Secularism in India

Buddhist monks at the Sera Monastery during a festival. The monastery was granted asylum by the India and relocated to Mysore after the Chinese invasion of Tibet.

The Preamble to the Constitution of India declares that India is a secular country. The term secularism refers to the governmental practice of indifference towards religion. Secular politics attempt to prevent religious philosophies or bodies from influencing governmental policies. The philosophy that the Indian constitution upholds is a kind of secular humanism made relevant through a historical development of the ideology within the context of religious pluralism in India.

The Constitution of India prohibits discrimination against members of a particular religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

The word secular was inserted into the preamble by the Forty-second Amendment.(1976) It implies equality of all religions and religious tolerance. India, therefore does not have an official state religion. Every person has the right to preach, practice and propagate any religion they choose. The government must not favour or discriminate against any religion. It must treat all religions with equal respect. All citizens, irrespective of their religious beliefs are equal in the eyes of law. No religious instruction is imparted in government or government-aided schools. Nevertheless, general information about all established world religions is imparted as part of the course in Sociology, without giving any importance to any one religion or the others. The content presents the basic/fundamental information with regards to the fundamental beliefs, social values and main practices and festivals of each established world religions. The Supreme Court in S.R Bommai v. Union of India held that secularism was an integral part of the basic structure of the constitution.

History

Secularism in India has very different meaning and implications. The word secularism has never been used in Indian context in the sense in which it has been used in Western countries i.e. in the sense of atheism or purely this worldly approach, rejecting the other-worldly beliefs.

India is a country where religion is very central to the life of people. India’s age-old philosophy as expounded in Hindu scriptures called Upanishads is sarva dharma samabhava, which means equal respect for all religions. The reason behind this approach is the fact that India has never been a mono-religious country.

India is one country where caste rigidity and concept of untouchability evolved and still plays a major role in religious, social and cultural matters. Caste dynamics in Indian life, even in Christian and Islamic societies, plays larger than life role. Since most of the conversions to Christianity and Islam took place from lower caste Hindus, these two world religions also developed caste structure. There are lower caste churches and mosques in several places.

Under feudal system there was no competition between different religious traditions as authority resided in sword and generally there were no inter-religious tensions among the people of different religions. They co-existed in peace and harmony though at times inter-religious controversies did arise.

There was also tradition of tolerance between religions due to state policies of various kings since time immemorial from Gupta Kings to Ashoka and Akbar. Many religious sects and practices kept away from rigid intolerant forms.

The Indian National Congress at the time of independence from British Raj adopted secularism, not as this worldly philosophy but more as a political arrangement. As power-sharing arrangement could not be satisfactorily worked out between the Hindu and Muslim elite the country was divided into two independent states of India and Pakistan, Muslim majority areas of North-West going to Pakistan.

After independence and partition a large body of Muslims were left in India and hence the leaders like Gandhi and Nehru preferred to keep India secular in the sense that Indian state will have no religion though people of India will be free both in individual and corporate sense to follow any religion of their birth or adoption. Thus India remained politically secular but otherwise its people continued to be deeply religious.

In India right from the British period main contradiction was not between religious and secular but it was between secular and communal. In the western world main struggle was between church and state and church and civil society but in India neither Hinduism nor Islam had any church-like structure and hence there never was any such struggle between secular and religious power structure.

The main struggle was between secularism and communalism. The communal forces from among Hindus and Muslims mainly fought for share in power though they used their respective religions for their struggle for power.

Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India was great champion of secularism and secular politics. Theoretically speaking the Congress Party was also committed to secularism. However, the Congress Party consisted of several members and leaders whose secularism was in doubt. But it was due to Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and B.R.Ambedkar that India committed itself to secularism and its Constitution was drafted on secular lines.

Secularism in India, as pointed out before, meant equal respect for all religions and cultures and non-interference of religion in the government affairs. Also, according to the Indian Constitution no discrimination will be made on the basis of caste, creed, gender and class. Similarly all citizens of India irrespective of ones religion, caste or gender have right to vote. According to articles 14 to 21 all will enjoy same rights without any discrimination on any ground.

