See, this is where the whole argument falls bunks and your ignorance becomes apparent - You believe, wrongly, that the indian constitution only permits the government to "interfere and manage" the affairs of only the majority Hindu religion.
That is a false propaganda spread by the right-wing because the indian constitution also permits the government to oversees the administration of even the minority religious institutes by framing laws and regulations. And they do so. (Some states even have a whole ministry and their own state laws added to it).
E.g:
- Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee - This organisation is governed by the Chief Minister of Punjab (an elected politician) and is entrusted with the security and maintenance of all Gurudwaras and religious places of importance of the Sikhs. Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1971 defines how Sikh's religious institutes can be administered in the Delhi union territory.
- Waqf Act (1954 and 1995) and the Central Waqf Council of India: The religious and charitable institutions of muslims are administered by Waqfs (Trusts). The Central Waqf Council is headed by a Union Minister, along with 20 other members appointed by the Government of India. They oversee the administration of all the musim waqfs in India, creating the rules and guidelines and advising the state bodies. (By the way, there are now 30 government run Waqf boards in 28 states and other UTs in India).
- Indian Church Act, 1927 - Till it was repealed in 1960, it dictated the rules on administration of Churches. No new law replaced it. One of the reason being that that Christians forms less than 3% of the population and they often choose to register their movable and immovable properties under the the Societies Registration Act, and not under the Religious Endowment Act or The Charitable and Religious Trust Act, 1920. Thus, many of them come under the more stringent NGO laws in India, voluntary, and are managed more professionally. (After a recent scandal on misuse of church funds and properties in Kerala, the Kerala government plans to introduce a law to oversee their activities more stringently - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-draft-bill-regu... ).
So understand clearly that such arguments and propaganda of the right-wing that only Hindu religious institutes are governed by the Government of India is an absolute lie. Their real anger is with the fact that they cannot take-over the Temples and manage and misuse it for their political purposes. It has nothing to do with "secularism".
In fact, with The Religious Institutions (Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1988 the government even clearly defines what it considers to be illegal in any religious institute.
All the rest of your arguments that you believe and are just plain lies of the right-wing, without an iota of truth in them (some are facts that you have been misled into believing is wrong). I can point out the actual facts to you if you cite your sources for them.
You are both breaking the HN guidelines egregiously. Religious and nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, neither are personal swipes, and we don't want tedious tit-for-tat spats.
Please don't do anything like this on HN again, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
I was discussing how secularism is defined in the indian constitution, and how it functions with respect to the related laws guaranteeing minority rights. It doesn't have anything to do with "nationalism" but was a reply to another post (by a french?) in the hopes of discussing how secularism works in India and other democratic countries.
But it was hijacked and derailed. As I have pointed out to you before, it's a tactic of the right-wing online to deliberately generate controversies on ideas they don't like and then abuse the reporting tools to get it removed if they can't browbeat the original poster.
I mention this not to pick an argument with the mods here but to make you recognize this pattern.
You were part of the hijacking and derailing. Please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for.
If other comments are egregious, flag them and/or let us know at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll take a look.
I can see how one can conclude that. But I replied to a post with honest intention (it hadn't been flagged, and I assumed secularism was a "safe" topic :). But it wasn't certainly on the topic, and I'll keep that in mind from now before contributing.
Hilarious how you compare symbolic government representatives on waqf and gurudwara committe to be like government administration of temples.
1) in the case of temples, the money to run it comes from devotees, but the complete administration is done by the government. This means government hires and fires the employees, decides the salaries, have complete oversight of the money incoming and outgoing, decides what to do with the money. All of this is funded by the temple devotees.
I don't know much about gurudwara, and by own admissions, church act is null and void, but i can speak for waqf and mosques. Mosques have zero external interference. It's run by mosque committees formed of the local Muslim community elders. How is this even comparable?
As for waqf comitte, let's see. Sure they have namesake goverment appointee. But he does nothing in terms of setting the agenda on the waqf properties and institutions' administrations. They are completely decided by the Muslim community leaders who form bulk of the committee. They not only have complete independence on administration, in some cases (for eg: in kerala) their salary comes from state exchequer. So just to reiterate, temples are completely run by the state government with the funding coming from Hindu devotes, while the exact opposite is true for Muslim religious institutions, and you want to say both are same? Temple priests had to go to court (Indian courts that takes decades to settle a case) just to increase their salary from 20 rupees and you say they are same type of interference? That's a whole another level of gaslighting and bigotry.
