Ideally, politicians should not seek votes based on religion or caste. However, the split verdict of the Supreme Court on Monday holding that any single appeal to religion would invalidate an election goes beyond this norm. All overlap between identity and politics is not always straightforward. Take the hypothetical case of a tiny community, having been persecuted on account of its group identity, seeking representation in the legislature so as to press for redress and to build institutional guarantees against future persecution. Should the Supreme Court ruling invalidate this democratic exercise, simply because the group identity, which suffered victimisation and thus is crucial to vote seeking, falls foul of the bar on caste/creed while canvassing votes?

A seven-member Constitution bench split 4-3 to deliver the verdict that seeks neat separation of religion and politics. The minority held that discussion of caste and creed is protected free speech, with which alone can social concerns be addressed. We agree with the minority view, for some added reasons as well. In most cultures, morality and ethics are embedded in the social code via religion. Thus, Gandhi, when he projected the goal of Ram Rajya, was not seeking a theocracy but using a religious idiom that people would understand to call for a moral order of popular sovereignty. To prevent misuse of faith for political purposes, if one were to mandate total rejection of anything religious in politics, the result might well be politics denuded of morality and ethics.

The simple point is that fixing the problems of democracy cannot be achieved through court rulings. Politics has to fix its own problems, through dialogue if possible, using logical extrapolation of troublesome arguments, and, when argument is not effective, via the hard lessons of the often violent culmination of taking anti-democratic logic forward through social action. The legislature, rather than the courts, should draw the line, if any line can at all be drawn in the abstract, on the interface between religion and politics.