According to Article 25 all those who reside in India are free to confess, practice and propagate religion of one’s choice subject of course to social health and law and order. Thus even conversion to any religion of ones choice is a fundamental right.

SECULAR AND UNSECULAR PEOPLE Now question arises how many Indian people are secular and how many unsecular? Since secularism does not mean being this worldly in India, one cannot say how many are believers and how many unbelievers? On the contrary in Indian context what it means how many people are against people of minority religions like Islam and Christianity and how many people respect them.

In fact in India an overwhelming majority of people are religious but tolerant and respect other religions and are thus ‘secular’ in Indian context. Even Sufis and Bhakti Saints are considered quite secular in that sense.

There are some rationalists and secularists who reject religion in its entirety but such rationalists or secularists are extremely few. Though there are no census figures available but one can safely say they are less than 0.1% in India. Also, there are extremely orthodox people who exhibit rigidity and intolerance towards other faiths though of course not on communal grounds but on the grounds of religious orthodoxy but they too are in minuscule minority. Tolerance in India among people of all religions is widely prevalent. It is perhaps due to influence of ancient Vedic doctrine that truth is one but is manifested in different forms.

Thus the real spirit of secularism in India is all inclusiveness, religious pluralism and peaceful co-existence. However, it is politics, which proved to be divisive and not religion. It is not religious leaders by and large (with few exceptions) who divide but politicians who seek to mobilise votes on grounds of primordial identities like religion, caste and ethnicity.

In a multi-religious society, if politics is not based on issues but on identities, it can prove highly divisive. Politicians are tempted to appeal to primordial identities rather than to solve problems. The former case proves much easier. The medieval society in India was thus more religiously tolerant as it was non-competitive. The modern Indian society, on the other hand, has proved to be more divisive as it is based on competition.

Thus in case of India one can say by and large it is secular in as much as it is religiously plural and tolerant but there are politically divisive forces quite active and create communal pressure and widen the gap between religious community thus bringing Indian secularism under threat. (Secular Perspective)

« The history of Indian secularism begin with the protest movements in the 5th century B.C. The three main protest movements were by the Charvakas (a secularistic and materialistic philosophical movement), Buddhism, and Jainism. All three of them rejected the authority of the Vedas and any importance of belief in a deity.

However, it was in the 18th century, when the British East India Company began to gain total control over India that ideas of secularism began to have impact on the Indian mind. Until then, religion was considered to be inseparable from political and social life. On the other hand, the British codified laws pertaining to practices within religions on the sub-continents. To this effect they instituted separate laws for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis and others as part of their divide-and-rule policy. In doing so they laid the foundation for a nonuniform civil code which remains largely unchanged to date. This is a major grouse for Hindu politicians who insist that there should be a uniform civil code for all citizens. For example, believers of all faiths other than Islam are legally bound to be monogamous while those who practice or convert to Islam are permitted up to four marriages, which is therefore not uniform behavior.

Religious laws

On marriage

As the Shah Bano case demonstrated, successive governments have failed to enact a uniform civil code as regards to marriages, and in this case, the dissolution thereof. A significant observation from this case was that despite a direct ruling from the Supreme Court of India, the Rajiv Gandhi government, in pandering to the Muslim vote bank not only failed to protect the interests of a divorced female in a secular and even handed manner (Shah Bano was 62 and a mother five when her husband divorced her), the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 was enacted, further exacerbating Muslim women's plight. Here the common civil code is not being taken by the Islam (organization in INDIA) as they have different faith than just law. Here the common civil code of the secular country & the Islam law collides.

Views

While the pluralist view of Mahatma Gandhi, that all religions are equal, has a strong impact, there are movements like those of the dalits (depressed classes) and the communists who have criticized such a view. Gandhi himself was a devout man and instilled devotion in the Independence Struggle. But still he was killed by a religious person for his adherence to minority appeasement calling it secular principles.

