By: Shreepal Singh
Concept of secularism:
India proudly proclaims in its Constitution it is a secular country. Let us examine the substance of this Indian secularism and what it has returned back to India during the period of over half a century. Let us be honest and examine the facts first. India is a country that is home to millions of people who are devoutly religious by nature. These people profess different religions – Hindus, Muslims, Shikhs, Christians, Parsees and many more. Almost all religions of the world and their vast number of sects and sub-sects find a place for their profession in this country. Out of all these religions, Hindus account the most – they are more than 80% of the population. These Hindus here engage their whole life dedicated to achieve the fruits that are declared by their religion to be the highest desirable thing in this world, which they call ‘Mukti’ or emancipation from the bond of life, death and rebirth – again and again. Then, there are millions of Muslims living in India whose whole life is entirely devoted to fulfill the mandates of their Holy book ‘Koran’. There are likewise a great multitude of people in India who are Christians and they are completely devoted to accomplish the mandates of their Holy book ‘Bible’. There are also considerable number of Sikhs, Jain, Parsi and similar other religious groups of people in India who are devoutly religious by temperament. For all these highly religious people this world and this world’s institutions – whether these institutions are political or social in nature – are only secondary in importance to their religious objectives.
But the paradox of the situation is that these very people are not only the electorate in India who elect their government and form a state – Indian State – but they are also to man this elected government and become its organic body – the part and parcel of the government, that is, they themselves become the government of this country. These people have their varying religious allegiance and are mandated by their particular religions to carry forward – in their private and public life – their religious objectives, which objectives are mostly clashing in nature with each other. – religious their religious mandates in their private and public life. While electing their government or becoming part of the State, these people deeply submerged in their clashing religious fervor do not – and cannot – divorce with their personal allegiance to their religion. In fact, they advance the agenda of their particular religion. It is but natural. It cannot be otherwise. It is human nature to advance the cause of a thing to the best of one’s capacity that one thinks to be the most desirable thing. This paradox becomes accentuated when one finds that historically there is an incompatibility between segments of these highly religious people in India and it becomes ironic when these people with diverse religious missions are called upon to elect and run their government in the secular way.
What is a religion? Materialist philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx famously defined religion as the opium of people. He is wrong; it is not so. Humans are not animals because they have evolved then above animals. Humans are motivated in their daily activities by their basic physical necessities for survival, like food, shelter, cloths and amenities. But in these activities, humans are guided by their emotions, like love and hate, and their mental thoughts and ideas. These mental thoughts and ideas make humans separate from animals. Religion – everyone of them – is a bundle of peculiar ideas, with which most part of the humanity is afflicted. Religion divides people and puts them into separate groups. Religion is a reality among humans, to which animals are immune because they are still animals. In a way, religion is an indicator of human evolution. But it splits them; it divides them. These divisions are real and all religious groups are bound together with their common interests. Most often, these groups are so vast that they overlap the whole population of a country. Religious ideas grip the mind of people, put them into separate classes and array them against each other. It is the reality of human society.
What is secularism? The essence of secularism is, ‘State has no institutional connection with religion; State is independent of religion’. It is defined by the Oxford dictionary as the principle of separation of the state from religious institutions. The origin of this principle lies in the Christian history. The invention of this principle has been done in the context of Christianity and, apart from this religious connection, it has no connection whatsoever with any of the major religions of the world like Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism.
The fact is that secularism is the invention of western Christian democracies. It originated in England of the sixteenth century. It was invented there to get out of the peculiar difficulty that was faced by the rationally awakened and mentally enlightened common masses of England. This difficulty arose out of an intrinsic clash of thoughts between the Christian religious dogmas, which had behind them the power of State controlled by the Christian religious authorities, and the new scientific ideas, which were being discovered then by the enlightened scientists. The Christian religious dogmas and the newly discovered scientific ideas were incompatible. Only one out of these two could be accepted as the correct one. But there was the State power behind the Christian religious dogmatic ideas and this power was legally duty-bound to punish the new incompatible scientific ideas. It was a horrific situation for all those mentally awakened and enlightened people who dared to put new scientific ideas in the public domain. But the Christian religious dogmas pricked the mind and common sense of the rationally awakened people of England. What was this incompatibility of ideas between the two?
