Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate
I oppose anti-superstition law in MH. . I might support a Jury-based anti-superstition law. But I oppose the existing draft as it goes.
This law , if passed, will do far more damage than good it can possibly do. So I oppose this law-draft. Now the said law is to be passed in MH, and not in Gujarat or India. So I cant send any SMS to my MP\MLA to oppose it. But I would request all voters of MH to order their MLAs via SMS to oppose the so called anti-superstition law.
This law is vague, and a vague law is weapon in the hand of judge to extort bribes and act in reckless way. It covers every Hindu\Sikh\Muslim\Christian ritual under the sun. A corrupt judge can even interpret a marriage ritual of taking 4 circles around fire as a superstition under this law.
The law says sacrifice of animal as superstition. So will those who sacrifice bakri on bakri-id be imprisoned under this law? The law is vague on it.
If a person has good intention behind writing a law, he would start by spelling out stand on most commonly occurring incidents. Does the law ban bakri-id? If yes, why doesnt the draft say so loud and clear? The fact that law is silent on bakri-id issue shows that the person who wrote the law has malicious intents, which is why he is keeping his stand vague and unspelled.
I might support a law against superstition where ruling is given by 12 Jurors chosen at random. This will ensure that there is least bias in deciding what is superstition and what is custom or common ritual. And whether person who performed ritual had malafide intentions or not. A judge is worst person to take this decision.
In any case, those who wish to ban superstition using law have to apply brains and give a draft which will do less . I consider superstitions has far far less important problem than corruption in judges, weakening of Indian Military etc and so I decided long back not to spend time in drafting law by which they can be reduced.
In any case, some of the laws , such as JurySys, RTR, etc will reduce superstitions as they make society less unpredictable. And laws such as community control over Hindu and other temples will reduce benefits priests get from malicious practices and so superstitions will reduce. Also, general anti-fraud laws, if made Jury-based, can also give sufficient protection against superstitions.
But these proposed laws dont reduce all superstitions and may be better anti-superstition laws can be drafted. It for those who give it some priority. But just because they have good intention doesnt mean that I would support any trashy law they come up with.