BY ROMILA
THAPAR ON 18/10/2015
• LEAVE
A COMMENT
In speaking about Indian society and the secular, let me say at the
outset, that secularism goes beyond just politics, although our
political parties have attempted to reduce it to a political
slogan. So one party endorses it in theory but hesitates to apply
it properly in practice, the other makes fun of it since the
party’s foundational ideology is anti-secular. Supporting
secularism or dismissing it, is not just a political slogan. It is
deeply tied to the question of the kind of society that we want.
This is perhaps why it was widely discussed in the early years of
independence whereas now attempts are being made to scuttle it.
Questioning the secular would mean seriously changing the direction
that we have intended to give to Indian society. If secularism is
removed from the constitution then democracy becomes a victim, with
an unthinkable future.
If however we want a secular society, then we would have to
stop identifying ourselves primarily by religion, caste or
language, and start thinking of ourselves primarily as equal
citizens of one nation, both in theory and in practice. This
involves mutual obligations between the state and the citizens and
between citizens, not just in theory as of now but in actuality.
The relationship of other identities such as religion, caste,
language and region will inevitably become secondary. These latter
have to be adjusted so as to ensure that rights of citizenship
together with what they entail remain primary. Eventually the state
will not be expected to support any religious organisation, even
those it is currently supporting.
I would like to begin by trying to explain what I mean by the terms
secular, secularism and secularising. Secular is that which relates
to the world and is distinct from the religious. Secularism
involves questioning the control that religious organisations have
over social institutions. This is sought to be justified by arguing
that it ensures morality. But the morality fundamental to
secularism goes beyond any single religion and extends to the
functioning of the entire society. Secularism does not deny the
presence of religion in society, but demarcates the social
institutions over which religion can or cannot exercise control.
This distinction is fundamental. And finally, secularising is the
process by which society changes and recognises the
distinction.
What secularism is and is not
When the term was first used in 1851, secular had only one basic
meaning. It described laws relating to morals and social values as
having been created by human society in order to ensure the
well-being and harmonious functioning of the society. These laws
were neither the creation of divine authority nor did they require
the sanction of divine authority. Authority lay in working out –
through reasoning and sensitivity – what was best for society in
keeping with generally accepted values of tolerance and social
responsibility, by those who constituted that society. Authority
was exercised through laws. Social values therefore grew out of
rational thinking, debate and discussion. This was needed to
establish a moral code agreed to by the entire society and was not
linked to any particular religion, caste or class.
What this means is that the laws and social values that govern the
society should be observed as laws in themselves and not because
they carry any divine sanctions. They have their own authority
distinct from religion or caste or whatever. Religion involving
belief and faith in a deity and in an afterlife continued to exist.
However, the civil laws were sanctioned and upheld by secular
authority and did not require the sanction of any religion.
Secularism therefore is not what it is sometimes said to be –
a denial of religion – but a curtailment of the control that
religious organisations have over social functioning. And I would
underline this definition repeatedly.
This theory after it came to be widely discussed had various
consequences. One was that it allowed people the freedom to think
beyond what was told to them as being religiously correct. Again
this did not mean throwing religion overboard but disentangling the
codes of social behavior from religious control. This did not make
people immoral as some had feared at that time, since the threat of
punishment for breaking laws was enforced, and punishment came
immediately in this life. It was not postponed to the next life as
in most religious codes. So it made people think about the purpose
of their laws and such thinking is always extremely useful. The
observance of the law is strengthened when people understand its
purpose.
Having to reason things out meant that people had to learn to think
independently. The thinking came from their education. Here too the
explanation of everything being part of a divine plan and requiring
divine sanction was not always the answer to simple questions.
Therefore, education began to involve searching for explanations
other than those based on faith and religion, or possibly even
honing these explanations if there was evidence to do so. But
preferably, social laws began to be drawn from rational enquiry
into both the natural and the human world in which we live.
Occasionally there might even have been a small leap of imagination
ultimately to be explained by reason. So the explanations for the
laws and a discussion of these, became an essential part of
education, and of thinking about the implications of being
secularised.