Secularism and Christianity:
The seventeenth century England was witnessing a renaissance of mind. It was making new scientific discoveries, which were showing the utter falsity of the views held by Christian religious Cardinals and imposed on the people with the might of Christian state power. For example, a new scientific discovery was made by Galileo that our Sun is the center – the point – around which our Earth revolves and, therefore, it is false to claim that our Earth is the center around which Sun and this universe revolves. And, he also demonstrated the truth of this statement with the help of his newly invented telescope. This discovery was creating a profound impact on the mind of common people. But this scientific statement just went against the established dogma of Christian holy book – Bible – which stated that Earth is the center of universe and Sun and everything else revolves around Earth. This clash of views about so fundamental a thing was not only pricking people’s reason and common sense but also it was eroding the faith of common people in the Christian religion. It was a very dangerous thing for people to openly believe in this new idea because the Christian State had a power over their life and they could well be punished for this heretic blasphemy. They had a heart to believe this scientific discoveries but they could not do so without risking their life. They saw with their own eyes Galileo had to pay a heavy price for telling a truth that went against the dictates of Christian religious State. For telling this truth Galileo was blinded by the State. It was his crime of blasphemy.
What was the way to get out of this horrific situation? It was sought to be solved by inventing the principle of separation of the state from religious institutions. It was the invention of secularism. Secularism owes its genesis to these peculiar difficult political conditions prevailing in the seventeenth century England. It is a reasonable solution that was invented by the enlightened political thinkers and endorsed by the power of the popular will. It was proposed to the Christian State and the State was forced to accept it. It is so obvious even to an average mind that secularism was invented just to come out of the difficulty that was posed to the newly emerging scientific ideas by the Christian State.
The concept of secularism is historically confined to the countries where the majority of people follow the Christian religion. It is totally absent in the Islamic world. Islamic world since its origin in Arab in 628 AD did neither believe in this principle of the separation of state from the religious institutions nor did they follow this principle anywhere in the world where Islam ruled a country. Why is it so? The reason is that Islam did not experience – either in seventh or sixteenth century or even in twenty first century – the kind of mental awakening that evokes natural scientific queries and produces discoveries. In fact, it restricts and punishes such queries that go against its religious dogmas. It prohibits such questioning and punishes them under blasphemy. It has no space for common people to freeky express their mind and common sense. Why Islam is unable to follow secularism? It is because while Christianity had abolished the religious law of blasphemy long ago, Islam has not been able to do so even in the twenty first century, when the non-Muslim global community is fast running on the pathway of scientific discoveries. The Muslim world seems to be now trying to walk on that path of common sense, reason and mental enlightenment but it is very late.
Secularism and Indian faiths:
India had historical conditions that were totally different from conditions of England. Even in 326 BC when Alexander the great invaded India, he found that in India Hindu Yogis and Buddhist Shramans were living in austerity in meadows near a river. They were living naked but were revered by the king and the common people alike. They did not hold any political authority over the king of Taxila kingdom. Thereafter we find, a Yavan (Greek) king named Maharajadhiraj Milind (Greek name Minendra) who was ruling from Mathura (in India) to Bactria (in modern day Iran). This Bactria was conquered by Alexander and on his death was inherited by his successor that king Milind who was otherwise bound in friendship with India under a treaty concluded between Chandragupt Maurya and Seleucus Nikator. (His coins have been found in India, on one side of which is written in Sanskrit ‘Maharajadhiraj Milind and on the other side in Greek ‘Maharajadhiraj Minandrau)’. That king came with a royal retinue of soldiers to an Indian Buddhist Yogi Nagasena to learn from him the teachings of Buddha. Here too, we find that the political power of State did not vest in the religious authorities.
