We are carving out limitless ghettoes and islands on the idea of grievances, real and imagined.
Won’t rent our house to Bengalis due to the fact they prepare dinner and devour fish, to Punjabis due to the fact they’re loud, to attorneys, cops, and assets sellers because they refuse to vacate, to unmarried humans because they may be unmarried, to two human beings of the identical gender due to the fact they could be gay, to Muslims because….
You get the gist – people discriminate. Many a time, whilst a person I recognize studies or hears of a person discriminating while leasing a house, or even banks giving loans, they question me – honestly, that is unlawful? Well, yes and no, I say. ‘But isn’t ‘equality’ an essential right?’ is typically the follow-up question, to which my reaction is similarly unsatisfying – ‘Fundamental rights can best and in large part be enforced in opposition to the State, not in opposition to citizens.’ Usually, aren’t matters the alternative manner round?’ ‘So it isn’t always ok for the State to do something incorrect to citizens; however, it’s miles ok for citizens to do it to each other?
Is it legal for residents to discriminate against every other while, say, promoting items or services? When I pose this query to a person discriminating, pop comes to the magic phrase – ‘It is my property/organization/provider. I can do as I please.’ But we will do as we please. A public restaurant can’t refuse to get admission based on gender/faith/race. The constitution forbids it.
But does the Constitution forbid religion-based total discrimination while renting a house? Lawyer and author Gautam Bhatia in a paper titled ‘Horizontal Discrimination & Article 15(2) of the Indian Constitution: A Transformative Approach’ says that the textual content of Article 15(2) of the Constitution (“…(2) No citizen shall, on grounds simplest of religion, race, caste, intercourse, vicinity of birth or any of them, be a problem to any incapacity, legal responsibility, restriction or situation in regards to (a) access to shops, public restaurants, inns and palaces of public leisure…”) interpreted with the useful resource of constitutional debates wherein Ambedkar responded what to his thoughts the time period ‘store’ denoted: “it’s going to consist of all and sundry who offers his offerings… the phrase ‘store’ used here isn’t used inside the constrained sense of permitting entry. It is used within the larger framework requiring the services if the terms of the provider are agreed to.” Let’s make it amply clear that the Constitution does, in fact, forbid citizens from discriminating based on faith/caste/intercourse at the same time as giving a residence on lease.