Religion had originated as a personal emotional need. This was then
extended to explanations of how one experienced life and beyond
that how the universe functioned. This was all attributed to a
supernatural power who was held in awe. Gradually however, this
personalised religion became a complex organised religion and took
the form of institutions ambitious to control society and politics.
With this change, religion became powerful both as the focus of
belief and as an authority controlling social institutions through
various religious organisations. In some places, its power
paralleled that of the governing authority – the state. It is this
particular aspect of religion – the control that religious
organisations have over social institutions – that the secular
person wishes to keep separate from the state. The distinction is
important because we often overlook it, in saying that secularism
denies religion altogether.
Secularism then takes on an additional meaning. The state having
authority over the making and observing of laws by human agencies
should be distinct from religion since religion has its sanction
from faith and from deity. The authority of each was clearly
different.
Social laws are the spine of a society. They should protect the
right to live and they should ensure that there should be no
discrimination that affects life and work. This is crucial to
protecting the points of change in the human lifecycle for which
laws are necessary, such as registering birth, marriage, or even
divorce, processes of education by which a child is socialised into
society, occupation and employment, and inheritance, generally of
property. Actions linked to these come under the jurisdiction of
civil law. To make this link effective, social laws have
necessarily to provide the basic aspects of welfare in a modern
state – the absolute minimum of which are equal access to education
and to health care for all members of society, and to employment,
and this is to be irrespective of religion and caste. If civil laws
are to be universal and uniform as they would be ultimately in a
secular society, then we must guarantee this endorsement by the
state. Discrimination on any count would be completely
unacceptable.
So religious authority continues in a secular system but is
limited. It extends only to governing religious belief and
practice. It has been argued that there should be no rigid barrier
between religion and the state, but there can be a negotiated,
principled distance between them. This can allow for new alignments
within the religion or between religions or between religion and
the state. The overall relationship would disallow the dominance of
any single religion since each would have equal rights on the state
and the state on them and equal status before the law.
Nevertheless, there is a degree of stipulated separation in this
arrangement in as much as religious authority would no longer be
controlling social laws.
‘Indian’ secularism
This is not of course the same as what is sometimes described as
the Indian definition of secularism, namely the coexistence of all
religions. Mere coexistence is insufficient as religions can still
be treated as unequal and some be marginalised, as they often are.
The acceptance of coexistence together with equal status before the
law can certainly be a first step. But we do have to ask how far
does this go and what should be the next step.
This definition based on the coexistence of religions is incomplete
in many ways since the question of the jurisdiction of religious
authority remains unanswered. The intention would in any case be
not to put up barriers between state and religion. It would be to
demarcate the activities that come under a civil jurisdiction and
those that would continue to be controlled by the organisations
representing religious authority. In a democratic system the
equality would be essential – as essential as spelling out who
controls which laws. In contemporary India, the coexistence of
religions exists but their equality has yet to be established. The
secular is less evident and some might even say that it is
virtually absent. Political and state patronage does not invariably
distance itself from religious organisations. In fact, it is
sometimes closely tied together as we know.
Some oppose secularism by arguing that it is a western concept not
suited to India. Should the same be said about nationhood and
democracy, both new to post independence India? And surely our
internalising the new liberal market economy is a far stronger
imprint of the west. To support the secularising of society does
not mean subordinating ourselves to a western concept but rather
trying to understand a process of change in our contemporary
history. Being a nation-state is a new experience of modern times
and is current now in every part of the world. We have chosen
democracy as the most feasible system despite its being new to us.
I would argue, that a secular society is essential to democratic
functioning.
Let me turn now to the specifically Indian aspect of the subject
and comment on how I see religion and society in the past in order
to compare it with how it is viewed in our times. My argument is
that colonialism introduced a major disjuncture in how we perceive
ourselves and that we have accepted this without much question. Any
deliberate social change with sizeable consequence becomes a little
easier to handle if one can see the earlier historical forms of the
society and its gradual mutation. The present, after all, does
emerge out of the past. In the important area of the relationship
between society and religion, we have been nurtured on ideas about
how religion functioned in India. These ideas came from colonial
views of Indian religion that we have internalised without
adequately questioning them. So a brief look at these might be
useful.
