answer me guys
a) Define the term federalism? Why was it chosen as a key feature of our Constitution?
b) Religion A's religious leaders, across the world, have declared a nule prohibiting the
women of their community from practising in the medical profession. How would the
government of India react to this rule? Give a reason to explain the Indian
government's reaction and how it would help promote secularism.
Answers
Answer:
A)Federalism in India refers to relations between the Centre and states of Union of India. The Constitution of India establishes structure of the Indian government. Part XI of the Indian constitution specifies the distribution of legislative, administrative and executive powers between the union government and the States of India
Key features:
Federalism:
It means more than one level of government. India has a three-tier government.
We need a three-tier structure of government because of the diverse religious and cultural composition of its citizens. A government alone at the center could not be effective for everyone.
Separation of Powers:
In order to prevent the misuse of powers by the elected representatives, the Constitution advocates separation of powers. Each branch of the government has its powers fixed by the Constitution.
The Constitution ensures that a balance of power is maintained between the legislature, executive, and judiciary.
Fundamental Rights:
Fundamental rights guarantees the rights of individuals against the state as well as against other individuals.
It protects minority communities and guarantees rights against the majority.
Parliamentary Form of Government:
In a parliamentary form of government, the Constitution guarantees universal adult franchise for all citizens.
It simply means every adult citizen has the right to vote irrespective of their caste, education, status, race. The idea of the universal adult franchise is based on equality.
Explanation:
B)n the past, colonial rulers employed personal status systems to compartmentalize subjects into ethno-religious and confessional groupings, and to distribute goods and services while denying certain populations the benefits of full membership in the political community. We can understand why colonial rulers, who often had a “divide and conquer” approach toward their subject populations, may have employed legal personal status systems. However, it is difficult to comprehend why such modern nation-states as Egypt and India—both constitutionally obliged to treat their citizens equally before the law would ignore their constitutional obligations and hold people to different legal standards on the basis of gender, ethnicity, and religion by continuing to employ old personal status systems.
Many nations that originally inherited such legal systems from their colonial predecessors—such as Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Morocco—still continue to employ variant forms of personal status in their legal systems. Some scholars have considered the survival and persistence of legal personal status systems as an anachronistic legacy of colonialism. According to the proponents of the “colonial legacy” thesis, postcolonial governments, despite their strong desire to unify their field of personal status under an overarching network of law and courts, acquiesced to communal jurisdictions, which had originally enjoyed autonomy under colonial rule, because they failed to overcome the resistance of ethno-religious groups and authorities after independence.
However, “colonial legacy” accounts do not alone explain why personal status systems continue to exist today; these explanations often neglect the centrality of the state and the desire of its leaders to control and utilize personal status as a potent tool in the process of state- and nation-building. In fact, all postcolonial nations that inherited legal personal status systems upon independence faced more or less the same dilemma: what were they going to do with these fragmented systems, which were not necessarily conducive to building a modern bureaucratic machinery or a civic sense of national identity? Some countries opted for institutional unification (consolidating the courts of different groups under an overarching system of national courts); some for normative unification (abolishing different bodies of communal laws and enacting in their place uniform territorial laws); some for both; and some for neither. In the final analysis, however, countries’ choices were simultaneously determined by their ruling elites’ ideological orientations and ability to impose political will upon ethno-religious groups; and by the capacity of ethno-religious groups to resist government interventions in personal status, preserving their juridico-political autonomy.