Political Line newsletter: Defining acts

(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)

There are parallels between a 13,000-word definition of showerhead in the U.S. and a recent Supreme Court (SC) judgement in India. The latter set timelines and steps for the President and Governor to follow in processing legislation passed by a State Assembly. Both are about enforcing rules, which can be done only through definitions and timelines.

The dictionary meaning of a showerhead is simple: ‘The part of a shower that water flows out of’. But definitions are not so simple when it comes to laws. American law defined a showerhead in 13,000 words until recently, when the Donald Trump administration cut it down to the dictionary meaning. This battle over the definition of what a showerhead is, has been going on for 12 years now. The first Trump administration (2017-2021) overturned the definition by the Barack Obama administration. This was then changed by the Joe Biden administration (2021-2025). Now, it has been changed yet again, by the current Trump administration.

This hysterical battle is about how much water a showerhead can discharge in a minute. The 1992 regulation said it should be no more than 2.5 gallons. Innovation is often about working around rules. Some manufacturers circumvented this rule by designing showers that had multiple nozzles, each one discharging up to the set limits of water flow. That triggered the battle over the definition, which continues. MAGA followers think that restriction on water flow in their shower is an assault on their lifestyle, while the ‘save the earth’ Democrats think that regulation is the key to protecting an overheated planet.

Krishnadas Rajagopal writes about constitutional silence, aspects of rules that are not clearly defined by the Constitution. The SC judgement that set specific timelines and various courses of actions for President and Governor, once a piece of legislation passed by a State Assembly comes before them, is an instance of judicial intervention to overcome this silence. When politics is less fractious, the rule of law goes on, even in the absence of clear definitions. When it turns more fractious, the rule of law can become marshy terrain, if the definitions are unclear.

To liberate the many, imprison many

A meeting between El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and President Donald Trump in America, was not as eventful as the visit of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, but it still had interesting conversations that touched upon some fundamentals of liberalism. “We turned the murder capital of the world—that’s what the journalists called it—into the safest country in the western hemisphere,” Bukele said. “Sometimes they say we imprisoned thousands. I like to say we liberated millions.” Mr. Trump could not agree more. “To liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some…” he said. The United States, which takes pride in being the freest country on the planet has the largest prison population of any country. Communist China, which has nearly four times the population of the U.S., has fewer prisoners. There are more than 18 lakh people in U.S. prisons compared to China’s nearly 17 lakh, at the beginning of 2025.

Federalism tract: notes on Indian diversity

The religion of language

“Language is not religion. Language does not even represent religion. Language belongs to a community, to a region, to people; and not to a religion,” the SC of India declared last week, dismissing a petition against Urdu signage in a municipal building in Maharashtra.

In the early decades of the 20th century, there were two language conflicts in India: one Hindi vs Urdu within the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh; the other Hindi vs Tamil. Mohammad Ali Jinnah who did not speak Urdu, and other Muslim nationalists, sought to make it into a question of community identity. His insistence that the Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan must learn Urdu concluded with the division of the country and the birth of Bangladesh. The communalisation of the language sought to split the shared linguistic terrain. Urdu promoters pushed for the infusion of more Persian vocabulary and Hindi promoters sought to Sanskritise the spoken language to make these two into distinct languages. Alok Rai explains the various factors that contributed to this situation in my Terms of Engagement series.

Watch | Alok Rai on the origin of Hindi vs. Urdu debate

The Tamil resistance to Hindi though, is not communal. However, non-religious language mobilisations can have features that are comparable to religious faiths, with claims of purity and sacrifice, as Sumathi Ramaswami argues in her book on Tamil linguistic identity, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970. In fact, the claim of purity, authenticity, and primacy of many languages is based on some links to religious faith: Arabic for Muslims, Sanskrit for Brahmins, and Syriac for some Christians.

Opponents of Hindi, or rather promoters of Marathi, have been up in arms in Maharashtra. Meanwhile, the BJP-led government in the State has announced that Hindi will be compulsory for students up to Class 5. Until now, the students in the State learned Marathi and English.

Count matters

In electoral democracy, often all that matters is numbers. A sudden drop in their claimed numerical strengths is agitating the Vokkaligas and Lingayats, the two powerful communities of Karnataka. Lingayats always claimed that they were between 17% and 22% of the State’s population; Vokkaligas claimed to constitute 13% to 15%. In a State government census, Lingayats are 11% while Vokkaligas are 10.25%. The new numbers will alter the power dynamics within parties and between parties in Karnataka. Vokkaliga heavyweights like the members of the Deve Gowda family and Congress leader and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, and Lingayat leaders such as B.S.

Yediyurappa of the BJP grew in power, at least partly, because of the inflated claims regarding the numerical strength of their communities.

Weight of purity

Talking of purity, it is difficult to ignore the vulgarity associated with its enforcement. Two recent incidents from regions as wide apart as Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are instructive. In T.N., a girl was forced to sit outside the classroom and write her exam, because she was menstruating. In Alwar in Rajasthan, a temple was ‘purified’ after a Dalit entered it.