Senior advocate Indira Jaising on Friday said the Constitution is under threat from those responsible for upholding it.

Delivering the 29th Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture at the India International Centre, Ms. Jaising said, “The truth is, you can never have a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ under a secular Constitution.”

She said, “What I am witnessing is something that I would call a kind of repudiation of the Constitution of India by those responsible for upholding it. This is done in many ways, formal and informal. The formal way to do it is to amend the Citizenship Act, which allows for fast-track citizenship for only certain religious communities,”

Ms. Jaising criticised the new criminal laws [Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam] and said that they failed to “decolonise” issues like marital rape. The senior advocate also expressed concerns over anti-conversion laws implemented across the country that particularly target the minority communities.

Ms. Jaising also pointed out recent controversies that had erupted from Indian courts owing to a lack of “fairness and impartiality”. This included the ‘hate speech’ given by sitting judge of Allahabad High Court, Justice Shekhar Yadav. She also pointed out how a Gujarat High Court judge told a minor rape victim, who had sought for the termination of her pregnancy, that she must go and ask her grandmother how women used to deliver babies at her age.

“We see judges looking for divine guidance to make their decisions. This is very anti-Constitutional. I want to end by saying that I stand here to affirm the Constitution of India,” Ms. Jaisingh added.

Terming the topic of the lecture, ‘India’s Modern Constitutionalism’, as of ‘great importance’, Delhi High Court Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya said that there is a need to differentiate between having a Constitution and practising constitutionalism. Emphasising on the importance of rule of law, Justice Upadhyay added that even authoritarian regimes have a constitution but they lack constitutionalism. “What separates these two, in my understanding, is the rule of law. Even authoritarian regimes may have a constitution, but sans constitutionalism. The best example is that of the rise of Hitler after the First World War in Germany,” Justice Upadhyaya said.