Colonial view of religion
Colonial perceptions were based on the European experience of
religion in the context of European society. With reference to
Europe, secularism is often described as the separation between
Church and State. This is taken as a one-to-one relationship
because generally the religion was a single monolithic religion.
This was so strongly asserted that in past times those that
questioned Catholic belief and practice in Europe were heavily
punished as heretics. Some were burnt, some had to recant as did
Galileo and many faced the punitive actions of the Inquisition.
Although Protestantism later was more flexible, the earlier
experience was not forgotten.
This was the perspective of religion that was familiar to the
colonisers. Their reading of Indian religion was through this
perspective. Recent writing on Indian religion and society suggests
that this was a defective view and therefore needs reinvestigation.
The colonial image of Indian society projected two nations – the
Hindu and the Muslim – defined by monolithic religious identities
and inherently hostile to each other. And because of their mutual
hostility, a controlling authority from outside was required. This
became one justification for colonial rule. As many historians have
pointed out, this image was then imprinted on the history of India
– especially on the medieval period – thus enforcing a distancing
between the two religions.
The concept of majority and minority communities identified by
religion was also introduced by colonial policy. This further
consolidated the idea of monolithic religions and these in turn
fueled communal politics. Permanent majority and minority
communities are of course contrary to the norms of democracy. A
democratic majority is formed on each occasion when a large number
of people come together in support of a particular opinion. The
number has to be larger than of any other group, and those that
join it are not restricted to membership of any previous affiliated
organisation. Forming a majority, therefore, is not based on any
pre-existing religious, caste or linguistic identities. The
constituents of the majority change with each issue. There are no
permanent members of majority or minority communities.
Anti-colonial nationalism tried to confront this image since broad
based nationalism has to be inclusive, has to induct a range of
opinion, and has also to draw on a shared history. The shared
history is crucial. I would also like to quote Eric Hobsbawm who
wrote that history plays the same role in nationalisms as does the
poppy in the life of opium addicts. It is the source. It feeds
ideas of identity. Anti-colonial nationalism did not question the
monolithic nature of religious communities. It focused on denying
their antagonism and projecting their coexistence. This became
central to its idea of secularism. But this did not fully succeed.
One reason was that the colonial view of religion in India was, and
it still is, also foundational to the ideologies of what are now
referred to as religious nationalisms, Hindu and Muslim, that went
into the making of the communal landscape of India. In other words,
anti-colonial nationalism and both the religious nationalisms build
on the colonial construction of Indian religion, though the first
borrows much less so whereas the second make it foundational to
their ideologies. A century or so ago, the organisations
propagating religious nationalisms were the Muslim League and the
Hindu Mahasabha. These were not religious orthodoxies but rather
ideologies using religion for political mobilisation. Today,
religious nationalisms include a range of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and
other religious organisations, politically ambitious and anxious to
continue their control over community laws to ensure a political
constituency. History in religious nationalisms is not shared, it
is divisive and it becomes the arena of battle. The struggle over
history text-books, therefore, is the attempt to ensure the
projection of a history slanted towards one religion and a denial
of a shared history.
We may well ask was this actually the way in which religion
functioned in relation to Indian society from early times? Have we
looked analytically at our past? Have we examined the role of
religious organisations from that past? What form did these
organisations take, how did they exert authority and which sections
of society supported which organisation ?
The place of religion in Indian history
I would argue that the historical picture of religions in India was
complex. It was not just a simple binary of Hindu and Muslim,
because religious groups took the form of an array of sects, and
not of a large monolithic community. I see it in terms of two sets
of relationships, each required for investigating the link between
religion and society. The first was the interaction of sect with a
close social linkage through caste connections, present in every
segment of Indian society. The second was the mediation with and
through political authority that then became a three-way process
involving sect, caste and the state. There was no church to bring
together the sects into a single entity. In other words, I’m
arguing for a much more decentralised way of looking at
religion.
