Exploitation, religion, culture and remedies

Right against Exploitation:

• Prohibits traffic in human beings (buying and selling people) and forced labour (begar): labour without payment, once imposed by landlords, moneylenders and the wealthy. Some bonded labour survives, especially in brick kilns; it is now a punishable crime.
• Forbids employing children below 14 in hazardous work like factories and mines. With child labour illegal and education a fundamental right for children, this right has become more meaningful.

Right to Freedom of Religion:

• Everyone may choose and practise a religion, or no religion (freedom of conscience), and may profess, practise and propagate it. Propagation includes persuading others to convert, but forcible conversion is not allowed: only spreading information to attract others.
• It is not unlimited: the government may restrict it to protect public order, morality and health, and has acted against social evils such as sati, bigamy and human sacrifice. Such limits sometimes cause tension between religious groups and the government.
• Equality of all religions: India has no official religion; no one need belong to any religion to be prime minister, president or judge; the state does not discriminate by religion in employment; and state-run institutions do not preach any religion or give religious education. These provisions sustain secularism.

Cultural and Educational Rights: India's diversity is its strength. Minorities, whether religious or linguistic, are groups with a common language or religion that are outnumbered in some part of the country or in the country as a whole. They have the right to conserve and develop their language, culture and script, and to set up their own educational institutions; the government will not discriminate against minority-run institutions when giving aid.

Right to Constitutional Remedies. A list of rights is not enough; they must be enforceable. Dr Ambedkar called this right the 'heart and soul of the Constitution': it lets a citizen go straight to a High Court or the Supreme Court to have a Fundamental Right restored. The courts can issue orders and special orders called writs:

• Habeas corpus: the court orders that an arrested person be produced before it, and can order their release if the arrest is unlawful.
• Mandamus: issued when an office-holder is not performing a legal duty, thereby infringing someone's right.
• Prohibition: issued by a higher court when a lower court has gone beyond its jurisdiction.
• Quo warranto: issued when a person is holding an office they are not entitled to, stopping them from acting in it.
• Certiorari: the court orders a lower court or authority to transfer a pending matter to a higher court or authority.

Other protectors of rights: the National Commissions for Minorities, Women and Scheduled Castes, and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), set up in 1993. The NHRC is made up of a former Chief Justice of India, a former Supreme Court judge, a former Chief Justice of a High Court and two experts. It inquires into complaints of rights violations (on its own or on a victim's petition), visits jails, and promotes research. It receives thousands of complaints a year, about custodial deaths, police excesses, indignity to women and more, but it cannot prosecute: it can only recommend action to the government or the courts. Civil society groups like PUCL and PUDR also act as watchdogs.

Example (new): if a district office keeps refusing to issue a pension certificate that the law says a widow is entitled to, she can ask the High Court for a writ of mandamus ordering the official to do their duty.