Discuss how communal politics involving religious clergy influence democratic institutions in South Asia, with examples.

Religious clergy in South Asia command moral authority that, when converted into communal mobilisation, bends legislatures, executives and courts away from constitutional neutrality. Sri Lanka's Supreme Court verdict of September 2026 on a monk's pardon shows both the depth of this pressure and the capacity of institutions to resist it.

Capture of the electoral and political arena

• Clergy-led outfits convert faith into vote-blocs. In post-war Sri Lanka, the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), founded in 2012 by Gnanasara Thero, mainstreamed anti-Muslim rhetoric within majoritarian politics [1].
• India pre-empts this legally: in Abhiram Singh (2017) the Supreme Court held that an appeal for votes on grounds of religion, caste, race, community or language — by the candidate or anyone else — is a corrupt practice under Section 123(3), RPA [3].

Pressure on executive discretion

• Politically connected clergy obtain selective clemency. President Maithripala Sirisena pardoned Gnanasara Thero in May 2019, releasing him mid-way through a six-year sentence imposed by the Court of Appeal in 2018 [1].

Direct strain on the judiciary

• The underlying conviction arose from the 2016 storming of the Homagama Magistrate's Court and intimidation of Sandya Eknaligoda, wife of cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, missing since 2010 — the courtroom itself became a target [1].

Institutional resilience and civil society

• A three-judge Supreme Court bench declared the pardon "arbitrary" and null and void on 10 September 2026 and ordered his return to prison, on a petition by the Centre for Policy Alternatives and Sandya Eknaligoda [1].
• India's Epuru Sudhakar (2006) similarly subjects clemency under Articles 72 and 161 to limited judicial review, expressly where exercised on political or religious considerations [2].

Clergy-driven communalism therefore weakens institutions less by capturing them outright than by normalising exceptions to equal law. The durable corrective lies in enforceable limits on executive discretion, credible victim-redress mechanisms and active public-interest litigation — anchoring politics in the ideal that S.R. Bommai (1994) affirmed as basic structure: secularism as equal treatment of all faiths [4].