In the Indian past, the crucial relationship lay in the connection
between multiple religious sects and many castes. The sect
propagated belief, the caste often determined its social context.
Status was measured through an interdependence of the two. Upper
castes across religion – whether they observed caste restrictions
strictly or not – tended to be more closely associated with the
text-based formal manifestations of the religion, whereas the lower
castes, perhaps being less text-based, were far more flexible.
Caste determined the social code, maintained formally by those who
claimed to be educated and knew the law. For most people, however,
it was the hearsay of tradition. The authority of caste and sect
over the social code has now to be replaced by civil law applicable
to all. This will require looking afresh at the civil law claimed
by all religions to ensure its secularity and its endorsement of
social justice. Both secularity and social justice are familiar as
values but their application in social institutions is new.
Many valuable and meticulous studies have been made of religious
texts that have enhanced our understanding of them. However, less
attention has been given to examining the institutions created by
various religions both to propagate their beliefs and as agencies
of social control. Rather than focusing on monolithic
undifferentiated religious society in general, what may be more
insightful is if we study the link between caste and sect in order
to comprehend more precisely the interface between religion and
society in our past. The link between caste and sect had a
flexibility, even a fluidity that monolithic religions lack. We
could then ask whether the rigidity lay less in religion and more
in caste discrimination. In that case, the colonial construction of
religion in India, so readily accepted by us, would need to be
examined again. Perhaps we need to look more carefully at how caste
in past times and now class in its turn, has shaped and is shaping
the relations between religion and society. Which groups in society
support which politico-religious organisations and why.
In pre-Islamic times, there are no references to any monolithic
type of Hinduism. Interestingly, what we today use as labels for
religion, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, are not mentioned as such.
Instead, there is reference to two broad categories of sects that
propagated their distinctive ideas. These were the Brahmana and the
Shramana. The basic differentiation was based on belief in or
denial of, divinity, and the theories of the afterlife. Brahmana
referred to brahmanic beliefs and rituals, Shramana referred to
the shramanasor Buddhist, Jaina, and
other monks of so called heterodox orders,
the nastika/non-believers, and their
followers. The latter rejected
the Vedas, divine sanctions and the
concept of the soul. They were consequently associated with more
rational explanations of both the universe and human life. Within
each of the two, distinct sects with various beliefs were
recognised.
Neither of these were monolithic groups. They were a collection of
diverse sects. This duality of Brahmana and Shramana continues to
be used in a variety of texts with reference to what we would today
call religions, and over a period of 1500 years from the edicts of
Ashoka, to the accounts of Megasthenes, the Chinese Buddhist
pilgrims, and Al- Biruni in the 11th century AD. References
are made in Brahmanical texts such as
theVishnu Purana, and in
Buddhist texts, to occasional hostilities between the two.
Interestingly, they use the same abusive terms for each other. The
grammarian Patanjali of the early centuries AD, refers to the two
and adds that their relationship was comparable to that of the
snake and the mongoose.
A third category that is not mentioned was that of those
who were discriminated against because of their caste or lack
of it. Because of this, they had their own belief systems and forms
of worship. This was the category that was intrinsic to caste. The
equivalent of what we call the Dalit today is found in every
religion under different names, such
as,pasmanda, mazhabi, etc;. The
Dalit is present even among those religious sects that claim that
all men are equal in the eyes of God. Technically all Dalits,
irrespective of religion, should have the same rights but this is
not generally conceded.
The importance of sects
Among the multiple sects that were emerging over time, some adhered
to the orthodox and others were supporters of the heterodox. The
advantage of sects over monolithic religions is that sects shade
off from the very orthodox to those far less so. This allows the
less orthodox to assimilate new beliefs and these are not treated
as heresy. The heretics function in a stream of their own.
Our understanding of conversion would be much clearer if we could
focus on sect and caste, wherever the evidence exists or can be
traced back. This would provide a far better explanation than
merely going on referring to Hindus becoming Muslims. What we
understand of historical interactions in the past moulds to a fair
extent our thinking about present-day interactions. It is,
therefore, incumbent upon us to be far more analytical and precise
in our historical exploration and explanation. We should not allow
history to be reduced to, or dismissed, as political slogans of
various kinds.
