Signboards and a Procession Route in Chandwad

Regionalism and communalism are different claims that can be fused by the way a demand is enforced.

Regionalism is an identity claim built on language or territory. It is not automatically exclusionary: the demand that a state's language be used in administration and commerce is a claim about dignity and opportunity, and linguistic reorganisation of states in 1956 was broadly handled through it. It becomes exclusionary when it turns into 'son of the soil' politics - when language becomes a proxy for who has a right to live and trade in a place.

Communalism is a political ideology, not merely a riot. It treats religious communities as homogeneous, bounded and permanently opposed blocs, and explains every dispute as a clash between them. Bipan Chandra's point is that communalism is a modern, organised politics that uses religious symbols, not a survival of old religious feeling.

The test in Chandwad is the target, not the slogan. The Andolan demands 60 per cent Marathi on all 3,400 boards, but the bandh is called over 1,900, and the traders it identifies are the 260 Muslim-owned shops. Urdu here is being read as a religious marker rather than as a language also spoken by Hindus. So the demand is formally linguistic and functionally communal - the same rule enforced against English boards in a mall and Urdu boards in a bazaar produces two different meanings.

A further test: does the movement allow a Marathi-speaking Muslim trader inside its 'we', and an Urdu-speaking Hindu outside? If the boundary tracks religion rather than language, the claim has already stopped being regionalist.

The council must regulate the procession, not adjudicate the faiths.

Both freedoms are qualified. Article 25 guarantees freedom of religion subject to public order, morality and health; Article 19(1)(b) guarantees assembly, subject to public order. Last year's violence is a relevant, evidence-based ground: 14 injuries and 22 arrests establish a real risk.

The guiding principle should be principled distance (Rajeev Bhargava): the state may intervene in religiously-connected activity, but only on grounds it would apply to any community - traffic, timing, noise, safety - and never so as to favour one over another. It should regulate the secular aspects of a religious event, not its content.

Applying that:

• Do not ban the procession. A ban punishes the mandal for a threat made by others, rewards whoever threatens violence, and will be read as a minority veto.
• Do not simply allow it unchanged. That is a failure of the public-order duty.
• Do: fix a published schedule separating the two events by 40 minutes; divert the route for one year with written reasons; cap amplified sound after a stated hour; constitute a joint peace committee with named representatives of the mandal and the mosque, in writing; deploy police along the disputed 30 metres; and video-record the passage.

The diversion does not concede that one community's prayer matters more. It removes a predictable flashpoint that has nothing to do with either ritual - which is precisely what a secular administration is for. The decision must be in writing, published, and reasoned in the same way as the signboard file: one test of public order, applied to everyone.

The 'stay out entirely' position sounds neutral but is not; it leaves the field to whoever already has more power.

The American wall-of-separation model was built for a state that did not fund religion. India's state is different by design: it funds minority institutions, reforms temple endowments and maintains personal laws. So the Indian question is never whether the state intervenes, but on which ground and for whom.

In Chandwad, three hands-off policies all have effects:

• No signboard rule. English and Hindi signage expands and Marathi speakers lose access to information in shops, courts and hospitals. Neutrality here protects an existing advantage.
• No route regulation. Either the procession is cancelled by threat, or it proceeds and is policed by violence.
• No language policy at all is not on offer, because the municipality already issues forms and notices in a chosen language.

But a Marathi-first signboard rule can be legitimate if it is general and phased: applied to new boards first, with a subsidy for small shops, allowing Marathi alongside other languages rather than instead of them, and with a clear, appealable procedure. Its legitimacy depends on being a floor for access, not a weapon against a group.

The lesson is that secularism is not indifference. It is a disciplined, even-handed involvement - refusing to treat one community's language or festival as the default, and refusing to let a majority's numbers decide a minority's rights. Both the Andolan and the traders' association should leave the council meeting having had the same rule applied to them.