It was for the first time in India that the emperor Asoka the great declared Buddhism a State religion and the State power vested in a religion. Still, he too, in accordance with Buddhist tenets, did not outlaw religious dissent or punish those who held a contrary religious or secular views. Far from such persecution of the opponents, he forbade the killing of any human and even of animals. The Buddhist religion when it was vested in the State did not forbid any person to believe in a religion or ideas that were opposite to Buddhism. In India this relation of state with religion passed through ages and continued till the times of King Harshvardhan, who ruled Kannauj in 628 AD. We find that in India there was never a clash of religious dogmas or beliefs with any new ideas and free thinking of dissenting philosophies (of both religious and secular nature), whether the State power vested in religious institutions or not.
For Buddhism, Hinduism and all other religions having their roots in Hinduism (called Indic faiths), secularism was an alien concept. None of these religions had the history of clash between their established religious dogmas and newly emerging ideas that were articulated by lesser mortals and challenged the established dogmas. On the contrary, India had a history where the State power – ruling kings and monarchs – sponsored and encouraged open debates between the rival claims to truth. The intellectual contest between Adi Shankaracharya and Mandan Mishra is well known in Indian history. The visit of king Milind (Manendra) to Nagasena, the Buddhist master, to learn knowledge at his feet is also well known to us. Huen Tsiang – the Chinese traveler to India – wrote in 628 AD that there is a tradition in India of holding of intellectual debates between renowned but rival men of knowledge; that such intellectual contests were patronized by kings and society alike; and that the one who was defeated in the contest leaves the company of society in ignominy and departs to live in forests away from human presence. With such a historical background, there was no scope in India for the germination of an idea of the separation of religion from the State authority. India historically had nothing to do with the concept of secularism. Thus, India had a different reason why – despite having a long and rich civilization and a fertile imagination – it did not have an inkling of the idea of secularism or why this idea did not have any utility for India.
Secularism and Islam:
With the invasion of Islam on India under Mohammad bin Kasim in 629, for the first time a very strange situation arose in India. The Islamic State power integrated with that religion and it disallowed any kind of dissent. Even an attempted dissent was labeled as blasphemy and blasphemy was declared a crime. It was a law, which was punishable by the State. The Indian history of medieval period of Islamic rule is saturated with the blood of people who followed Hinduism, Buddhism and many other non-Islamic religions. These people were declared as living in dark ages (Jahilya), converted under the threat of murder, killed mercilessly and their women, children sex-enslaved (Gilmas) and their property looted (Mal-e-Ganimat) if they refused to convert. If these non-Muslims were found to be of some utility to Islam (like slave labour), a heretic tax (Zazia) was imposed on them. Books of knowledge and libraries were burnt. There is an interesting episode at the time of burning of the Nalanda university library by the Muslim religious zealot Khilji. This Muslim king justified the burning of the library by saying, “If these books in library say what Koran has said, they are superfluous and deserve to be burnt. If they say against Koran, they are dangerous and deserve to be burnt. They say either what Koran has said or against Koran. In both cases, they need to be destroyed.”
This pathetic condition of the intolerance of old Hindu religious ideas by the Islamic State, which State was inseparable part of the Islamic religion, continued till the British in 1858 AD took over the State power from the Indian Islamic ruler, Bahadur Shah Jafar. With the British in command, the relation of State in India with religion(s) followed their peculiar imperialist strategy, of which legacy the free India’s secularism is still following without putting any thought into it. The British imperialist policy in dealing with Muslims and Hindus both was, “We are Christians. You are Hindus; and you are Muslims. Each one of you are free to do what your respective religion mandates for you; but we are the State and as such have the power to arbitrate in disputes between both of you”. During the Indian freedom struggle, for the sake of Hindu-Muslim unity against the British imperialism, it was propagated by the Indian political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru that the imperialists adopted a policy to “divide Hindus and Muslims and rule over them”. This statement was factually wrong. Hindus and Muslims were already divided when the British came to India. This painful fact is testified by the occurrence of Hindu-Muslim riots in united India on almost regular basis from 1858 to 1947. What the British imperialists did was only to utilize this communal chasm between them to their advantage. They nurtured this divide further by taking sides, when it suited them. By this strategy they sided with the weak and vanquished the strong. It was only because of this strategy that they were able to rule this country despite having a very small contingent of English military force at their disposal in India.