The creation of a sect was open and led to a plurality that became
characteristic of every religion in India. This constitutes an
important aspect in understanding the relationship between religion
and society, and these relationships differ from society to
society. We cannot assume therefore that the role of religion that
emerged for Europe can be applied automatically to India – a
mistake made by colonial scholarship. This does not imply that the
meaning of secularism can change, but that the manner in which it
is introduced into a society may vary.
Since Shramanism in the main was based on historical founders, it
takes a fairly linear form with segments referring back to a
central teaching. The history of Brahmanism is far more complex. An
early phase was Vedic Brahmanism focusing on the ritual of
sacrifice,
the yajna, invoking
many deities and specially Indra and Agni, and performed by upper
castes. A variety of heterodox sects, pre-eminently the Buddhists,
Jainas and Ajivikas, questioned these beliefs. Heterodox groups
tended to provide rational explanations about social institutions
and established a critical tradition of questioning orthodoxy,
although eventually establishing their own orthodoxies.
By the early centuries AD, Brahmanical ritual became more
individualised with a shift to the worship of Shiva and Vishnu.
Sects of worshippers came together differentiated by particular
deities, as for example the Vaishnava Bhagavata and the Shaiva
Pashupatha. From the seventh century, religious belief and worship
took the form of devotional sects – what we call the Bhakti sects.
They arose at varying times in different parts of the
sub-continent. The earlier recognisable ones were the Alvars and
Nayannars in the south to be followed by many in the north. Some
among the later ones reflected striations of new religious
ideas.
Both Brahmanism and Shramanism received hefty patronage and became
wealthy, powerful, established religions. This gave them status and
enabled them to control social laws. Donations were made to sects
and not to a monolithic religious entity because this did not exist
at that time. This continued to be the norm even in later
periods.
Centres of the wealthy sects became the nucleus of education. This
added to their authority and they could induct the elite.
Frequently, sects with large followings and authority began to
function as castes in themselves as for example the Lingayat in
Karnataka, and many others in others parts of the country. They did
not necessarily identify with the formal religions, and some
actually opposed them. But in colonial records they were assigned
to either one or the other.
The arrival of Islam
With the arrival of Islam and more so with the presence of the
Sufis, the exploration of religious ideas – orthodox and
heterodox – expanded, as did the number of sects. Some took
orthodox positions, others held out mixed beliefs and worship. The
latter were popular among the larger number of ordinary people.
The new presence was marked by the elaborate mosques
and khanqahs built by
royal patrons and the wealthy. The religious endowments became
richer and richer, as is so in all well-patronised religions. As
with Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples
and mathas,these endowments tied to
Islamic centres also enabled their recipients to participate in the
world of scholarship and in politics. Detailed studies of the
social institutions controlled by various religious authorities
that we refer to as the Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc. would be
revealing.
As in earlier times the sect remained the popular religious
identity among the majority of people. This becomes more evident if
we look at two processes involved in the coming of Islam
– settlement and conversion. Today this event is projected at
the popular level largely in terms of invasion and
its subsequent political consequences. But there were many
other avenues that took different forms, as in the settlements of
traders, migrants, Sufis and such alike.
Mohammad bin Qasim’s conquest of Sindh is known. But far more
interesting were the settlements of Arab traders all down the west
coast of India from Sindh to Kerala. Some Arabs entered the service
of the Rashtrakuta kings of the Deccan dating to the 8th and
9th centuries. The more senior among them exercised their
right to give grants of land to temples
and brahmanas as had
been the prevailing custom in the area. Arab traders inter-married
locally and new communities evolved with a new take on existing
religions. Inevitably, these became new sects – such as the Bohras,
the Khojas the Navayat, the Mapilla and many others – where belief,
ritual, and civil law did not hesitate to draw from existing
practice. So no two were identical. Gujarati Bohras had little to
do with Malayali Mapillas. Many such sects mushroomed all over but
have not been sufficiently studied as part of the history of
society and religion.
