but chose to point out her identity as a black feminist to derive legitimacy for an academic essay. In these types of analysis, empirical data takes a backseat as everything is about false narrative building and appealing to the limbic brain, so why care.

Now you see the larger scheme of things behind promoting, sharing, and writing about views of a judge who is enjoying his post-retirement days and also holds the ‘distinction’ of recusing himself from the Ram Mandir judgement.

But as earlier pointed out, empirical data, history, and logical conclusions tend to take a backseat in these analyses. For every future or present essay appreciating Nariman for his so-called courage of speaking about the second-largest majority community of India, by virtue of being a Parsi, will skip the larger point that a Parsi is speaking up for his own oppressors.

Also Read: Intersectionality Won’t Work: Senior Legal Professionals Need To Catch Up With Changing Societal Needs

Parsis generally live along the coastal lines of India on the western front. Today they comprise 0.06 per cent of the Indian population and are arguably one of the richest groups in India. But they have a bloody history with Islam, and the expansion of Islam is the reason why they migrated to India.

Before Islam, they were concentrated in Persia, or modern-day Iran. The expansionist wing of Islam took control of Persia by the middle of the seventh century. Successive caliphates destroyed their temples, burned their libraries, killed whoever they thought deserved it, and raped women. 

With time, laws were made to delineate Zoroastrians from society. Resultantly, almost all of them fled, and today the percentage of Zoroastrians in Iran is less than 0.05 per cent. However, a recent survey by a European research organisation on 50,000 Iranians put Zoroastrians’ percentage at 7.7, but the sample size is very small.

Fundamentally, Parsis or Zoroastrians also faced the same fate as Hindus, but such is the narrative building around Intersectionality that a Parsi speaking up for the perpetrators of his community is hailed as a celebration of secularism.

As bizarre as it may sound, the phenomenon is not uncommon. In the last two years, the Israel-Hamas war has been a dominating theme for the criss-crossing of different groups under the Intersectionality paradigm, in which both LGBTQIA and Islam are considered marginalised groups.

The logic behind considering them as such is that both are neglected sections of society. One is neglected because of inbuilt homophobia in Western society, while Islam is neglected because of its bloody history against Christians and Jews, dating as far back as 11 September 2001 (9/11).

What Ivy League tricksters did was bring everyone together in an imagined world of oppressor-oppressed narrative war. Now, posters like Gays, lesbians for Palestine can be seen there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed such activists in his address to the US Congress.

His slamming was valid not because he was being opposed but because LGBTQIA has no place in Palestinian territory or any place where Islam has its foothold. Hanging, burning, and killing them is common as Sharia does not allow such activities.

There are many videos in which such LGBTQIA activists have come off as fools after getting fact-checked. A simple enquiry is death to Intersectionality anywhere.

India will also see such instances. The only thing to be feared is that it could be too late. Jains and Christians seem to be waking up. When will others do it?