This situation continued till 1947 when India was partitioned on religious lines into two countries – one part called Pakistan for Muslims, where they were free to lead their life according to Islam; and another remaining part of the once united India for Hindus, where were free to lead their life according to Hinduism. The British rulers made both of them free and choose their path and future. The first part – Pakistan – chose Islam, which was well in accord with the Islamic philosophy as advocated by its its founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The founding philosophy of Pakistan was sung by the famed poet Mohd. Iqbal and had the mindset of the bygone era of Mohd. bin Kasim. In fact, Pakistan was the fulfillment of what Muslims had sought to achieve in united India but could not achieve. Once they got their feet put on the ground of their own country – Pakistan – they engaged with their unfinished Islamic religious agenda of destroying Hindu-India with more vigor. For Muslims of Pakistan, from the day one India was a Hindu-India. This is the reason why the left-over part of this new India – or supposedly Hindu-India – did not see a moment of peace from the day Pakistan was created and this India is not likely to have that peace any day soon.
Secularism in India:
Now, what did the remaining part of this once united India do in choosing its path and future? The first thing it did was to declare in its Constitution that India is not a not a Hindu country; that it equally belongs to Muslims; that India will be a secular country; that Hindus and Muslims (and all other religions) will have right to carry forward the mandate of their respective religions. The great leaders of free India who drafted the Indian Constitution did not realize the serious dangers inherent in such constitutional approach. The first error of judgment they committed was not to realize that if it was possible for Muslims to carry forward their religious mandate in the united India, there was no need for them to demand and create their own country separate from Hindus. The second error they committed was to assume that all those Muslims who were religiously bigots and wanted to live in their own country according to Islamic religion had migrated to Pakistan and that other Muslims who chose to live in free India would not be so religious bigots as to once again demand second Pakistan. Generations of people succeed generations. There is no justification to suppose that once a generation of Muslims had demanded the creation of Pakistan out of India, another succeeding generations of Indian Muslims would not so demand again. It is so because nothing has changed since 1947 in India on the religious front. It is the same religion that had demanded Pakistan before 1947. The popularity of Muslims sectarian organizations (like Indian Muslim League and similar other political organizations) among Indian Muslims is the proof that these Indian Muslims still harbour the sentiments of their forefathers who had demanded the creation of Pakistan.
Suppose for a moment, there is no substantial presence of the followers of Islam and Christianity in India? What would be the fate of secularism in India? In that case secularism would be a redundant and irrelevant thing in India. It is so because there would be no occasion in India for the suppression of the new ideas and thoughts by Hindus on the ground that those ideas were against Hindu religion. Then, there would be no need to separate the State power from the Hindu religious institutions. As there would be no religious institutions antagonistic to Hinduism, there would also be no need to separate the State from Hindu religious institutions. Because of the nature of tolerance of Hindu religion, there would be no need in India of secularism. But this situation is only a supposition because in India there is a substantial number of people who follow Islam and Christianity. These people are governed by Islamic and Christian religious teachings, which teachings are intolerant in their thinking and predatory in their conduct.
India is the home of vast number of those people who follow various branches of Indic faiths, like Hinduism (or Vedic religion), Jainism, Shikhism etc. This India did not have secularism – as a political principle -governing its State authority, until it was incorporated in its constitution. It was incorporated in it for the first time after its liberation from the British colonial power. The adoption of the idea of secularism in independent India was an ill-fitting constitutional device. This idea is strange in the Indian context. In the Indian conditions it is a poison for its social fabric. It disturbs its peace and destroys its communal harmony. Its strangeness lies in the fact that among the overwhelming majority of Indian people who follow Hinduism and allied Indic faiths, there are no religious dogmas that challenge the religious views of those that are antagonistic to these Indic faiths. Neither do these Indian people following Indic faiths seek to convert or persecute those who happen to hold religious views contrary to their own. Historically these Hindus never took an offence against any foreign views or any ideas discovered by science, even if they seem to go against their own religious views.