This pattern continued into later centuries at the level of the
wider society. This was despite the emergence of other patterns
that arose from political power and administration. Such
dichotomies run through history and only their constituents change.
The newly emerging teachers of various persuasions attracted
supportive followers. Until recently, these remained the essentials
of how a major part of Indians experienced religion irrespective of
having to declare conformity to formal religions in colonial times.
This was prior to the ingress of Hindutva and Islamisation, that
have considerably hardened the boundaries and even altered
practices. Many people today who identify themselves with the
monolithic religion, whichever it may be, when pressed further,
will mention the sect that they belong to, or the holy man whom
they revere – the baba,
guru or sant
– who can be of any persuasion. This link is often more
pertinent to the lives they actually live. And interestingly, the
sects that they identify with are generally those that were
established in the last thousand years.
Myth-making about medieval history
In the history of India, medieval history, which colonial
historians called the Muslim period, is located in the last
thousand years. This history has had a raw deal from religious
extremists and politicians in being described as the age when, to
quote the slogan, “We were slaves” – the assumption being that
Islamic rule tyrannised an oppressed Hindu population. This is a
continuation of the British interpretation of Indian history
eagerly taken up by religious nationalism. Viewed historically, the
scene differs at many levels.
The interaction between what we call Hinduism and Islam had its
moments of confrontations and conflicts in the face offs between
competing politics and were manifested in various ways, and often
through religious organisations. What was a largely political act
at that time is often interpreted today as an entirely religious
act, with the politics left out. Some confrontation was to be
expected. Such confrontations were not new to the Indian scene if
in earlier times
the brahmanas and
the shramans had a
relationship comparable to the snake and the mongoose – and this
was probably a correct assessment as we know that in some regions
Buddhist monks were killed and in others Jaina monks were impaled.
In the subsequent millennium, that is the last thousand years,
things may not have changed strikingly. It was neither a
culture given over to religious aggression as colonial scholars
maintained, but nor was it entirely free of such aggression. It
was, in fact, a normal culture similar to many others in the world
at the time.
But as was so in earlier times, the medieval period continued
to be a time when striking creativity enriched facets of Indian
culture and we still live with these. The intellectual liveliness
of the time expressed in Sanskrit and Persian and in the regional
languages matched that of earlier times, although in different
genres. It was precisely this period that gave shape and form in
various ways to much, although not all, that we now identify as
Hindu in the landscape of present times.
Leaving aside for the moment the interaction of cultures practicing
diverse religions, even some of the activities clustered around the
Brahmanic tradition are most impressive. Throughout the second
millennium AD, that is the last one thousand years, from Kashmir to
Kerala and in between, there were scholarly commentaries being
composed on Brahmanical texts and religious practice. Sayana’s
explanation of
the Rig Veda is
a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a learned scholar of the
14th century with its mix of reality and fantasy. Social
change draws out new commentaries on existing social codes.
Kulluka’s commentary on the
Manu Dharmashastra incorporates
a reaction to the social change of the times, as in the debate over
the status of temple priests vis-à-vis other categories
of brahmanas, a
matter of concern only when temples became powerful institutions,
at a time simultaneous with the arrival of Islam in the
sub-continent. The looting of some of the wealthy temples did not
prevent the building of other equally wealthy ones and striking
innovations in architecture.
There were many commentaries, digests, discussions on classical
Sanskrit poetry and literary compositions. With the gradual switch
to the regional languages, grammars required commentaries. New and
prior philosophical theories are discussed in texts such as
the Sarva-darshana-sangraha of
Madhavacharya in the 14th century. Discussions on the Advaita
Vedanta and Mimamsa schools of philosophy, to mention some, date to
this period. There were explorations into theories in mathematics
and astronomy going from Ujjain to Baghdad and beyond, with Indian
scholars at the cutting edge of knowledge. Classical Hindustani and
Carnatic music was patronised by the courts of Maharajas and
Mughals and in the homes of the wealthy.
