For a week or so, the issue of Haj subsidy is in news. The Supreme Court had stayed the Allahabad High Court order restraining the Centre from granting financial subsidy to Haj pilgrims every year and cleared the subsidy for 2006. However, it asked the latter to dispose of the main petition on the validity of the subsidy as expeditiously as possible, but before Haj 2007. This judicial intervention into an issue which is directly linked to the religious sentiments of the Muslim community raises several questions regarding the difference in the understanding of the idea of secularism enshrined in the Constitution and the role of the political and religious elite of the community and the country at large. Initiated as a financial support for those who used to go on the Haj pilgrimage by ships, Haj subsidy continued even after 1995 when it was prohibited to travel in ships. In the same year, Hari Shankar Jain on behalf of BN Shukla, a VHP activist, challenged the legitimacy of the subsidy in a writ filed in the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. It is, during one of the hearings on this petition, the Court had given its latest verdict. The judiciary is of the view that Haj subsidy violates "the secular character of our Constitution" according to which there shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion while no communities other than Muslims receive such a subsidy for their pilgrimage. It has spurred a debate among the Muslim society whether it