Secularism wounded India:
Secularism is a poison for Indian social fabric because in India there are a substantial number of people who follow predatory religions, like Islam and Christianity. These people believe in religious dogmas that clash not only with common sense and reason but they also prey upon Hindus. They believe in religious dogmas that command them – direct them as their religious duty – to convert Hindus to their own religion(s), and even to kill them if they fail to so convert them. It is a reality. It is a dangerous reality. It has become a face saving device for the enlightened class to hide themselves behind the smoke screen of political correctness. But no amount of lies can hide this truth. No strategy to camouflage this truth can succeed today in this internet age. Secularism was invented in England to keep the Christian religion’s State authority at bay to ensure the safe space for the newly discovered scientific truths, which context is absent in Hindu India.
The inner and outer structure of Islam and Christianity is such that they cannot survive without preying upon other religions that are incompatible with them. They devour them and assimilate their body within their own self. The build of their thinking and their organization is solely directed at killing all those who are foreign to them. They feed on their corpse. These two religions cannot coexist with other religions. Indic faiths are such that they can live in harmony with all other religions. Indian secularism creates an environment in polity where it is not only made possible for these two religions to infect the State with their poisonous virus but also this process is made easy and smooth. In Indian secularism they are guaranteed a freedom to carry on their preying and devouring activities. In India this secularism, instead of fulfilling its historical aim of isolating the State from the short-sighted religious institutions and shielding it against their unwanted interference, infests the State with the virus of these predatory religions and, thus, serves the cause of an indirect take-over of the State by them. The secularism of India is a sick secularism.
It has been devastating in its impact. While secularism in the western democracies has played a positive role – a soothing down effect on the frayed nerves of antagonistic forces of state and religion, in Indian democracy it has played a negative role. Secularism has generated in India an antagonism among people following the religions of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. The net result of secularism in India has been that these religions have been left free to do – practice and propagate – what they (these religions) believe in and in this freedom to pursue their teachings have been protected by the state against any objection or restraint. All these religions have been guaranteed a fundamental right to practice and propagate what they believe in. In exercise of this fundamental right these religions have been shielded by the power of state – judicial courts, executive forces of police and military and legislation by Parliament – against any encroachment or challenge. Because of this device of secularism, in India a serious socio-political anomaly – a strange situation – has been present from the day when Indian constitution was promulgated. For an example, just see this strange situation wherein the religious right of Islam to practice and propagate the Koranic mandate of converting or killing the Kafirs as defined by this holy book has been shielded by the state power against any challenge. On the one hand, killing of human being by a human being is forbidden by a law – made by Indian Parliament – and penalized as a crime of murder, on the other hand the right to practice and propagate the religious mandate of killing of a Kafir (a human being, by whatever definition) is protected by the state power. One can easily say it is not so mandated by this holy book but when raising a fundamental issue like the implication of secularism in India one cannot hide the truth what this holy book teaches.
This is one example. There are many kinds of anomaly created by secularism in India. Hinduism – or Buddhism – does not practice and propagate conversion but Islam and Christianity both practice and propagate conversion. In fact, the entire efforts of these two religions are focused on conversion, leaving aside for the time being the issue of employing by them of unfair means like deception, luring, threat and violence for conversion. Religious conversion is the mandate of their holy books and their this right to convert is guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and protected by the power of Indian state. It is so because the Indian State is mandated by the Constitution to be secular. The State in India has nothing to do with religion and leaves religions free to carry on their religious mission of conversion. This is Indian version of secularism. In the face of this situation where Hindus or Buddhists are not inclined to convert others and Muslims and Christians doing everything to so convert, this secularism is a confirmed death warrant of the religion of Hindus in India. This death warrant of Hinduism in India has been imposed on Hindus none other but by themselves. They have voluntarily invited this calamity to their religion by thoughtlessly adopting a sick secularism where they still constitute 80% of the country’s population and rule India by the democratic principle of majority. Certainly Hindus in India are slowly walking towards their extinction because of this secularism. It may look strange but the fact is that Hindus in India do not need any fundamental right to practice and propagate their religion but a fundamental right of protection against their religious conversion by the followers of Christian religion and their religious conversion and killing by the followers of Islamic religion. It is their human right to be so protected. They need the constitutional protection of their religious identity against these two predatory religions. Grant of such a protection to Hindus in India is their right and the true meaning of secularism.