FOCUS-SEPTEMBER 2021

Secularism -the need to walk the talk The concept of secularism in the West is that of the state keeping aloof from religion and religious faiths. In countries where a highly predominant majority of people belong to one community or large group of homogeneous communities secularism can be narrowly defined as it is usually understood in the Western countries – as indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations from the state.However, Secularism gets a distinct connotation in societies with a substantial plurality with many fundamentally different faiths, religions, languages and social mores. The Nobel Laureate Amarthya Sen says, “The long history of heterodoxy has a bearing not only on the development and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly contributed…to the emergence of secularism in India, and even to the form that Indian secularism takes, which is not exactly the same the way secularism is defined in parts of the West… The form as well as the interpretation and understanding of secularism in India can be linked to the history of the acceptance of heterodoxy”. That history of India includes the space for diverse thinking throughout India’s history. Thus the main feature of secularism in India is not the exclusion of religion or faith from the state, what Amarthya Sen calls “prohibition” in general – prohibition of religious signs in attire like Hijab as done in France, prohibition of prayers in public places as in some other countries etc. India’s idea of secularism is the broader idea of inclusion – there is space for plurality, the co-existence of heterodox religious groups and faiths. What is the role of the state in this arrangement? The state’s role is that of neutrality in particular. The state will treat all religions and faiths equally – absolute neutrality. Thus Indian secularism anchored itself in pluralism, providing equal scope to all faiths, non-discrimination based on faith and the right to practice one’s faith. The state did not exclude religion or faith, but maintained neutrality between them. Salman Rushdie says that in Europe the battle for freedom of thought and expression was fought against the Church more than the State. So, in European thought, ‘freedom’ came to be understood as ‘freedom from religion’. In the United States the battle was ‘for religion’. That is to say, no laws about religion should be enacted by the State. India falls somewhere between these two positions – the State can legislate about religion, but it should be even-handed between different religions. So, the Indian version is ‘freedom to practice’ one’s religion. The Constitution of India protects certain rights of minorities – religious minorities, linguistic minorities and cultural minorities like the tribal people. These protections also ensure neutrality rather than provide rights to some groups to the exclusion of others. These provisions protect the rights of minorities to practice their religion or speak or learn in their language without hindrance, in the same way as the majority practice their religion or speak and learn in their language. Over the years secularism became a highly politically divisive issue in the country.Skepticism about India’s secular credentials which grew over the years has two important sources: Firstly, the Foreign, mainly Western media for whom India is a ‘Hindu nationalist state’.Hindu India is paired against Islamic Pakistan. But what these supposedly knowledgeable media and commentators fail to note is the fact that while Pakistan has a small minority of less than one per cent Hindu population, India has the second highest Muslim population in the world, constituting about 16 percent of the population. Besides, the so called Hindu India has a sizable Christian, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh population. Moreover, these Pundits throw a blind eye at the fact that secularism of India is not the gift of the erstwhile or the departing colonial power. India’s secularism is a positive choice of the majority community. The constituent assembly had members representing various political parties, majority of them being Hindu. Therefore, this criticism of India’s secularism as superficial is based on lack of knowledge and appreciation of Indian reality and sheer arrogance of people who still consider races other than their own as the white man’s burden. Moreover, these patron saints of secularism from the West are blind to the erosion of secularism or minority rights in their own countries. The Black Lives Matter movement showed the world how badly the Black minorities are treated by the majority in those countries. But when the oppressed revolt in those countries it is labeled as “hooliganism”; if it happens in India it is the“fight for rights” by the oppressed minority. If racist attacks are done on soccer players or fans of particular teams in the UK as it happened recently, it is, of course, hooliganism. If similar attacks happen in India, it is “majoritarianism”. One wonders whether India should take these gratuitous advices seriously from people who are neither friendly nor sympathetic to India! Secondly, the domestic source of skepticism, mainly from the Hindu community that India’s secularism is primarily an instrumentality of favoritism to appease and pamper the minority community, particularly Muslims. We need to see this from two different perspectives, namely(a) what the founding fathers of our constitution said in the constitution, and (b) the abuse of the idea of secularism by governments of free India for garnering political gains. To begin with, the constitution originally did not speak about secularism. Secularism was introduced in the preamble to the constitution by the 42ndamendment to the constitution in 1976. However, what is important is thatArticle 15prohibits discrimination against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, and place of birth or any of these.A careful reading of this article makes it clear that there is no favoritism shown to the minorities or any citizen on the basis of caste, religion race etc. as some claim in social media these days. On the other hand, the constitution only guarantees that such minorities will not be discriminated against simply because of their religion, caste, community etc. This is in conformity with the principle of neutrality. However, what the politicians and successive governments did over the years since independence, irrespective of what the constitutional provision says, is to use the minorities as vote banks. Indian laws are equal to all. The constitution treats all equally with neutrality. But the politicians put in place Hindu Code Bills for the majority community regarding marriage, bigamy, inheritance and so on while the other communities are allowed to follow their own personal laws. The principle of neutrality was first compromised by these legislations. There is no question that the Hindu civil code put