In addition to Sanskrit and Persian, literary compositions of high
quality began to be composed in regional languages that acquired a
new standing in the royal courts and in places linked to religious
sects. These compositions carried much of the thought and
creativity of their own times, as is evident in
the Ramacharitamanas, and
the Krittibasi,distinct from the
Valmiki Ramayana and
much revered by Hindi and Bengali speakers. There were even
alternate histories sung as legends by folk poets and bards, very
different from the court chronicles that we quote. These were the
voices of numbers of people as also expressed in
the bhajans of Meera
and Surdas and the compositions of Tyagaraja. These were not the
achievements of enslaved people. We are today unable to look beyond
what we have been told by those who colonised us, and those who
loyally continue to carry on with that legacy.
The task of secularisation
In this rather scattered attempt to look at some aspects of the
past, I have tried to underline the plurality in the articulation
of religion in India often in the form of sects and their interface
with caste. To eventually disengage religious institutions from
controlling the functions of civil society would help us in
bringing about a more equitable society. The process of
secularising society will have to address both religion and caste,
and to that extent it requires a different kind of analysis from
that of religions elsewhere. We have internalised the colonial
version of the relationship between our religions and our society,
and are experiencing its aftermath in the stridency of dominant
religious organisations. We have also allowed some of these to
become mechanisms for political mobilisation. Secularisation
therefore will have to be thought through with sensitivity, care
and thoroughness. Although it cannot be a rapid change,
nevertheless a serious beginning has to be made to introduce
secular values through establishing confidence in a secular society
and explaining its necessary link to democracy. The resort to
assassination to silence secularists can never succeed – it merely
leads to the suffusion of terror that will one day rebound on those
terrorising others. If there is one lesson that history teaches us
it is this.
A secular society and polity does not mean abandoning religion. It
does mean that the religious identity of the Indian, whatever it
may be, has to give way to the primary secular identity of an
Indian citizen. And the state has to guarantee the rights that come
with this identity, as the rights of citizenship. This demands that
the state provides and protects human rights, a requirement that at
the moment cannot be taken for granted. Such an identity, while
adhering to human rights and social justice, would also be governed
by a secular code of laws applicable to all.
A beginning could be made in two possible ways. One would be to
ensure the secular in education, and the other, the secular in
civil laws. Education means the availability of all branches of
knowledge to all citizens without discrimination. Knowledge means
updated information and training young people to endorse the method
of critical enquiry. I would like to add to this the need for young
people to know what is meant by a shared history. Given that we are
a democracy, we can perhaps work out how best this could be
done.
Our civil laws were drawn up in colonial times although we have
made some changes after independence. In a turn to the secular, we
shall have to comb through the existing civil laws to ensure that
they conform to equal rights for all citizens with no exceptions.
Resolving the differences between the civil laws and the laws of
each religion and caste, will have to be discussed with the
communities concerned and not only with those currently controlling
religious and caste codes. A uniform civil code does not mean
merely doing away with the laws of one religious code. It means
reconsidering jointly the social laws of all religious codes and
arriving at a common secular civil code. In this process, injustice
and discrimination against minorities and against the
underprivileged – whether because of religion, gender or caste –
will need to be annulled. Law does not remain law if it can be
manipulated to allow discrepancies. This is likely to be the most
problematic in our turn toward secularising society. Is it not time
now to start work on this?
The overwhelming projection of religiosity – not religion but the
excessive display of religiosity – in the world that surrounds us
sometimes appears to be a surrogate for not coming to terms with
real life problems; or perhaps it is due to our having become a
competitive society with all its unexpected insecurities. Can we
instead consider how we can make the reality of citizenship a
guarantee of our social welfare, our well-being, our understanding
of our world, and our wish to bring quality into our lives? The
secularising of society is not an overnight revolution. It is a
historical process and will need time. But hopefully it will be
assisted by the recognition that the state and society need to
function in a new way. Implicit in democracy is the upholding of
the ethic of human action. Secularising society is an advancing of
that very ethic.