As the State has been successfully bent by Sikh and Muslim communalists over the last decade, double-standards, I would say in some cases duplicity h… - Arun Shourie

A contributing factor certainly must have been the contempt that Mao, Chou En-lai and others felt for India and Indians. This comes through again and again in conversation after conversation of the Chinese leaders. Chou and Kissinger agree on how India is the one that is causing the troubles in East Pakistan; on what China and US should together do to halt India in the tracks; they agree about not just what is ‘the Indian tradition’—deceit, blaming others—but just as much about the Indian character—marked by ingratitude.⁴ The contempt and coordination show through even more dramatically in the conversations that Kissinger later has with the permanent representative of China at the UN, Huang Hua, during which he asks Huang Hua to assure Chou En-lai that, should China take military action against India to divert it from pursuing its assault on Pakistan, the US will hold the Soviet Union at bay. Nixon, Pompidou and Kissinger are exchanging views about the state of the world. Nixon summarizes the Chinese assessments: ‘...the attitude of the Chinese towards their neighbours can be summed up in this way. The Russians they hate and fear now. The Japanese they fear later but do not hate. For the Indians they feel contempt but they are there and backed by the U.S.S.R.’

On the other hand, when sticking to the text is what will advance the judgment, they become strict constructionists. Some of the most conspicuous instances of this can be found in judgments relating to Article 30, the article that deals with the ‘right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions’. The country had been partitioned on the cry that Muslims will never be secure in a united India. The framers were naturally keen to reassure the minorities that they would be free to preserve their religion, language and culture. Accordingly, Article 29 was enacted guaranteeing them and assuring them of this freedom. In case they wanted to set up institutions for safeguarding their language, culture, religion, Article 30 was enacted assuring them that ‘All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.’ The context made the purpose clear: minorities would have the freedom to set up such institutions as they thought would best preserve their culture, religion, language. But, given what has been the climate of discourse since the framing of the Constitution, the judges became literalists. Minorities would have the right to set up and manage ‘educational institutions of their choice’ irrespective of the purpose for which the institution was set up. Thus, engineering colleges and dental colleges set up by a family of, say, Muslims would have freedoms from state regulation and oversight that engineering and dental colleges set up by run-of-the-mill Indians would not.

In a word, fatwas are the shariah in action.