This article is written by Bamba Ceesay, pursuing a Certificate Course in Advanced Criminal Litigation & Trial Advocacy from LawSikho.

Introduction

A harsh reality of the law is that though written on paper with the boldest and most genuine objectives, its application and enforcement usually unlocks a plethora of issues ranging from social to political constraints thus barring the realization of the full potentials of legislation. A fair example of the above claim is the “Abolition of Untouchability” as per Art. 17 of the Constitution but I need not emphasize on how the practice of Untouchability is still prevalent in some areas of India. Apart from the above mentioned, many other circumstances exist in India where certain sections/groups find themselves subject to various forms of oppression (Social, economic and political) which ironically is considered necessary or acceptable/inevitable depending on the context. Such includes the issues surrounding LGBT rights, religious rights as well as women rights.

What is Identity Politics?

A term coined by the Combahee River Collective who were a group of women working towards the active participation of Black women in politics back in 1977. The term connotes a wide range of political activities and theoretical analysis of circumstances of injustice or oppression of certain social groups and their attempts to reclaim a higher self -determination and political freedom to participate in society on equal terms with other members of the society. It is thus a tool to frame political claims or call for social and political action in the context of inequality or injustice being faced by such groups in their aim to acquire distinctiveness, gaining power and recognition.

Post Independent India Demographics

Post independent India has had an enormous task of dealing with four key identities in India, language, caste, religion and tribe.

• Language- As per 2001 census, 22 languages are spoken in India with Hindi being top with 41.03%.
• It also reported 6 religions, Hindu, Islam, Christianity, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains recording 80.5%, 13.4%, 2.3%, 1.9%, 0.8% and 0.4% respectively. 
• The 2019 share of population based on caste is reported to be Scheduled Tribes 9%, Dalits 20%, forward Caste 30% and other backward class 41%. 

Problems posed by India’s Diversity

Taking the above demographics into consideration, it becomes evident that India has an indeed very diverse population which inevitably, comes with its shortcomings.

India has merely relied on democracy to remedy the foreseeable problems diversity creates and as a result, has proved to be inadequate as such issues related to discrimination or oppression based on caste, religion, tribe and language still persist and are arguably more rampant now than ever. 

This is because of the fact that democracy is perhaps not enough to assimilate the belief system and values of people distinct to them to a new way of living considered acceptable by everyone. India evokes the image of a nation as a family which in theory means, all religions (as well as languages, castes, and tribes) have an equal place in the national family, and none will dominate the functioning of the state. 

Quite ironically this has not been an easy task to accomplish hence the ideal has not been fully realized, nor is it easy to realize. One’s religious faith, linguistic, caste or social background should not be the determining factor for citizenship in any country and the rights that go with it; birth and naturalization should thus be the sole legal criterion. 

The Constitution has guaranteed many protections against discrimination based on any form of identity but it is not enough to change the way people treat or view each other. As a result, some social groups remain discontented by the fact that their distinctiveness is not recognized or not afforded equal treatment. 

 Lacing this with the fact that in a democratic system, the electoral process is the only lawful mechanism of getting one’s voice heard. In order to do so, one must be backed by popular support and once this was attained, significant changes can be made to relieve certain burdens on people. As a result, identifying with a particular social group in order to be heard does not in any way contravene the principles of democracy hence acceptable. It is by this logic we saw the rise of LGBT communities or social groups, disabled persons groups amongst many others fighting for one key objective, Identity, hence widening the scope of identity politics in their journey to emancipation.

Identity politics and the Indian Constitution

India is a secular and socialist democracy paying prime significance to welfare of the people. This is envisaged in the various provisions of the Indian Constitution namely-

• Right to equality (Articles 14-18),
• Right to Freedom (Articles 19-22), 
• Right against Exploitation (Articles 23-24), 
• Right to Freedom of Religion (Articles 25-28),
• Cultural and Educational Rights (Articles 29-30),
• Right to Constitutional remedies (Articles 32).

The above mentioned provisions of the Constitution pay particular attention to the sacrosanct nature of our individuality and the need to protect the same so as to better be able develop to our full potential in the most dignified way by allowing for equal opportunities in all areas of life (social, economic and political etc.). 

The very wording of the Constitution itself like, “there shall be no discrimination” “there shall be equality” not only put emphasis on the importance and straight forwardness of the provisions but only emphasizes on the fact that there exist multiple sections of the society that are fundamentally different owing to their religions, castes, tribes, gender etc. and these groups should not be treated differently solely on the basis for which they identify with certain groups. 