To quote waqf kerala state website (first link on state waqf board google search):
"The State Government appoints a Chief Executive Officer for the Boardin consultation with the Board . Also the Board is empowered by the Act to appoint such number of officers and other employees as may be necessary for performance of its functions in consultation with the State Government under section 24 of Wakf Act,1995. All the employees of the Board are deemed to be public servants within the meaning of Section 21 of the IndianPenal Code(45 of 1860)"
2) Now let me address this doesn't even remotely address the main point that i was making. Waqf plays no role in the administration of educational institutions.
Things matter here are:
article 29(1), 30(1), TMA Pai judgement, Art 15(5) through 93rd Amendment, RTE.
You can read about these on your own. The tl;dr of it is that, Muslims/Christians/Jains/Sikhs etc have absolute freedom to create and run schools with complete autonomy with the magical "minority status". Also, in case of Muslims/Christians/Jains/Sikhs as opposed to linguistic minorities, there is this thing called NCMEI who will automatically grant the status to a new institutions if the state does nothing on the application for the status. These institutions are run with complete autonomy on hiring/firing teachers, failing students, expelling students, some of the curriculum (that allows such human rights violations as a christian school forcing a non christian student enrolled to attend bible classes, or parading the students for political causes etc.). The schools can screen 100% of students on whatever criteria decided by the management setting whatever tuition fee. The teachers doesn't have to be SET/NET qualified. In some cases (aided schools), the funding comes from the government. These aided minority colleges are exempt from quotas (for poor, SC/ST etc) that are applicable to fully unaided Hindu run colleges.
For a Hindu run school, no screening allowed, teachers have to be SET qualified, at least 25% of the seats have to be reserved for government, students can't be expelled, and a lot more.
3) Then there are things like MSDP, hunaar haat, scholarships, subsidy for religious pilgrimages, salaries and pensions for priests and scholars and lot more that the Indian state discriminates massively on religious identity - which you ironically call "secularism".
You can't make your arguments by forever shouting right-wing after every sentence. There is no right or left wing. It's a meaningless adjective to shutdown any discussion to dehumanize the other.
There are authoritarians and religious fanatics. I argue that everyone must be treated equally irrespective of their religious believes or identity, and you want to discriminate others based on their religious identity and believes.
You are both breaking the HN guidelines egregiously. Religious and nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, neither are personal swipes, and we don't want tedious tit-for-tat spats.
Please don't do anything like this on HN again, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
That is a false propaganda spread by the right-wing because the indian constitution also permits the government to oversees the administration of even the minority religious institutes by framing laws and regulations. And they do so. (Some states even have a whole ministry and their own state laws added to it).
E.g:
- Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee - This organisation is governed by the Chief Minister of Punjab (an elected politician) and is entrusted with the security and maintenance of all Gurudwaras and religious places of importance of the Sikhs. Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1971 defines how Sikh's religious institutes can be administered in the Delhi union territory.
- Waqf Act (1954 and 1995) and the Central Waqf Council of India: The religious and charitable institutions of muslims are administered by Waqfs (Trusts). The Central Waqf Council is headed by a Union Minister, along with 20 other members appointed by the Government of India. They oversee the administration of all the musim waqfs in India, creating the rules and guidelines and advising the state bodies. (By the way, there are now 30 government run Waqf boards in 28 states and other UTs in India).
- Indian Church Act, 1927 - Till it was repealed in 1960, it dictated the rules on administration of Churches. No new law replaced it. One of the reason being that that Christians forms less than 3% of the population and they often choose to register their movable and immovable properties under the the Societies Registration Act, and not under the Religious Endowment Act or The Charitable and Religious Trust Act, 1920. Thus, many of them come under the more stringent NGO laws in India, voluntary, and are managed more professionally. (After a recent scandal on misuse of church funds and properties in Kerala, the Kerala government plans to introduce a law to oversee their activities more stringently - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-draft-bill-regu... ).
In fact, with The Religious Institutions (Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1988 the government even clearly defines what it considers to be illegal in any religious institute.All the rest of your arguments that you believe and are just plain lies of the right-wing, without an iota of truth in them (some are facts that you have been misled into believing is wrong). I can point out the actual facts to you if you cite your sources for them.