women equally with men in inheritance and gave them equal rights. It was a beneficial legislation, and hence it was accepted without murmur by the majority community. However, whatever may be the personal laws of the minority communities,the Supreme Court of India is the ultimate adjudicator to decide what those laws say and mean, to interpret the laws. The climax arrived with the pronouncement of the Sha Bano case by the Supreme Court upholding the rights of Muslim women for rights of alimony in case of separation in 1985. The judgment of the Supreme Court was based on Section 123 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 which puts a legal obligation on a man to provide for his wife during the marriage and after divorce too. The Supreme Court, after considering the arguments that the matter was under the purview of Muslim Personal Law, concluded that the provisions of Cr.PC 1973 applies to all Indian citizens. But the government, yielding to pressure from conservative Muslim religious leaders, nullified the Supreme Court judgment by bringing about legislation. Clearly, this was not an act of secularism; this was not an act of neutrality by the State. The umpire, which is the Supreme Court, rules what the law is and what justice demands. But an interested player, throws away the umpire’s neutrality and does what it thinks is best to secure votes in the next election. It was an act far from neutral, of surrendering to the dictates of dogmatic conservatives. Much of India’s majority community’s skepticism of Secularism that we see today is the result of this stab on secularism by the then Congress Government. The aftermath of this decision set in motion a spiral of sentiments and political activities subversive of secularism. As a damage-control measure, to display its secular neutrality and assuage ruffled Hindu feelings, the Government unlocked the Rama Janma Bhumi temple in Ayodhya. Following this, claims and counter claims by Hindu activists and Islamic activists for demolition of the Babri Mosque allegedly built on a Hindu temple, and the right to retain the Mosque as a place of prayer by the Muslims, respectively were set in motion. Once the principle of neutrality was so brazenly violated, communal politics took hold. The next three decades saw the unhindered growth of vote bank politics – the so called secular parties playing what the Hindu activists call appeasement politics of making laws which was not meant to protect rights against abuse by majority but creating separate rights by legislating restrictive laws. What is the backlash of this one act of casting neutrality away? If minorities can be organized as a tight ship of vote bank as Mamata Bannerjee or the Congress party often does, why not build the majority as a tighter ship of vote bank by sowing the seed of discrimination and abuse by minorities, insult to their religion and so on? This is a dangerous turn. Along the way facts and fiction get mixed. History is being rewritten; school textbooks are liberally sprinkled with mythological stories as facts. But the very people who withdrew all cartoons in text books because they hurt religious, political or communal sentiments are today attacking the government of tampering with school text books. As we said, the idea of secularism would not have taken roots in India, no matter how brittle it is, without the majority accepting it by and large. Once that acceptance was taken too much for granted and abused, the neutrality principle thrown to the winds, that idea began slipping towards a shaky foundation. In the midst of this, it was heartening to see Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS head, recently making apparently a bold statement saying that all Indians, be they Hindus, Muslims or any other communities have the same DNA. In essence, he said India is a place where all can live peacefully. Being the head of the organization which champions a narrowly defined Hindutva, Bhagawat’s recent overture shows his courage to tread a new path and to talk the new language of acceptance. Only time will tell us the depth of conviction behind his statement. Unfortunately, those who claim to be ‘secularists’ who proclaim their openness dismissed his statement as a gimmick. By doing that they did not do justice to the cause of secularism. They should have accepted his statement and watched how Bhagwat will walk the talk of openness instead of prejudging him and his motives. When Bhagwat said what he did, most people took it with the proverbial pinch of salt. But serious secularists should have taken it as an opportunity to build bridges. They should have tried to bind him to his statement. But they did not. Why? The reason is obvious. Mohan Bhagwat’s call is a challenge to those playing vote bank politics, no matter whether he meant what he said seriously or as a gimmick. The space for diverse thinking was the unique feature of India throughout our history.The rich Indian heritage of heterodoxy was never a subject of study for our children. In their eagerness to pull a veil on Hindu thoughts and ideals, the early governemnets of free India prevented almost all religious topics from school text books. This was not neutrality but a general prohibition. Perhaps learning the good parts of all religions would have made us all better secularists than the pseudo secularists of today. This colossal exclusion made our children ignorant of the rich heritage of multi religious, multi-cultural, multi linguistic India. The idea of inclusion would have made our children tolerant. Instead, the idea of pseudo secularism of exclusion is turning them into religious bigots. Even the Hindu Puranas mention about the space provided for divergent views as in the Mahabharata, when Charvaka questions Dharmaraya after the great war of Kuruksetra what was the good he did by killing his own kith and kin for the sake of the throne? Similarly in the Ramayana Jabali tells Rama with the force of his rational arguments about the finality of life in this world urging Rama to return to Ayodhya even if it meant ignoring the owe he took before his father. Contrarian view always had space in religious and philosophical thinking in India. The so called Hinduism of today is not a set of religious, ethical, moral or philosophical principles handed down to the followers by a Guru. What we call Hinduism today evolved over a period of thousands of years. The very fact of its evolution means it evolved by the arrival of new thoughts and interaction between many opposing thoughts. What we see today are certain broad norms, principles and rituals which are open to acceptance, rejection and interpretation by different groups and communities which are parts of these great heterodox community called Hindus. Secularism is inherent in this tradition. If Mohan Bhawat made his statement in the real spirit of this inherent quality of our heritage, there, indeed may still be hope for a secular India to thrive. V K Talithaya