The very nature of identity politics and its objective does not go against any provision of the Constitution simply because it is engaged in emancipatory politics i.e. uplifting shunned or oppressed social groups hence it actually enforces certain provisions of the Constitution.

As a result, identity politics for the purpose of emancipation of marginalized social groups or is within the purview of the Indian Constitution. It can even be argued that identity politics is required in a democracy for it is one of the few ways in which the marginalized are making efforts to get a share of power as democracy becomes useless if it does not pave a way for free play to power struggle between various sections of people.

Limitations/restrictions faced by social groups

As mentioned above, India’s population contains the most diverse set of people which inevitably, threatens the very sanctity of India’s democracy. Below are various sets of social groups who despite protection from the Indian Constitution, still find themselves subject to a series of limitations or restrictions on their rights.

• Dalits- Hinduism in India is the most practiced religion and amongst its pillars is one of the world’s oldest surviving social hierarchies. The social hierarchy places Dalits on the bottom of the order hence their classification as untouchables. The social system is also set up in a way that there is little or no room for movement upwards the social hierarchy by Dalits. The Dalit population of India is about 167 million people but unfortunately, they still remain the most underprivileged class of Indian Society. 80 percent of the Dalit population live in rural areas. They also perform bonded labor despite it being abolished, forced prostitution, manual scavenging and as reported by the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), less than 2 percent of rape cases against Dalit women result in convictions, compared to around 25 percent against women in India generally. 
• Muslims- About 200 million Muslim people live in India hence making it the largest minority group in the country. Muslims have found themselves subject to discriminations in relations to education, employment and housing as well as communal violence in India. A 2019 report by an NGO titled Status of Policing report showed that half of the police surveyed showed an Anti-Muslim bias meaning, police are less likely to intervene to stop crimes against Muslims. It was also noted in the report that there existed, a widespread impunity for those who attack Muslims. Courts and government bodies have sometimes overturned convictions or withdrawn cases that accused Hindus of involvement in violence against Muslims. The citizenship amendment Act has also added to limit Muslims’ rights by allowing fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from nearby countries.
• LGBT- Members of the LGBT community despite being recognized as legitimate by law, still face a lot of bullying from society for identifying differently. The United Nations education agency and the International Commission of Jurists have each published in- depth reports on the plight of LGBT Indians. The ICJ report highlighted gender-specific school uniforms, lack of access to toilets, and difficulties in obtaining accurate identity documents as barriers for LGBT students and accounts of bullying in schools were common. The report also detailed cases of teachers beating and berating male students for acting too effeminately, and forcing transgender students to sit separately from their peers.  The UNESCO report on the other hand surveyed 371 sexual and gender minority youth thereby gathering in-depth information from more than 60 through focus groups in Tamil Nadu state. Eighty-four percent of participants reported being bullied by other students, one-fifth of those cases by a male teachers. Only 18% of those who were bullied said they reported the incident to school authorities.
• Women- Discrimination against women in India begins from birth as girl children are normally aborted due to preference for a male child resulting in the population ratio of 1000 boys to 908 girls. This all stems of the highly patriarchal norms of Indian society. Reports also show 42% of married women in India were married as children (District Information System for Education (DISE), 1 in every 3 child brides in the world is a girl in India (UNICEF), more than 45 lakh girls under 15 years of age who are married with children. Out of these, 70% of the girls have 2 children.

Rise of movements based on Identity Politics

When discriminations, as mentioned above, prevails, an inevitable consequence is the rise of movements that seek to emancipate the vulnerable groups to realize their full potential and participate as equal members of the society, In India, some movements identifying specifically to certain social groups have rose over the past decades and they are as follows-

• Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)- Formed in 1984, BSP is a political party representing the people on the lowest ranks in the Hindu hierarchy ( SC, ST and OBC) as well as other religious and social minorities. BSP opposes and criticizes the inequalities of the caste system. Its main tenets are focused on respecting and upholding the constitutional rights of the lower members of Indian society. The first significant political success for the BSP came in 1993, when it entered into an alliance with the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party for the governance of Uttar Pradesh. The BSP scored a decisive win in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh parliamentary elections, however, winning 206 of the assembly’s 403 seats. The BSP has also been a force in national politics. It has had a generally small but influential number of members in both the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) and the Rajya Sabha (upper chamber).
• LGBT Movement- Aug. 11, 1992, marked the first known protest for gay rights was conducted in India. In 1999, Kolkata hosted India’s first Gay Pride Parade which saw only 15 attendees. This parade was later named Calcutta Rainbow Pride. The year 2009 saw the birth of a landmark Delhi High Court decision in Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi. The case held that treating consensual homosexual sex between adults as a crime is a violation of fundamental rights protected by India’s Constitution. The decision was later overturned in Suresh Kumar Koushal and another v. NAZ Foundation and others in 2013 by the Honourable Supreme Court thereby reinstating Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.  In 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the right to privacy as a fundamental right under the Constitution in the landmark Puttaswamy judgement giving renewed hope to LGBT activists. September 2018 saw the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Section 377 was unconstitutional “in so far as it criminalises consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex”.

Women Rights Movements- There have been several movements with regards to women’s rights in India. On December 21, 2012, the streets surrounding Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi was teeming with thousands of people out in anger against the brutal rape of a 23-year-old girl.  The incident resulted in some significant changes in laws regarding rape cases in India. The protests became a landmark moment in the history of the feminist movement in India. The chipko movement was also a very significant one as it concerned the preservation of ecological balance in the state of Uttarakhand (then Uttar Pradesh) which started in the early 1970s. The protests were against the government’s policy of handing out contracts to industrial giants to utilise forest produce for making profits. On July 11, 2004 a 32-year-old woman named Thangjam Manorama was picked up by members of the Assam Rifles (a paramilitary force unit in India) in Manipur on allegations of her being part of the banned People’s Liberation Army. Next morning, she was found raped and murdered with bullets pumped into her vagina. Five days after the murder, 30 women came out on the streets of Imphal in protest against the army atrocity against Manorama.

These amongst many other movements have sparked the light on the plight of Indian women.

Critique of Identity Politics

• Identity politics has often been criticised for sowing the seeds of enmity and hatred amongst various sections of the society based on castes, religions, language etc. It is argued that this is similar to the divide and rule strategies meant to divert people’s attention from the main issues. This critique is rather absurd as marginalized groups are not often in a position of power. The whole idea behind identity politics is the opposite of what it is commonly depicted to be especially by those in power. It is meant for the emancipation of those vulnerable sections of the society subjected to various forms of discrimination and oppression. All politics at the end of the day identity politics because of the fact that what is considered as just politics is merely the identity politics of dominant groups because there is a big misconception that the interest of dominant political parties is always the same interest of those of the general people which is not always the case.
• Identity politics has also been criticized for being limited or a narrow minded view of citizens and political parties. This is far away from the truth as identity politics involves the analysis of historical events that add to the oppression and discrimination of certain groups the reasons it occurred (for example, slavery, discrimination of women rights, LGBT etc.) and devising mechanisms to change the status quo for a better tomorrow in which social injustices have been gotten rid of. It also avoids the consolidation of activity around the maintenance of the identity thereby overcoming the conditions that generated it.
• Identity politics though being a natural and inevitable response to injustice has also been criticized for having the tendency to focus on cultural issues which diverts the energy and attention away from serious thinking for progressiveness for socio economic equality.

Conclusion

Political identity inevitably has some of its bad side as mentioned above but this does not warrant the total disregard for its efficiency in being able to unite the underdogs of society to call for equal treatment and equal opportunities afforded to them by virtue of being human and the Constitution. 

From the LGBT Community, women rights movements, religious groups and movement to the political organization of Dalits and other scheduled and backward tribe persons in their quest for emancipation from oppression, political identity has played a major role in the realization of these objectives as seen in the Sabrimala case, Decriminalization of consensual homosexual intercourse by the Supreme Court in 2018 and even the recognition that transgender people have a constitutional right to change their legal gender and a third gender is recognised amongst many other social development seen in India over the past years.

Social differences may seem ubiquitous in the country, but that is entirely to be expected in a highly ethnically and religiously diverse democracy, which has stood firmly on the principle that groups are free to mobilize support and make claims on the state. Democracy, therefore, becomes both the channel through which conflict is waged, as well as the channel through which conflict is solved or managed.

Identity politics has played an important role in bringing marginalized and discriminated sections of society to mainstream politics and as a result, we need to ensure that Identity politics don’t result into limited or narrow thinking while reaping its benefit.

Students of Lawsikho courses regularly produce writing assignments and work on practical exercises as a part of their coursework and develop themselves in real-life practical skill.