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India's top court doubts country's secular future

Agencies
Expressing concern over growing influence of religion on social issues, the Indian Supreme Court on Monday wondered how long India would remain a secular country but batted for a uniform civil code.
“It is a secular country but I don't know how long it will remain so," Justice Vikramjit Sen said during the hearing on a P1L seeking recognition for Christian courts set up under its personal law, PTI reported.
Justice Sen said law should not be compelled to recognise dictates of personal law in civil and family matters like divorce, marriage and adoption.
The bench, also including Justice C Nagappan, however, said courts should not go into the area as every religion then would say that the law should incorporate their personal law. “We have to stamp religion out of civil matters," it said.
It, however, granted four weeks time to the Centre to file a reply on the peti-
tion which said 'Canon Law' was the personal law of Indian Christians and that a decree of dissolution of marriage granted by an ecclesiastical court should be held valid and binding.
The petitioner, Clarence Pais, a former president of the Catholic Association of Dakshina Kannada in Karnataka, said many Catholics, who married after getting divorce from Christian courts, faced criminal charges of bigamy as such divorces were not recognised by the courts. He
said 'Canon Law' had to be applied and enforced by a criminal court while deciding a case under Section 494 (bigamy) of the IPC.
"It is reasonable that when the courts in India recognise dissolution of marriage (by pronouncing the word talaq three times) under Mohammedan law which is the personal law of Muslims, the courts should also recognise for the purpose of dissolution of marriage Canon Law as the personal law of Indian Catholics," the petition said.
Canon Law says that Catholics are required to marry in a Catholic church and enjoins that they seek nullity of marriage in the canonical court also under the code of canon law. Otherwise, the marriage and the dissolution are not recognized by the Catholic church.
The comment came days after US President Barack Obama denounced growing intolerance on religious minorities in India.
Only days after warning in New Delhi during a historical tour about the need to promote religious tolerance, Obama invoked the memory of India's independence icon Mahatma Gandhi to drive home a similar appeal during a speech in Washington on last Thursday.
While praising its "magnificent diversity", Obama then described India as a place where "religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs".
Such “acts of intolerance ... would have shocked Gandhiji", added Obama in comments that made front-page headlines in Indian newspapers on Friday.
The issue of religious freedom in India - an officially secular country -has become particularly contentious since the election last year of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a fervent Hindu nationalist.