The Pulse Vishal
Arora for The
Diplomat August 24, 2015
A push to change the
draft constitution could place religious freedoms under
threat.
A majority of
Nepalese supposedly want the term “secularism” to be removed from
the draft of its new constitution, which will soon be put to the
vote. Hopes are high among Hindu nationalists, who have been
demanding that Nepal once again becomes a Hindu nation, a status it
lost after the fall of the monarchy in 2006.
The Constituent
Assembly has allegedly
received millions of suggestions that the word “secularism” be
dropped from the draft charter.
This is not
surprising, as the Nepali word for “secularism,” dharm
nirpekshta, carries a negative connotation. The term means
“indifference” or “opposition” to religion – a phrase that could
fit the French idea of secularism, calling for a complete
separation of religion and state. However, the majority of Nepalese
are religious, at least in their cultural manifestations, and are
not keen to establish a state that is anti-religion.
Nepal’s four major
political parties – the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of
Nepal United Marxist-Leninist (UML), the Unified Communist Party of
Nepal-Maoist, and the Madhesi Peoples Rights Forum – though
left-leaning or Maoists, ascribe a different meaning to secularism,
one that reflects its practice in neighboring India, which too has
a Hindu-majority population. The Indian state is constitutionally
mandated to remain “neutral” to and respectful of the various
religions its people adhere to, while having no state or official
religion.
It appears that in
their numerous suggestions, Nepalese people, too, favored a similar
state ideology. They urged lawmakers to replace the term
“secularism” with “Hindu” or “religious freedom.” In other words,
they are comfortable with describing their country as being Hindu
or one that provides for religious freedom.
However, the
royalist and Hindu nationalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal
(RPP-N) is holding rallies and protests to pressure the Constituent
Assembly to replace the term “secularism” with both words: “a Hindu
nation with religious freedom.”
To make a case
against secularism and for a Hindu nation, RPP-N members and
supporters are projecting Hinduism to be under threat, claiming
that missionaries are seeking to convert Hindus to Christianity, a
“foreign” religion, using “allurement” or “force.”
The RPP-N has mere
24 seats in the 575-seat Assembly, all of which were allotted to
the party under the proportional representation system in the 2013
election. It failed to win any seat by plurality vote in
first-past-the-post single-member constituencies. So the minority
party is seeking to piggyback on the majority sentiment against the
use of the word “secularism,” and take it one step further by
calling for a Hindu nation.
However, there are
problems with both its claims and demands.
The RPP-N is
claiming a crime in which the alleged victims are not the
complainants. In fact, the converts, if any, are not complaining at
all. If Hindus are being converted with financial benefits or under
duress, then where are the “victims”? Blaming conversions on
missionaries or preachers insults the converts, whose right to
freely choose a religion of their choice should be respected. It’s
as if the converts had no role in their own conversions.
Despite the flimsy
nature of the allegations, the draft constitution already states
that no one can “convert another person from one religion to
another” (Article 31). It doesn’t even qualify the verb “convert”
by adding the adverbs “by force or allurement,” but simply imposes
a blanket ban on all activities and expressions that can
potentially be deemed as attempts to convert. This could
effectively outlaw preaching of the tenets of a religion to people
of other faiths, violating religious freedom and freedom of
expression.
The demand that
Nepal be re-declared a Hindu nation is equally
problematic.
The RPP-N argues
that with more than 40 Muslim countries and 70 Christian countries
in the world, then Nepal certainly has the right to become a Hindu
state.
The party’s leaders
are confusing Muslim- and Christian-majority countries with nations
that accord a special status to majority religions. There are about
17 countries where one form of Christianity enjoys a special status
or is the state religion, and around 24 such Islamic
countries.
Besides, it would be
a challenge to avoid a clash between the constitutional values of
special treatment for the majority religion and full religious
freedom, or to even “protect” the religion. This is why few
countries that allow a close relationship between religion and
state are seen as models of religious freedom or communal
harmony.
Nepal doesn’t need
to look too far for bad examples. A look at its own fellow members
of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation could be a
good case study.
Would the Nepalese
people see nations like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the
Maldives, whose constitutions accord a special status to Islam, as
their role models? Are these nations peaceful? How about “Buddhist”
Sri Lanka? Are minorities happy in Sri Lanka? Is there peace in
that country? Are extremist Buddhist groups protecting their
religion, or giving it a bad name?
Bhutan is also an
officially Buddhist nation and yet peaceful, but this tiny nation –
because of its isolation until recent years – has an entirely
different context. Besides, even Bhutan doesn’t have a clean image
in the area of religious freedom.
A study of 59
countries, published in Southern Economic Journal in 2004, examined
the impact of state religion and of constitutional protection for
religion on the degree of religiosity. It found
that the existence of a state religion “reduces” attendance in
places of worship by 14.6 to 16.7 percent of the total
population.
The study concluded:
“Having an established state religion can undo the positive effect
of well over a century of constitutional protection of religious
freedom… If these religious groups are successful in obtaining
governmental favor for their particular brands of religion, they
may be inadvertently sowing the seeds of their own
destruction.”
Nepal still has time
to heed the warning.