SC will have to grapple with ticklish socio-political issues over jallikattu

The situation is unlike any other legislation/ordinance that governments at the Centre and states had passed on earlier occasions after the higher judiciary had held certain laws, orders or decisions ultra vires of the Constitution, says N Sathiya Moorthy. 

Ask social activists from across the country and they would tell you that the Supreme Court’s ban on jallikattu, the bull taming sport of Tamil Nadu, was the right thing to do.

Read some posts by a few social media activists in Tamil Nadu and they would tell you how to make jallikattu acceptable, overnight: 'Form four teams, auction it to the highest bidders from Bollywood and big business houses of the country...Then watch the fun... Overnight, ‘our jallikattu’ would become world famous and in a very positive way.'

There were heated arguments on social media about the ‘cultural’ aspect of the ban, some comparing it to the ban on women’s entry into the hill-shrine of Sabarimala in Kerala.

“If the ban on entry of women in Sabarimala is acceptable owing to tradition and culture, likewise the ban on bull-fighting in Tamil Nadu not be lifted for the same reason,” goes the argument.

Well, the protection of the ‘reasonable restriction’ clause under Article 14 of the Constitution which is available to Sabarimala, may not be applicable to jallikattu. But, now that the annual Tamil harvest festival of Pongal is behind us, the focus should move away from the bull-taming sport. Instead, it should be about a larger question that could crop up again and again in the coming years.

It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will address this very ticklish socio-political issue in a state that has been known to be hyper-sensitive in terms of language and culture.

Despite the ban, several villages in the state reportedly organised jallikattu and protested against the police for trying to enforce the ban. They even pelted stones at the cops. Some villages organised the sport using traditional or local names of the game like manjuvirattu or eruthuvirattu, while some interpreted the SC ban ingeniously to argue that the animals faced no cruelty.

It is possibly for the first time that such a societal defiance of any court order has been undertaken in any part of the country since Independence.

Although not every section of the state’s population will approve of any defiance of the order, there seemed to have been silent sympathy for the villagers.

To them, the ban on jallikattu is only one more in a series of injustices being heaped on the Tamil people in the aftermath of the Cauvery water dispute (with Karnataka), Mullaperiyar dam case (with Kerala) and the issue of Tamil fishermen.

Protestors against the Koodamkulam nuclear power plant too tried to bring in the ‘Tamil cause’ into their arguments, saying that the Centre seemed to be holding Tamils’ lives less valuable and less important than those of the rest of the country.

Considering that Tamil Nadu has had a history of ‘separatist’ politics after Independence, all focussed on the step-motherly treatment on the linguistic and cultural fronts, any additional issue just now has the potential to add fuel to the re-stoked fire since the Sri Lankan annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam.

That notwithstanding, Tamil Nadu had lived with the SC ban and even the Opposition had kept mum.

With the assembly elections due in May, jallikattu ban seems to have provided the much-needed diversion to the state government amid criticisms over the ‘poor handling’ of the Chennai floods.

The ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam have already started blaming each other for the ban. The two national parties -- neither having any substantial vote-share in Tamil Nadu -- the Bharatiya Janata Party and its bête noire Congress, have also joined the issue.

With the result, the Centre and the state governments were left with little choice but to pass an executive order, side-stepping the SC ban.

Possibly, the mandarins in North Block may have concluded that if the ban is lifted at least for this season, the state BJP leadership could claim credit for it.

It is in this context that Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitaraman, a native of Tamil Nadu, advised the state government to pass an ordinance to ensure the revival of the game this year, promising that the Centre would stand by it.

'The Centre cannot intervene at this juncture because the SC has only granted an interim stay and not given a final order on the issue. At the same time, the state government can promulgate an ordinance as per the Constitution,' Sitaraman was quoted as saying.

'The Constitution empowers the state government to promulgate ordinance on fairs and markets. As jallikattu can be categorised as a ‘fair’, the state can issue an ordinance,' the minister further said.

This followed Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s shooting off another letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting the Centre to pass an ordinance facilitating jallikattu revival.

DMK chief M Karunanidhi also wrote to Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan, an MP from Tamil Nadu, after the latter declared that the Centre would do every thing to allow jallikattu at least for this year.

Today, when the ban is in force, leaders like Pattali Makkal Katchi chief S Ramadoss and Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief Vaiko are already calling it a failure of the state and the Centre as well as of their respective political leaderships.

It was one thing for Sitaraman to say that the Centre could not intervene until the SC had disposed of the case, but, under the circumstances, it would be another thing if a Union minister says that the state alone had the power to promulgate an ordinance to render the SC ban ineffective, promising that the Centre would support it.

The Centre may also advise the governor of the state accordingly if he were to seek the former’s legal, constitutional or political advice in the matter.

The situation is unlike any other legislation/ordinance that governments at the Centre and the states had passed on earlier occasions after the higher judiciary had held certain laws, orders or decisions ultra vires of the Constitution.

Apart from the sensitivities involved at the grass-root level, such an ordinance in this case would have come, if at all, a full four years after the original ban.

It thus remains to be seen how the SC treats the matter -- the reports of the villager’s defiance, the efforts of the state government to get the ban lifted, and now, the advice of a Union minister to the state in this regard.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation.