Secularism in India

In present day India, the concept of secularism always occurs in our minds along with its corollary, communalism.

In 1976, the 42^nd amendment of the preamble of the constitution included the term secular to describe the Indian State. Thus, India today is a “sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, republic.”

Indian constitution is framed with extreme clarity of its objectives. Indian being a secular state, according to the constitution, it has to observe an attitude of neutrality and impartiality towards all religions. This concept of a Secular State is founded on the idea that the state is concerned only with relations between man and man and not between man and God. The latter relation is a matter of individual conscience.

It should be pointed out that “secular” is a dubious term, capable of diverse meanings. One of its dictionary meanings is “concerned with affairs of the world” as opposed to religious affairs. This has caused much confusion in the study of political science and law advantage of this issue. This chaos was laid to rest by the Supreme Court of India when it stated that “secularism, in India, does not mean that the State should be hostile to religion, but that it should be neutral between the different religions and neutrality of the State would be violated if religion is used for political purposes, as it offends secular democracy.”

Thus, all religions can decide about what rituals and rites are essential to them. However, the court has the right to determine whether a particular right or practice offend public health or morality or contravenes any law of social, economic or political regulations. The constitution hence says that the country upholds no religion as State religion. In addition, every person is guaranteed the freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess, practice and propagates his/her religion.

Unfortunately, some religious leaders have many times, misinterpreted the above law and they have made assertions that the word “propagate” gives them fundamental rights to convert people, by any means. In fact in 1977, a Christian Priest had filed a suit against the Madhya Pradesh Act. This Act made it a penal offence to convert or attempt to convert a person ‘by means of force fraud or allurement.’ The very people whose ire was aroused by it are now using this same method.

Salman Rushdie rightly said, “Secularism in India, is not just a point of view, it is a question of survival”. This statement is true, as we know that India cannot afford to become a Hindu State and thus be repulsed by the majority of the world, which is Christian and Islamic. The 1984 genocide of Sikh community, the communal riots of Mumbai and extremely planned violence in Gujarat, in the post-Godhra period are all incidents that clearly show that India cannot have a State religion. It also brings to light the fact that there are some critical errors in our judiciary and political system.

The Constitution is contradictory in its ways of keeping politics and religion away from each other. In the preamble, India is declared a secular country. Later in the same constitution, it gives reservations to people on basis of casteism, a product of religion. The solution to this may lie in making it binding on all educational institutions to provide reservation based on economic status of the people. Politics today’s is based on religion-based vote banks. Analysts openly discuss the allegiance of so and so community to such and such party.

It will be a case of over-simplification to say that India is in revivalist mode. The ideology that draws masses to the saffron brigade has its origin in the fact that modernity was introduced in India under the colonial auspices. Thus, we have (i.e. the revivalist) come to associate modernity with colonialism. Hence, to regain and maintain our identity we find it necessary to thwart modernity. We have repeatedly felt the need to bear all external signs of our ‘Indianness’ as proof of the fact to the world.

The brand of Hinduism preached by the Saffron Brigade sees only Hindus as essentially Indians. However, their concept of Hinduism also seems to have evolved from the times of Marathas and not from Vedas.

Although, the number of believers may be few, and people like me who wish to be comfortable with their father’s name are a majority though our vocal chords lack strength. Our rebellion to this New Age Hindutva, shows action only in mere sad nodding of our heads and heated intellectual debates. The question that is forced upon us today is, ‘Does being more tolerant, make me less Indian?’ Secularism has been, for a long time now, associated with soft shoulders and warm hearts. Secularism now has to become hard nosed. The need of hour is to insist that law applies to everybody equally. Faith cannot be allowed to undermine the constitution, nor should bigness of heart substitute for letter of law.

India is highly complex organism of many centuries, many languages, many regions, many races, many movements and migrations, the ups and downs of history, the shifts in geography, the rise and fall of governments – complications and contradictions arising from all possible kinds of interactions between the dimensions of space and time. The past has to be perpetually discovered, the present has to be constantly investigated and the future is a receding mirage, never yielding to our optimistic prognostications. We are indeed passing through turbulent times because it is not clear to us what the moorings of our culture are, even what kind of India we want to build.