Social Boycott Act

What is a social boycott?

• Social boycott is a weapon used in rural and some urban communities to reinforce hierarchies and power structures.
• The more apt term for it may be “ostracism,” where an individual is banished from society (if not physically, then socially) for a perceived breach of that society’s rules.
• In India, it is deployed against the deprived sections of society.
• It is aimed at making the lives of the boycotted as difficult as possible, cutting them from all social interactions that make life meaningful.
• To address this, the Maharashtra government passed the Social boycott act.

 

What are the features of the Social boycott act?

• It seeks not only to criminalize a panchayat or any person who imposes or enforces a social boycott but tries to take measures to prevent such social boycotts and give relief to victims.
• It also places an obligation on the district administration to take proactive steps to prevent anybody from issuing calls for social boycotts.
• It creates the post of a “social boycott prohibition officer,” to help the district administration and other officers in the discharge of their duties.

 

What was Excommunication Act?

• This is not the first attempt by Maharashtra to tackle the problem of social boycotts.
• An ex-communication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit the membership of a person in a religious community.
• The Excommunication Act, 1949, declared that ex-communications would have no binding effect and would not be enforceable, at the same time imposing criminal penalties on persons who engaged in or enforced an ex-communication.

What is Article 26 of the Indian Constitution?

Article 26 is a Fundamental Right that provides Freedom of Religion. It states that – Freedom to manage religious affairs subject to public order, morality and health, every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right

• To establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes;
• To manage its own affairs in matters of religion;
• To own and acquire movable and immovable property, and
• To administer such property in accordance with the law.

 

Why was it quashed?

• The ex-communication act was challenged in the Bombay High Court as being unconstitutional for violating the rights under Article 26 of the Constitution.
• Bombay High Court turned down this challenge on the grounds that the scope of the right of a religious denomination to manage its own affairs under Article 26 could not possibly extend to interfering with the legal rights and privileges enjoyed under law.
• But in a subsequent challenge Supreme Court struck down the ex-communication act as being contrary to Article 26.
• It held that the power of ex-communication, being an exercise of the religious power of a denomination or community, was protected under Article 26.
• The minority judgment was written by the then Chief Justice, BP Sinha disagrees with the majority. His judgment tentatively links the act of ex-communication with the practice of untouchability, abolished under Article 17.
• The minority view expressed by Sinha is clearly the better reasoned one and takes into account the true extent of the protection of the freedom of religion guaranteed under the Constitution.

 

What will happen to the current law?

• There is one key distinction that has to be kept in mind while assessing the constitutional validity of the social boycott act.
• Excommunication necessarily means that a person’s access to religious places of worship and fellow worshippers is cut off, but a social boycott of course may involve religious places of worship as well need but not necessarily do so.
• The fundamental difference is in the nature of authority being claimed; ex-communication is carried out by someone who has religious authority to do so. Social boycotts do not necessarily involve anyone with “religious authority.”
• This distinction may seem narrow, but it is significant.
• The basis for the Court to strike down the ex-communication act rests on the claim that it violated the rights of religious denominations to manage their own religious affairs. Social boycotts are imposed and enforced by caste panchayats, and such institutions are not, in general, religious institutions. If it is challenged in court, the social boycott act is unlikely to meet the same fate as its predecessor law.
• However, the law’s effectiveness hinges on the ability of the police to necessarily take the side of the individual, the weaker and oppressed sections of the society, over their oppressors.