Treatise 2010

The International Thought Challenge

Secular India will always remain an Utopian concept

Posted by Team Manfest On January - 9 - 2010

“What can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spare? Her assailants instead slit open her stomach, pulled out her fetus and slaughtered it before her eyes.”

“What can you say about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity?”

“What can you say about the gang rape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by their murder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in one case with a screw-driver6?”

The above tales of macabre violence -“masses of pus released by slitting open large festering wounds9” – are accounts by an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, who is a key eye witness to the Gujarat riots. Gujarat 2002, sadly, is not a one-off occurrence. In the past two decades - India, the land of Gandhi and the Buddha, has been ravaged by so many acts of inter-communal violence that peace is an intermittent, temporal period of uneasy co-existence waiting to be disrupted by the next round of hatred.  These acts have metamorphosed the collective Indian mindset so much that communal tension and religious bigotry, shockingly, have been accepted as a way of life. Surely this was not what the founding fathers of Independent India had in mind when they adopted secularism as a constitutional and political ideal. Who is to be blamed for this – the Indian political elite who are blissfully disconnected from reality, or the broader Indian society and its inherent anarchy? When we proudly proclaim that we are a secular society, do we really understand what we mean?

SECULARISM AND THE STATE

Secularism in India, right from the days of Nehru when it got its most virulent and articulate political expression, has been understood as a political ideology that seeks to protect and guard equally the rights of individuals belonging to all religions to profess, practice and proselytize their religion. This is in stark contrast to how secularism evolved in Europe and America in the eighteenth century – it was a child of the age of enlightenment that sought to separate all the activities of the state from religious influences. There are historical reasons for why this is so.

On one hand, all the major political transformations in the 18th century western world came about as a direct or indirect consequence of grievances created by organized religion (the Church). Hence, these political transformations consisted of an element which sought to limit the power of religion over society and the law making process. For example, it must be noted that when Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Virginia Statuette for religious freedom, coined the famous phrase “wall of separation between church and state5”, he was trying to reassure the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, of state protection from the religious persecution threatened by the Danbury Congregationalists.

On the other hand, majority of the nationalistic and social reform movements of 19th and 20th century India were spearheaded by men and women who sought to find a basis for social transformation within the religious doctrines and texts of India. This could have been considered essential to unite a vast segregated population and to facilitate the process of accepting the liberal values of the west, which was then perceived as an agent of political dominance trying to push a “foreign culture” down the throats of Indians. Hence, a serious critique of religion was largely absent in the social reform movements in India, with the exception of the rationalist political movements of Tamil Nadu.  Added to this is the problem of identifying a strict definition of organized religion in India- with is myriad belief systems, practices and heritages – which made it impossible for such a critique to gather steam. Hence, even the best strains of Secularism one finds in India’s past – such as those during the reigns of Asoka and Akbar – have limited themselves to upholding plurality in public life and ensuring communal harmony than in divorcing religion completely from the body  of politics 4.

SECULARISM – EATING ITS OWN LIMBS?

The tumultuous days of Partition and the blood bath that ensued did not give rise to an immediate and concrete shift in the political outlook of the nation. It was one instance when the terrible human cost of religious intolerance was clearly evident and the political will for adopting a form of government which is religion-blind was the strongest. Yet, this opportunity was lost due to the simultaneous creation of an ‘Enemy State’, which was theocratic and predominantly Muslim. This demonized the Muslims of India in the eyes of the Hindu majority, forcing the founding fathers to formulate a state which assumed a patronizing role in protecting and appeasing the minority communities. With this attitude extending to its treatment of the majority, the state has continued on a trajectory that is farther and farther away from the secular ideal. Today, after more than 2 generations, when the memories of the civil war with which the nation began its existence are slowly fading away, a strong impetus which can overcome this social impasse is lost. This is in contrast with the governments of post-Nazi Germany, which proactively educated their people about the dangers of bigoted ideologies and brought in a permanent shift in the German national psyche for generations to come.

One of the many consequences of this distortion of the idea of secularism in India is absence of a common civil law even after 60 years of the republic’s formation. The governments at various levels require citizens to disclose their religious affiliations while religious conversions need to be registered and are subjected to various state laws, most of which have been enacted to  favor vested religious interests 1. Even the most progressive sections of the society today are in favor of Sharia – many of whose tenets are highly regressive- for the Muslims in India, preventing social reform within the Indian Muslim community3. All these have further prevented the emergence of an atmosphere for the gradual adoption of secularism as a social ideology.

SECULARISM AND THE MAJORITY

At the core of a secular heart is an affirmation of the equality of the goals of all religious traditions. Secularism, as it stands today, can then be understood as a manifestation of this belief in the daily lives of ordinary people. However, the Hindu social life had long been festered with unimaginable inequities, limiting to a huge extent the participation in mainstream religious activities by a huge section of the populace. Consequently, it has cultivated a mindset that rejects the rights of others to cultural and religious expression within its own sect. With the existence of such a mindset, extending similar rights to other religions remains unthinkable in modern India. References to Muslims as “outsiders” or those with a “non-indigenous/wrong faith” are numerous in popular Hindu discourse and such notions are further stoked by the Hindu Nationalist party, the BJP. The emergence of this party from the sidelines to the mainstream in the last two decades is a testimony to that fact that things are only getting worse. Moreover, this party has proceeded to build religious orthodoxy upon a vilified Muslim population unlike traditional conservative politics which derives its strength from absolutist values. With this party remaining the only political alternative to the current ruling coalition, the future does look bleak for Indian secularism9.

OLD HOPES AND NEW FEARS

Contrary to popular belief, there seems to be almost no correlation between the level of education or economic prosperity and the tendency to accept secular and humanistic ideals in the Indian society. Major instances of religious intolerance resulting in social unrest have happened post-liberalization in India, with the exception of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. The religious bigotry that found its fullest expression in Gujarat in 2002 had grown out of the affluence of the state’s nuovo rich middle class and their passive but discontent coexistence with the Muslim minority there. In fact, most of post-independent India’s communal riots and bomb blasts have happened in the 1990s and 2000s indicating the ability of home-grown religious bigotry to feed from the new-found prosperity of the middle classes.

A recent poll of young urbanites in India also shows a lack of openness to religious conversion12. The behavior of Supreme Court judges in the Kanchi Mutt murder case is also a testament to the existence of religious orthodoxy among people professing to uphold the secular values of the Indian constitution. For long considered the secular bulwarks of the country, the fast developing southern states have begun to show worrying trends of religious intolerance. The attack on Christian minorities in Karnataka and Kerala, the riot in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and the blasts that followed it are testimonies to this. Higher Urbanization has been accompanied by riots that had their epicenter in the cities.  In the last fifty years, 96% of all riot deaths have occurred in cities, even though these cities are home to less than 30% of the total population of the country8. Home to the social, cultural and economic elite of the country, Mumbai has been the victim of many such communal tensions post the Babri Masjid demolition7.

The tribal people of Orissa, who had for long led a life of harmonious coexistence with nature, are now active and willing participants in the violence against Christian missionaries and converts2.  Kashmir, with its sizeable Muslim population and endemic violence has proved to the most striking example of the failure of Indian secularism. The communists, who are self-avowed atheists, contributed their bit to stifling secularism by banning the book of Tasleema Nasrin11. Army officers Lieutenant Col. Purohit and Major (Retd.) Upadhayay were arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts of 2008, indicating that religious bigotry has entered even the Indian army.

CONCLUSION

These failures to learn from the past coupled with an ignorance of our own realities have made secularism a distant utopia to be just dreamt about. With secular ideals taking a back seat and losing to other priorities across social, cultural, economic and ideological groups and the visibly increasing tendency to get polarized along communal lines, secularism remains an unfulfilled promise and an unrealized hope.

Topic 3
11 COMMENTS
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11 Responses

  1. Manoj Says:

    Dear Team manifest,

    First of all, cogratulations for making a bold critique of the present state of “secular” india. However, I disagree with your prophecy of doom and gloom.

    What is happening in Independent India is a matter of shame for it’s government and of concern to it’s citizens. However, let’s ask why such savage behavior erupts when crowds of peace-loving, coflict avoiding Indians gather? Do we see similar actions in nations earlier colonized, and now free? If so, why?

    To me,there are 2 major reasons :
    1. The unfinished and un-reversed agenda of Lord Macaulay’s. The primary education system set up then was aimed at making indians a nation tuned to anglo-saxon sensibilities. However, in doing so, they created a pool of people educated for tasks, but uprooted from a cultural identity and even social consciousness. It’s a mixed blessing – an indian educated under such a system is a globally mobile person, at ease anywhere in the world, lacking strong connects to his own people. And the British left 60 years ago, but the system they put in continues to survive, and indeed, thrive. As south-east asians have been doing, we need to fix it and quickly.

    2. Democratic India preserved the same instruments of maintaining rule of law left behind by the British – the police, special forces, the military. But it’s leaders lack vision to recognize that these instruments were largely meant to protect the British people and property, to the exclusion of people at large. Don’t we see the police behaving exactly the same way even now?

    In conclusion, obtaining independence from the British rulers was a major achievement of the leaders then. But the subsequent task of building a nation’s institutions and re-orienting or dismantling the dysfuntional instruments left behind by colonial powers was a task assiduously avoided by both the political and thought leadership till nineties.

    So what makes me hopeful about the current situation? The recent social campaigns by eminent persons, the sensitivity of the present prime minister, the steady increase in educated leaders entering active poltics, and above all national spirit and cultural revival of the teenaged Indians.

    All these comfort me that the dawn is not far, that Indians will soon be at home in their own country, wherever they may be. And that we’ll soon be a population that’s not secular only through pain of severe punishment, but in spirit and from our hearts.

    Will all this happen? In my early forties, I’m not sure I will see this in my lifetime, but I stay optimistic about the outcomes.

    Posted on January 10th, 2010 at 7:33 pm

  2. Cartoons Says:

    Secularism in India in the present scenario is for sure an unfulfilled promise and an unrealized hope but that does not in any manner imply that secular India will always remain an Utopian concept.

    What is needed for this utopian concept to become a reality is the understanding that the concept of religion was born not to alienate humans from each other but to bring humans close to each other as well as to God. Just being a little tolerant can help in huge proportions in solving the menace of communalism and taking India closer to this so called Utopian concept of secularism.

    But before that we need to ruminate and try and find answers to some burning questions. Why do some citizens of the country need to prove their faithfulness and love for the country time and again? Why do they need to prove their integrity to other countrymen at every alternate step?

    Hinduism in olden days was perceived as a very tolerant religion. But is it still that tolerant. Who gives the right to Hindu fanatics to act like moral policeman with a baton? Who gives them the responsibility of stopping conversions to other religions when convertees are comfortable doing that and against individuals will? Why do we have a Babri masjid demolition or Graham Stephens killing? Why do we have such a big brouhaha being made on something as trivial as portraying some God in apparels to questioning tenets related to religions in novels and movies? Why do we need to be so susceptible that any and everybody can come and hurt and inflame our religious feelings?

    Who gives religious fanatical organizations the right to question us and tell us what to do or not to do? Who gives this small group of people the right to stir the emotions of other humans and make them do which no normal human will?

    Why do we have incidents like Gujarat or Orissa or even Ayodhya where small fanatic groups play with the whole society as there pawns?

    Its high time we stop succumbing and reacting to the sentiments arousing self serving politics of these groups, be of any community.

    Another aspect which we need to be careful about is that we do not need to emulate the western model of secularism because that is not what secularism truly means. How can we make countries who tend to mistrust anybody wearing a turban or having a beard as our role models of secularism?

    We don’t need to look unto them because they are not truly secular.

    We also need to understand one thing that people of other minority religions are in India because they want to be in India so we need to trust them as Indians.

    Pt. Nehru had once said that Indian Muslims have always been at least one generation backward to Indian Hindus. This can be exemplified from the fact that the proportion of minorities in higher education or in coveted posts in jobs is very low. This situation exists even in the present scenario and this calls for giving them a favorable special treatment and so special rights and reservations for minority communities are required.

    It needs to be understood by the majority community that minorities are as much a part of our country as they are and have an equal right on it. Minorities also need to behave with integrity and take care that they fulfill their duties as responsible citizens and do not take any undue advantage. All communities equally need to stop the blame game which they indulge into so frequently and understand fighting among ourselves will do us no good and lead us nowhere.

    Its time that authorities at responsible positions in religious organizations stop playing with humans as pawns and understand that the need of the hour is progress and it can never be achieved if countrymen keep on fighting among themselves.

    We need to remember the opening line of our preamble
    “ALL INDIANS ARE BROTHERS AND SISTERS”

    Let us all lend our hands in ingraining this outlook in the hearts of the coming generations…

    Posted on January 12th, 2010 at 2:26 pm

  3. EaglesSecret Says:

    Bird’s eye view

    Secularism is not absence of a religion nor is religion an evil whose very presence is antithetic to secularism. Secularism is understood in two planes – The first being that there will be no discrimination based on faith or religion before law. The second being that the government should exist separately from religion and there will thus be no mixing of the two. Thus secularism slams the idea of a dominant single religion subverting and subjugating any other. If such a situation arises, the government is expected to be disinterested and arbitrate fairly with due respect to both faiths. (Kosmin, 2007) The team has made sweeping generalizations in every incident quoted by drawing out the mindlessness of a section of the population to blissfully ignore the presence of millions of moderate voices. Religious bigotry has been engineered by a religious head or a political class on almost every occasion and its best we don’t charge India as a hopeless class incapable of redemption.

    Secularism and Economic Progress

    The team points to the enlightenment in Europe preceding secularism – “This is in stark contrast to how secularism evolved in Europe and America in the eighteenth century – it was a child of the age of enlightenment that sought to separate all the activities of the state from religious influences”. The witch hunting and crusades ceased not because of a single revelation but because of continual engagement in productive work concomitant with economic progress. (Munby, 1963)

    This applies to every society across the world. The religious bigotry perpetuated in Gujarat has been cited as an instance where economic progress had little to with secularism. This is an intuitive inference more than a factual argument. The religious bigotry in Gujarat had no doubt the implicit approval of the Gujarat government and the administration but the incidents were condemned by a much larger populace of the middle class across India and in Gujarat. To take sections of the state’s population and draw judgements about an entire strata and ergo their economic status is far too weak a rebuttal of Economic progress and Secularism.

    Secularism and the India Law

    There is no evidence of the Indian Law discriminating between religions nor is there sufficient evidence to prove that the Indian courts have favoured a religion in their hearings. Be it the Supreme Court’s scathing indictment of the Gujarat’s government’s callousness or its commentary on the Babri Masjid case, the Indian courts have always upheld secularism. The team uses the Kanchi Mutt case as sufficient evidence for the India Law’s failure to uphold secularism. Speculations about the Supreme Court’s siding with the High Hindu guru have been presented as facts by the team. The religious head was believed to be guilty by the media and across multiple sections of the populace but this cannot comprise the Supreme Court’s stand which is constrained by the ambit of clearing all doubts before choosing to punish the offender. The Indian courts may not be immaculate but they cannot be held guilty for favouring a religious majority.

    All is lost?

    BJP, The Hindu Nationalist party has indeed been found guilty at many occasions for minority bashing and inequitable treatment of religious faiths. Multiple state Governments have sided at myriad occasions with the majority religion for vote bank politics. These are facts and little can be said to dispute them.

    Secularism is not religious tolerance but religious awareness. (Boyer, 2002) The existence of a radical Islam is not because of intolerance (which is an antecedent) but the lack of awareness. Marginalization of the Muslims is an offshoot of ignorance and it is this ignorance that begets bigotry. It is true that the highly educated may harbour discriminatory thoughts but discrimination is prevalent across economic classes’ as much as social classes. Education is not a panacea to cure the human mind and this is evident in highly industrialized countries which witness violence against people based on race, wealth and ancestry. Does all this lead to the only possibility that Secularism will always remain utopian?

    For every violent case of religious segregation there are thousands of instances of the Indian Diaspora coming together to condemn the violence. The voice of these moderates has been eclipsed by sanguinary tales of riots. Would that imply that moderation and religious objectivity is dead and buried in India? If that was so, Salman Rushdie would have never been granted a visit here and neither would we have had a highly revered former president from another religion. There is an endless list of facts where Secularism has been upheld. There is hope and we choose not to ignore it.

    India is a diverse and vibrant society. The absence of an overarching organizing principle does not in any way imply an “inherent anarchy”. Indian society fosters an order that emerges from within all the apparent chaos.

    Gazing into the crystal ball

    India’s present has no doubt been tainted but there are inroads being made by moderate voices across the society. Will this supplant bigotry progressively and result in a truly secularist state? We do not know and thereby would not accept a generalization about the future.

    We will not venture to discuss India’s future without due justification because that would entail that we contradict our own stance – To prove factually and beyond reasonable doubt without resorting to gut feelings and intuitive analysis. In the same breath, we refute the team’s stand because they have extrapolated current situations into the future. As much as thousands of Indians have been involved in religious segregation, there are millions who have loathed the same. One could conjecture that these acts of religious intolerance could be the very spawn for the evolution of a mindset that detests anti-secularism because of the sheer loathing from being a mute witness to bigotry. This is only a conjecture but a contingency nonetheless. As long as such a contingency exists, we rest our case.

    Posted on January 12th, 2010 at 2:33 pm

  4. India Says:

    Come, O Aryan and Non-Aryan,
    Hindu and Muslim,
    Come, O English and you Christian,
    Come, O Brahmin,
    On the shores of Bharat,
    Where men of all races have come together.
    Rabindra Nath Tagore

    INTERPERETING SECULARISM

    George Jacob Holyoake is seen as the man who coined the term secularism.It has taken many interpretations with the passage of time, some even bordering on atheism. Here I consider two interpretations of the word ‘secularism’. The first one maintains that the state should be at equal distance from all religions. It cannot favor one religion over the other. The second view, more a characteristic of the west maintains that a state cannot have any relation with any of the religions. India, on the other hand sees organized religion more as a positive force in the life of its countrymen. It sees for itself a role in protecting the rights of the minorities by enacting special laws in the constitution. That could violate western notion of secularism but certainly is more humane. Unlike in the West, where secularism came mainly out of the conflict between the Church and the State, secularism in India was conceived as a system that sustained religious and cultural pluralism and has done so.

    History and secularism

    India has a long history of being a secular society. India has been the birth place of major world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Christianity came way back in India in at least 4th century BC. India 6 system of philosophy is at the base of modern notion of secularism. It cedes space not only to schools of religion but Carvaka and Lokayata school as well. Asoka merely serves as an anecdotal example of a monarch who sought to run his empire on secular lines. We have Akbar during the medieval period engaging in inter-religion conferences at his palace. “Akbar was stressing religious tolerance and upholding reason over blind faith when in Europe Giardano Bruno was being arrested for heresy, prior to being burnt at the stake.”(Amartya Sen 1996)

    It was India which granted haven to the Parsees when they escaped from a less tolerant Persia 1200 years ago. The most important Sufi orders have flourished here in history.

    When the (Hindu) king of Bikaner was defeated by the king of Marwar, his family found shelter with Sher Shah Suri. When Humayun was defeated by Sher Shah Suri, he found shelter with the (Hindu) Raja of Amarkot. Shivaji built a Mosque near his palace while Tipu Sultan built a Temple near his palace. Ibrahim Gardy was the commander-in chief of Shivaji against the Mughals.

    It is only unfortunate that colonial historians and policies were fond of raking tensions between the two communities to ensure that “divide and rule” agenda worked out well for them. Secretary of state Wood wrote to Lord Elgin in 1857 that we’ve kept our power in India by making one force fight the other and we should continue to do so.

    In recent times we were witness to the colorful spectacle of a Sikh as the country’s Prime Minister and a Muslim as the president. These two belong to India’s minority community. Such thing may not be possible anywhere in the world. Even during US elections Obama had to emphasise again and again of his Christianity.

    CULTURAL HERITAGE.

    The secularism of india is visibly prominent in music, art, architecture and other cultural products. Saints such as Dadu or Kabir are examples of syncretism in religious life .Muslim poets like Rahim and Raskhan have written about their beloved Krishna, a hindu god. Dara Shikoh learnt sanskrit and translated few upanishads into Persian and named the book as sirr-i-akbar. He also wrote a book majma`ul bahrayn (i.e. Meeting of two oceans) and compared hinduism and islam and came to the conclusion that their teachings are quite similar.Many Muslim scholars translated Ramayana and Mahabharata into Arabic and Persian. It is said that there are more than 70 such translations. In most of the rural areas Muslims are highly assimilated with local culture: they dress like Hindus, speak local dialect – speak no other language – and follow all local customs and traditions. if we see the recent scenarios we find examples like Sahir Ludhianavi a Muslim has written some of the best memorable bhajans. Festivals like phool waloon ki sair where one chadar on the mausoleum of a Muslim saint and a Hindu mandir.

    Recent Challenges

    There is no doubt India has witnessed much communal violence but only due to involvement of political parties and their propaganda. Communalism is a powerful political weapon used by politicians of different hues. The masses are generally not to be blamed for such violence. In fact, a major triumph of the spirit of secularism in India is pointed out by BJP’s loss in the election following the Gujurat Riots in 2002. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister of BJP, himself admitted that people rejected them because they were held responsible for the Gujarat carnage.

    Conclusion

    The real spirit of secularism in India is all inclusiveness, religious pluralism and peaceful co-existence. It is time we stop judging ourselves by western notions of modernity. We have a different concept of secularism and we need to understand our socio-cultural context via our own interpretations. Unity in Diversity has been our greatest message to the world. We need to zealously pursue the ideal of secularism in our own sense of the word. We need to be watchful of elements who are eager to tear down our edifice of such splendor and beauty. The riots have been a blot on our common soul. We need to be vary of people who use religion to pursue their parochial goals. Certainly Secularism cannot be a utopian idea when we have seen its actualization in different periods of history. No doubt it has come under threat. But such is the nature of history which tests nations to prove their worth.

    Posted on January 12th, 2010 at 2:37 pm

  5. Kurukshetra Says:

    INTRODUCTION

    We would like to present our arguments in favor of the fact that secular India is certainly not a Utopia for India has always been a secular nation. In our 5000 year history, India has always been a secular nation and attaining a status that we already are and always have been, can certainly not be termed Utopia.

    We would like to start with a well known example of India, in spite of being a country of 80 % Hindus, has a Prime Minister who is a Sikh, the leader of the ruling party an Italian Roman Catholic by birth and a Parsee by marriage, the Vice President (also the ex-President) a Muslim, the Home Minister an atheist and the richest Indian for 6 years a Muslim. Though one can argue that this by itself doesn’t completely say that India is secular, such a representative political situation cannot arise in a society without an underlying base and belief in secularism.

    Though at one end some crooked politicians are trying to divide India under the name of religion, we feel that the people of India are strongly holding the pride of secularism in all their activities. The place Chandni Chowk at the national capital NewDelhi lives as an embodiment of this fact, where there is Jamma Masjid, a temple, a church and a Gurudwara all in the near vicinity of each other and one can see people dwelling there with love and harmony (which is the basic element of every religion) with each other (Chandani Chowk – Replica of a Secular India, 2008).

    ATTACK

    The reasons why the arguments made by Team 3 do not convince us is because we believe that they have cherry picked the few negative incidents that have occurred in the last two decades and have based their arguments on that. We attempt to show next how some of the arguments presented are flawed or could have been interpreted in other ways.

    Firstly, India is a very unique country having no real comparables in terms of the long existing religious diversity, cultural differences, and multiplicity of religions. We believe that measuring secularism in such a setting is very different from analyzing it in the context of other societies and countries. We therefore do not concur with the argument provided by Team 3 about the roots of secularism in India being flawed due to the state and religion not being completely separated. In fact, Amartya Sen argues that secularism can be defined in two ways, one where state and religion are completely separate and the second where the state is equidistant from all religions, which is what India has adopted (Sen, 2005).

    Secondly the greatest advantage that modern India possesses is the coexistence of secularism and democracy. The demographic split of India has roughly 80% Hindus, 14% Muslims, 2% each of Christians, Sikhs and Others (cia.gov). And if we go by the argument of Team 3 which talks about how BJP being in the opposition can never lead to secularism, with a 80% Hindu population BJP should have always been in power since its inception. On the contrary the Congress led party which is considered more secular has been in power for 17 years since 1984 (BJP’s inception). And in the 2008 Karnataka state elections, 25% Muslims voted in favour of the BJP (Khan). Most importantly, in a recent poll by CNN – IBN, nearly 90% of the Muslims in Gujarat feel that Hindu Muslim unity is definitely possible even after the after-effects of Godhara. (ibnlive) In fact in Mumbai, which was known for Hindu-Muslim riots after the infamous Bombay blast of 1993, there was not a single Hindu Muslim riot for 5 years under the Shiv Sena- BJP rule from 1995-1999 (Thackeray). This shows that the parties that were espousing Hindu nationalism, as per team 3’s arguments were actually more concerned with being pro-secular to ensure that their image isn’t tarnished.

    While we do accept the fact that there have been and continue to be communal tensions in India, we wish to show that these incidents are aberrations and not the normal state of the country. Such extremism exists in most aspects of all societies. As in any normal distribution, the regions outside a deviation of 3 Sigma should be neglected to get an idea of what the majority of the people feel. The events and activities of which fall beyond it should not be a yardstick to judge the attitude of a nation with a billion population.

    The authors seem to convey that for secularism in India to survive religious identity should get completely out of state and politics. This we feel is unrealistic in the near future since this is the land of the origin of Hinduism and a few other important religions and expecting it not to be a part of a person’s identity will take a long time. India is not a melting pot, but a salad bowl.

    We are quite doubtful with the point that “critiquing religion was largely absent, but for the rationalist political movements in TN”. If Team 3 refers to the DMK, we certainly disagree as the DMK has definitely fought caste based elections since 1957 till date. Even now, the composition of the DMK ministers at the Centre reveals accommodation of different castes (Karunanidhi trying to revive caste based front). And if they are referring to Periyar and his Dravidian movement, it was a social movement and never an electoral political movement.

    CONCLUSION

    We strongly believe that Secularism in India has existed over the past 5000 years and would continue to do so. There may be a few off instances that may threaten the intensity of secularism, but those are minor setbacks and not definitive examples. In short to cite a few riots instigated by lunatics as examples of lack of Indian secularism is as ridiculous as citing the 13 ducks scored by Sir Don Bradman in his long and illustrious career and calling him a failed batsman.

    Posted on January 12th, 2010 at 2:40 pm

  6. XLent_warriors Says:

    Introduction

    India, it is argued that, can never become a secular country in reality. The quoted instances of communal violence during Godhra incident, political transformations that happened in the last few decades, and the changing mindset of the people have all been cited as the contributors towards India getting tagged as non secularist. However are we not exaggerating too much? The political and societal resilience of India, though presently lopsided towards non secularism, has to be put in perspective and is certainly not beyond repair. This is where the article fails to address certain ideas.

    Riots put in perspective

    The article talks about the macabre violence and religious riots in India. Come to think of it – even nations having only one religion face riots and large scale violence – tensions between shias and sunnis in Pakistan is a case in point. Considering the number of religions in India, tensions between religions are bound to happen. Keeping this in mind, the number of riots is actually lesser when we put it in perspective. It is true that India has way to go but declaring secularism is a utopian concept based on this is incorrect.

    Comparison with USA

    200 years after USA got independence it needed Martin Luther King Jr. to fight against racial discrimination. In contrast to this, India, with its numerous religions, does not practice discrimination based on religion. Equality is practiced in all the places and the practice of “untouchables” is becoming extinct. This goes on to show that secularism in India is not a Utopian concept.

    BJP’s Politics

    The article vilifies BJP’s politics. It is prudent to note that even a Hindutva based party like BJP is trying to reach out to other religions. It realizes that quoting Babri Masjid and other Hindutva ideologies do not cut much ice with younger generation. Advani calling Jinnah as a secular person was an attempt to project himself as a moderate leader that Vajpayee was. Moreover, the success of BJP in Gujarat is also attributed to developments in Gujarat, which has made it the leading industrialized state of India today1, rather than just the fallout of the Godhra violence. These things clearly show no party can win with religion based politics only.

    Quota politics is the real enemy

    The article has not dealt about quota system in India. Almost all Indian political parties have continued to use the ‘divide and rule’ policy that British left behind. Introduction of quotas is to fortify their vote banks based on religions. This division of people ensures that they garner their vote share at the cost of secularism. If all political parties depend upon such divisive politics how will India become secular one may ask. It depends on today’s younger generation to make the difference.

    Mindset of young Indians

    The resistance towards breaking the barrier of non secularist India can come only from the young generation. Today most of the educated young Indians do not vote. The illiterate tend to choose candidates based on the caste. Secularism is possible when people vote based on performance rather than caste. The article says young Indians are not willing to convert to other religions. This in no way indicates that they are not tolerating other religions harmoniously.

    Wars with Pakistan

    The article states that creation of Pakistan has demonized Muslims. However whenever India has fought wars with Pakistan, the Indian Muslims have stood behind India and shown unity. When wars break out, the spirit of One India is upheld and religious differences are forgotten. This shows that secularism is not such a Utopian idea.

    Unity of people during disasters

    The article has not dealt about the unity of people during disasters. It is said that the true attitude of a person emerges in times of crisis. The same is applicable to our country. Though India has a record of communal violence and religious discrimination, the spirit that a typical Indian holds in times of adversity and natural disasters can be a driver for secularism. There were numerous instances during Tsunami, Mumbai floods in 2005, floods in Orissa in 1999, earthquakes in Gujarat when hundreds of residents came on to the roads to help out victims irrespective of their creed or religion. This shows that though various factors tarnish India’s image of being a secularist state, India can overcoming these hindrances.

    Terrorism

    Before typecasting India as no more a secularist country, it is important to consider the influence of terrorist activities. Investigation into Mumbai’s Taj bombings has confirmed the presence of Pakistani connections. Such events affect the mindset of the common man and increase the divide between Hindus and Muslims, thereby increasing the risk of another communal violence. Indian Government is taking steps to contain terrorist activities which will in turn help India get a secularist tag.

    Conclusion

    India can attain secular status in reality by taking concerted steps in reducing religion based politics and terrorism. India has long way to go in this direction but one has to realize that achieving secularism in such a multi-religious country is a gradual and incremental process. Given a favourable environment as indicated in above arguments, India being called truly secularist as given in the Constitution is certainly not a Utopian phenomenon.

    Posted on January 12th, 2010 at 2:44 pm

  7. Team Me, Myself & Chotu Says:

    Casting secularism in terms of communal parity is suffocating. The parity model simply produces untenable politics.

    There is a story of a man who was looking for a key under a lamp post. Asked why he was look-ing for a key at that particular spot, he is report-ed to have replied: ‘Oh, I know that I lost my key elsewhere, but I am looking for it here because there seems to be some light under the lamp post’. So it is with a lot of Indian discussions on secular-ism. We all hover around the lamp post of secularism, not because we lost the key there, but because we think there is light under this ideal.
    There is no doubt about the absolute necessity of secu-larism as a political ideal, where the civil, political and social rights of individuals are made independent of any religious affiliation they may carry. But the threat to political secular-ism does not come from religion. It comes rather from com-munalism, and a misunderstanding of what freedom entails. Communalism is the cluster of attitudes that targets individuals for simply being who they are, and thinks political rights should be a function of community affiliation. But if communalism is the great threat, then the place where we lost the key is not secularism, it is nationalism. We keep on interrogating religion, to disguise the fact that communalism is the offspring of nationalism. Communalism is a product of the unrealisable hopes of nationalism, not an offshoot of religious piety.

    How does nationalism produce communalism? Nationalism seeks to benchmark ‘identity’. But every attempt to benchmark Indian iden-tity, define it in terms of litmus tests, will produce mischief that pits com-munities against each other. Nation-alism, like communalism, is a col-lective narcissism that puts identity before rights, purity before freedom, collective idolatry over individuali-ty, sameness over a capacity to nego-tiate difference, descent over pos-sible futures, and unity over justice. The moral psychology of nation-alism is the same as that of commu-nalism; even the most expansive and generous notion of nationalism can-not entirely escape the violence and abridgment of possibilities that any collective identity entails.

    Politically what India needs is not so much a new conception of Indian identity, one that emphasis-es pluralism and compositeness. Rather, what we need is a social con-tract on how we respect and deal with those with whom we disagree about India’s identity. We don’t need to ask: what do we share? Rather we need to ask: what are the terms on which we relate to those with whom we disagree about what we share or with whom we share nothing at all.

    The challenge is not to find some-thing we share, the challenge is to find ways of negotiating difference. Does all this mean that India does not have an identity? If this demand implies that there is something we all unequivocally share, the answer is ‘no’. But it does not preclude the thought that we all have lots of different reasons and ways in which we define our relationships with each other. There is no ‘unity’ in diversity, rather we are diverse in our uni-ties, and we might identify with connec-tions to India, each in our own way. But any attempt to produce an authoritative conception of India will be fraught with exclusion and violence. We should take some heart from the fact that usually it does not occur to any-body to doubt whether India has an identity, until someone begins to give arguments to prove it. The spontaneous con-versation of India produces a thousand entanglements that bind us; a politics obsessed with unity will produce the forces that tear us apart.

    The second weakness in our articulation of secularism is this. It has seldom been concerned with the value of indi-vidual liberty. Different versions of secularism—secularism as communal harmony, secularism as respect for all religions, secularism as a project for giving different groups their own space to collectively define their identities—are less moti-vated by a concern for individual liberty. These versions of secularism are not averse to using state power to advance religious ends, provided some kind of parity between different communities is maintained. So, on this view, it is alright for the state to ban practices offensive to Hindus so long as it does the same for Muslims and so forth. So long as the state demon-strates equal treatment for commu-nities, on this view, secularism stands vindicated. But casting secu-larism in terms of communal pari-ty is misleading and suffocating.

    The parity model produced an untenable politics. Governments established their secular credentials by giving one concession to a partic-ular religious community and then offset it by granting concessions to other communities in a process of competitive bidding that left all communities feeling that they had lost. This parity model was suffocat-ing in so far as it put respecting reli-gion or collective identities above the cause of protecting individual freedoms. To say that the state should use its coercive powers to express “respect” towards all religions equally is by no stretch of the imagination the same thing as saying that each individual ought to have as much freedom as is compatible with a similar freedom for others.

    In short, the only sustainable conception of secularism is one that is tied to a project of building a society of free and equal individuals. It is based on recognising the radicalness of the claim that Emerson best articulated: “no society can ever be as large as a single individual.” This is the only antidote to collective narcissism, the only real threat to secularism.

    The author is President, Centre for Policy Research

    Posted on January 13th, 2010 at 2:43 pm

  8. Team Manfest Says:

    Definitions are as bad as the consequences they have

    Nobody has monopoly over what secularism means. Not Gotama’s Men, not the other teams, not the Americans, the Swiss, the founding fathers of India, nobody. And we never stated anything otherwise. At the risk of stating the obvious, everybody is welcome to call themselves secular in a way they wish to and think that their version has the greatest inherent value. What we did try to point out in our defense was that the way in which it was defined in India created huge demographical and psychological divisions in the country, and worked against the very intentions with which the definition was formulated. Whether or not this consequence that we claimed is accurate or not should have been the focus of contentions.

    Peddling Hope?

