Can a secular constitution become a religion? Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara says India’s UGC is quietly making that move — and the consequences are alarming.
In this third installment, Balagangadhara unpacks the philosophical incoherence at the heart of UGC’s equity mandate. He traces the concept of “equity” not to Indian legal tradition but to the Old Testament — specifically to Yahweh’s declaration in Exodus that the iniquity of fathers shall be visited upon children across generations. He shows how this Judaeo-Christian notion of intergenerational moral transmission entered modern DEI frameworks, was amplified by Biden-era policy, and has now been imported uncritically into Indian higher education through UGC rules. Constitutional morality, as deployed by Indian courts in cases like Sabarimala, fares no better: it assumes a settled meaning for contested terms like dignity and equality, and treats a procedural legal document as if it were a complete ethical system.
Most pointedly, Balagangadhara dissects a widely cited speech by a prominent Indian figure claiming that all Indians must accept 200 years of punishment for 2,000 years of caste discrimination. He demonstrates that no legal theory, no secular ethical framework, and no Indian tradition — least of all the karma doctrine, where moral consequence accrues only to the individual who acts — can sustain this claim. The real question, he concludes, is why institutions like the UGC are importing these alien frameworks without examination.

About the Speaker:
S. N. Balagangadhara is a professor emeritus of Ghent University in Belgium, and was director of the India Platform and the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap.