P J James
A Court in the Gandhinagar district of Gujarat has sentenced three Muslim persons to life imprisonment in a cow-slaughter case. The Court had no qualms to quote the scriptures from Manusmriti for delivering the judgement. And the deputy chief minister of the double engine government has hailed the judgement without any delay.
Of course, judicial orders quoting Manusmriti are not new. Courts in fascist double engine UP had already delivered similar judgements quoting Manusmriti. The Bahraich Sessions Court in December 2025 had quoted verses from the Manusmriti while delivering a verdict in connection with a case in October 2024, sentencing one person to death and nine others to life imprisonment. Recently, the Allahabad High Court has also cited Manusmriti while deciding a maintenance case.
Instead of strictly grounding in Indian laws and the Indian Constitution, this increasing trend on the part of Courts quoting Manusmriti should be seen as part of the intensifying saffronisation of judiciary in the broader context of maddening pace towards RSS-led Hindurashtra. For, shortly after the adoption of the Indian Constitution by the Constituent Assembly, in late 1949 and early 1950, the RSS through its publication ‘Organiser’ had proposed Manusmriti as India’s Constitution. In that sense, the Courts are only following what the RSS had proposed decades ago. Obviously, it is in the background of the Hindutva administrative structures already laid down by double engine regimes that Courts come forward to deliver such unconstitutional and archaic judgements.