    There are attacks which, in the garb of a logical conclusion, sell plain old hope by retorting to the old rhetoric that “The future can only be better when there is hope”. And they had built their castle of hope on such flimsy grounds as the presence of moderate millions who don’t toe the lines of religious fanatics. Is this true? Let us take a case in point whose mention attracted the ire of many of the attacking teams – the Gujarati middle class. Ashish Nandy has this to say about them – “It has become an active abettor and motivator of communal violence. Sections of it participate in the loot enthusiastically, those that do not often participate in the violence vicariously”. He says that during the three decades of intermittent religious violence in Gujarat, there has emerged a new social underclass, that thrives on riots and sees them as a way of life, often abetted by the non-martial upper and middle classes, which prefer to watch and fascinate from the sidelines. Even Ratan Tata and Mr.Mukesh Ambani, aspirational figures for the middle class of the country, prefer to overlook the state sponsored terrorism of the Gujarat government and rather concentrate on the state being a dream destination for private enterprise. Tridip Suhurd, in his paper “No room for dialogue”, published in the Economic and Political Weekly, blames the Politician-bureaucrat-businessman relationship of interdependence for the present state of affairs. He says that this “apparatus of interdependence has no stake in the civil society. Rather it sees it as a hindrance in the march towards global culture and political economy”. Again, we remind our opposing teams that the middle class refused to root out Narendra Modi’s government but rather voted it to power in 2002 and again in 2007.Clearly, the middle class of the country is more concerned about development economics rather than the secular aspirations of the society, if there were any. As far as the middle class is concerned, societal development balances and offsets cruelties of religious terrorism. It is ready to look the other way even as religious violence is being perpetrated as long as its more important needs of money and luxury are being met.

    Shout From over the Roof Tops

    Even if the middle classes were secular majorly, such a claim can only stem from a confusion that seems to have infected almost all the attacking teams. While the extreme cases of religious bigotry we had cited in our defense are very apt in illustrating the growing menace of religious intolerance, the attacks had confused the non-participation by a majority in such barbaric acts for a practice of secularism. However, as Howard Zinn aptly captures the essence of our tumultuous times in the phrase “You can’t be neutral on a moving train”, our redemption lies not in silence but in shouting from over the rooftops. When under these conditions, even silence is unforgivable, the Indian public, in hordes, has time and again openly endorsed these right-wing fanatics on which strangely all the attacking teams are silent.

    We Don’t Time Travel

    There are charges, again, of gazing the crystal ball when atleast a minority believes in secular ideals. “What if the minority won’t become the majority in the future?” some ask. “What if you haven’t seen long enough into the future?” others ask. It goes without saying that even the foremost experts in this area will not make a prediction about the way things will turn a century from now with confidence, let alone eternity. No one was expecting us to do that either in this forum. What the topic did imply was for us to take a stand on what we think would happen in the next one or two decades – the foreseeable future, if we can be less precise – and those are the time frames for which objective predictions can be made with reasonable confidence by extrapolating the trends we observe in the present. Anything beyond this scope (in terms of both time and observations) is simply bad science.

    Cherry Picking in a Cherry Orchard

    While most of the attacking teams were quick to point out how isolated the events of Godhra, the riots in Gujarat, the attacks on Christian missionaries etc. are, none of them had anything to say about the elephants in the room- the bloodbath of 1947 and the absence of a common civil law, on both of which we had spent a considerable portion of our defense. When conservative estimates say that about half a million perished and more than 12 million were displaced by this religious civil war of cataclysmic proportions, it is hardly cherry-picking. Also, it is only understandable that the psyche of a nation born out of such a traumatic experience would be strongly damaged and would tend to take a reactionary path most likely leading to a secular ideal. This was the spirit of our enquiry into the secular nature of the Indian state and the legal implications it had. The very fact that the attacking teams have brought onto this debate with them the hysterical loss-of-memory about the traumas of partition and the ensuing silence, reflecting very much the popular mainstream discourse one finds today on it, tells us how radically the space for initiating a discussion that could merge both the past and the present to throw light on the future has been reduced here.

    Of Politics and Minority Elites

    Many attacks had referred to the prominence of Mr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, the current Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh, and the current leader of the ruling party Mrs. Sonia Gandhi as proof of India’s secularism. Either it was a case of selective amnesia or plain ignorance, but we would like to remind these teams a few facts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his distinguished career, has never been elected to the Lok Sabha – not even once. He is currently a Rajya Sabha M.P from Assam. Then, isn’t citing his term at the prime minister’s office as a testimony of the country’s robust secular practices, to borrow a phrase from one of the competing teams, a case of “intuitive inference” and not a “factual argument”? And let us remind once again, that India does not have a presidential form of democracy. The selection , as opposed to election, of Mr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam to the president’s office was not as much on the popular vote of the public, as on the political compulsions of the then ruling party.

    One Life = How Many Ducks?

    Team 5 callously compares the riot deaths to the 13 ducks scored by Sir Don Bradman in his long career and says that the ducks won’t make Sir Don a lesser batsman. How can the lives and dignity of thousands of people be even compared to something as frivolous as cricketing statistics? Have we lost our sense of balance so much that we are ready to accept a few thousand riot deaths every decade and still proclaim we are secular?

    Facts Aren’t Fiction

    Many attacking teams seem to have glossed over the references or have not looked at them at all before jumping to arbitrary conclusions about some of the assertions we made in our defense. The lack of openness to religious conversions we had cited had more to do with the attitude towards people who undergo religious conversion than about a willingness to convert themselves. Similarly, while referring to the case against the Kanchi seer, we only intended to refer to the judicial improprieties indulged in by some of the Supreme court judges when they handled that case and not about the judgements they delivered – in fact, the case is still pending. Moreover, no all-encompassing statements were about the secular nature of Indian law or its absence. Another team seems to have read very little about Periyar when it proudly proclaims him to not have been political at all. On the whole, most of the attacks display a very poor engagement with most of the facts mentioned, and even in the few which seem otherwise, the interpretations tend to be over-assuming and reductivist in nature.

    Don’t Fuss After You Miss The Bus

    In our earlier defense, we believe we have articulated two specific denominations of secularism – one as a political doctrine whose use and understanding have direct implications for those in power and the other as a social phenomenon which could cause, emerge as a result of, or exist independent of such power politics. By underlining the linkages between these two, we broadly delineated the necessities of a religion-divorced polity by citing the absence of a common civil law and its impact on Indian Muslims. Since no attacking team seems to have understood the future-looking conception of such a discourse, they conveniently chose to ignore all the implications of our narrative. The argument against the manipulative and round-robin appeasement of communities by governments should be seen in this light and should have lead to a broader discussion about the place of individual liberty within the different imaginations of secularism available. However, when all the other teams chose to ignore that, team six has hilariously reproduced a piece from one of Pratap Banu Mehta’s articles which toes the same line as us – only that they reproduced it here thinking that they were attacking us. With no significant dimensions added to the discourse by any of the other teams, we stand by our assertion that secular India will indeed be an Utopia.

    Posted on January 25th, 2010 at 3:04 pm

  9. Sravanthi Says:

    @XLent_Warriors: <> That’s a curious comparison between RACIAL discrimination in the USA and RELIGIOUS discrimination in India. Is it because, that if we compare apples with apples, and oranges with oranges, it becomes obvious that with diktats like “an untouchable should not come within 60 feet of a Brahmin”, the Americans can never even come close to the kind of racial discrimination which was prevalent in India? (and continues to be, as a matter of fact, since untouchability is not “extinct” in India and is practiced in many villages across the country).

    Not that the RELIGIOUS discrimination in India doesn’t fare as good when compared to that in the USA. There are umpteen number of examples throughout history to substantiate that.

    In general almost all teams have pointed out to the sporadic instances of pluralistic existence in Indian history ( “Akbar was stressing religious tolerance and upholding reason over blind faith when in Europe Giardano Bruno was being arrested for heresy, prior to being burnt at the stake.” etc. ). Such instances of tolerance are found through out the world and should not be taken as an indication of what the future might look like. The general trend which has existed in the recent past (development of the idea of secularism, religious harmony or the lack of it among the masses at large etc.) and the contributing factors of the present (socio-economic inequalities, political movements, radicalization etc.) are the true compass for finding the direction where the future of secularism in India is headed.

    Posted on January 26th, 2010 at 1:56 am

  10. Sravanthi Says:

    (copy paste error in the previous comment)

    @XLent_Warriors: ” 200 years after USA got independence it needed Martin Luther King Jr. to fight against racial discrimination. In contrast to this, India, with its numerous religions, does not practice discrimination based on religion. ” That’s a curious comparison between RACIAL discrimination in the USA and RELIGIOUS discrimination in India. Is it because, that if we compare apples with apples, and oranges with oranges, it becomes obvious that with diktats like “an untouchable should not come within 60 feet of a Brahmin”, the Americans can never even come close to the kind of racial discrimination which was prevalent in India? (and continues to be, as a matter of fact, since untouchability is not “extinct” in India and is practiced in many villages across the country).

    Not that the RELIGIOUS discrimination in India doesn’t fare as good when compared to that in the USA. There are umpteen number of examples throughout history to substantiate that.

    In general almost all teams have pointed out to the sporadic instances of pluralistic existence in Indian history ( “Akbar was stressing religious tolerance and upholding reason over blind faith when in Europe Giardano Bruno was being arrested for heresy, prior to being burnt at the stake.” etc. ). Such instances of tolerance are found through out the world and should not be taken as an indication of what the future might look like. The general trend which has existed in the recent past (development of the idea of secularism, religious harmony or the lack of it among the masses at large etc.) and the contributing factors of the present (socio-economic inequalities, political movements, radicalization etc.) are the true compass for finding the direction where the future of secularism in India is headed.

    Posted on January 26th, 2010 at 1:58 am

  11. Balaji Says:

    It is quite interesting that Mr. Mehta has commented here about the possibilities of alternative ways of defining secularism and talking about it. The discussion sadly hasn’t progressed much after that. The very relevance of such debates, apart from their role in identifying and encouraging talent, is to make the intelligent minds that participate in it to think beyond their normal idioms, much beyond what their cultivated language allows them to. But when you employ precipitated minds to discover truth, you end up with a forum full of intellectually dishonest people. This forum seems to be no different. Full of misplaced quotations and non-sequiturs, of what use is this going to be for anyone?

    Moderation in debates are thus essential to apply some commonly accepted premises wherever necessary. One couldn’t find the exhibition of any in any post here. One invokes Gramsci to make a point, spews the all-too-obvious and suffocating neo-liberal verbiage immediately after that and proceeds to make a bourgeoisie liberal conclusion. If we come to the table with ideology, consumed in a confused state as it seems to be, and do not discuss it at all but tom-tom a mish mash of fancy names in mediocre prose, what comes out will, in all probability, be as confusing to us as it is to others. And everyone here seems to be at ease when they change their ideological premises as the topic changes.

    Coming back to the topic, is secularism really an utopia? Yes it is, for two reasons. First, any ever-lasting solution dreamt of for a human problem will be utopian, since we are all like variables in a boundary-value problem, with a few initial conditions missing. Who can solve this all? Tomorrow is going to be different, we might even forget what secularism is or why it is important. Will it then stop to be utopian? Will it even exist to be defined, argued, dissected and developed? Will it be utopian even if it is no longer relevant? Are we taking for granted then the idea of history as a progressive continuum, with the toppling of ideas and movements, beliefs and systems – a linear narrative that can befit a super-fast human race and the insatiability of its over-curious brains? This utopia is the dream of a temporary existence, much like the ambitions of the self-destructive nation states of the past and the present, which will evaporate into thin air the moment these desperate minds find a better outlet for their collective narcissism. Some say that religion will not survive the century, if humanity manages to survive it. I am a man of no pessimism, neither for humanity nor for religion. But my living experience does make me acknowledge an active combination of the two to be potently dangerous. However, I do understand the vanity of the alternatives. Will ever a wrong question fetch a right answer? How can we substitute “How?” for “Why?” and even as we do it today, how long do we hope it to guide us? No doubt, we sit on a ramshackle worldview, something that is not taut enough for an ultra-proud species. But what do I have to exchange for an answer? Well, atleast we can exchange questions, rename our hypotheses, be a little less proud.

    Second, as Poincare once said, “No design is apparent, hence no solution is permanent”. I am tempted to think of so many other possibilities. What if religion is the savior of a dirty tomorrow? What if morality is costly some other day, when the only language that doesn’t require translation will be those of super-tankers, shell-sharks and submarines? The Moslems, the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus – everyone of their spoken words will vanish, the pain will supersede anything ever known to humanity, the mask and the cross will become heavy to carry. Till then, let us go on – with shared lies, delusions, private conspiracies and a common heaven called secularism.

    Posted on January 26th, 2010 at 7:58 pm

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