However, there is obvious difference between secularism practised in India and elsewhere. The western model of secularism means that religion and politics are separate from each other (Caesar and God theory). In other words, polity does not enter in religious affairs and religion in political affairs. This also means that political mechanism cannot correct problems inside a religious group. However, Indian society being a mixture of religions, is always prone to dominance and conflicts. Moreover, the issues such as casteism is particularly of religious origin. In order to mitigate the harmful effects of casteism and other source of conflicts and human right violations arising out of religions, it is necessary that polity/government be able to meddle with religious affairs. As a result of several year's efforts to detoxify the religions, Government has been able to reduce the effects of casteism and modernize the Hindu personal laws. However, the country is far from having a common civil code. As far as other religions are concerned, government has only limited success in correcting human right violations such as atrocities against women in Islam.

However, ability of Government to indulge in religious affairs also boomeranged. Religions and castes increased their influence on political parties. As a result, politico-religio-regional chauvinism is becoming more common in contemporary Indian Politics. Thus, practising the Indian Brand of secularism (mutual tolerance instead of mutual respect) in the last 60 years, failed to produce communal harmony and trust. Liberhann Commission which investigated the Babri Masjid Incident, has recommended that religion be delinked from politics and that Politicians must not garner votes preaching religion or caste. The Indian experiment on secularism is here to continue.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sadanand Dhume criticizes Indian "Secularism" as a fraud and a failure, since it isn't really "secularism" as it is understood in the western world (as separation of religion and state) but more along the lines of religious appeasement. He writes that the flawed understanding of secularism among India's left wing intelligentsia has led Indian politicians to pander to religious leaders, extremists and militants like Zakir Naik, and has led India to take a soft stand against Islamic terrorism , religious militancy and communal disharmony in general.

Similar views have also been expressed by noted Indian LGBT rights activist Ashok Row Kavi in the wake of attempts by some ultra-orthodox Hindus to scuttle the gay rights movement in India by intimidation and violence. Kavi writes that extremist groups like Shiv Sena get too much credibility in the mainstream, which "displays the ridiculousness of the Indian concept of secularism". He also cites attempts by Islamist sympathizers to whitewash history books concerning Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent as another example of India's "secularism".

In India, blaming Kashmiri Pundits for their own ethnic cleansing from ancestral lands since time immemorial is passed off as secularism. So is blaming pilgrims, like in Godhra massacre, for their own massacre.

Others, particularly historian Ronald Inden, have also observed that the Indian government is not really "secular", but one that selectively discriminates against Hindu communities while superficially appeasing Muslim leaders (without actually providing any community or theological benefits to regular Muslims in India). He writes that poorly educated Indian so-called "intelligentsia" identify Indian "secularism" with anti-Hinduism and even a tacit Islamophobia. He also cites that often, leftist governments in India (such as in the Indian state of West Bengal) covertly support madrassa curricula for Muslims, helping traditional Islamic scholarship and teaching fundamentalism in "Islamic" disguise. He writes

Nehru's India was supposed to be committed to 'secularism'. The idea here in its weaker publicly reiterated form was that the government would not interfere in 'personal' religious matters and would create circumstances in which people of all religions could live in harmony. The idea in its stronger, unofficially stated form was that in order to modernize, India would have to set aside centuries of traditional religious ignorance and superstition and eventually eliminate Hinduism and Islam from people's lives altogether. After Independence, governments implemented secularism mostly by refusing to recognize the religious pasts of Indian nationalism, whether Hindu or Muslim, and at the same time (inconsistently) by retaining Muslim 'personal law'.

See also

• Views on Indian Secularism
• Religious conversions in India

References

Secular India, A Historical Quest by Sanjeev Tare (1991) published by Anmol Publications, New Delhi. 230 pages. English. It's a sketch of the Indian statehood's secular development through the ages. It traces the development of state from India's more than 5000 year old secular state up to 1965. Importantly, this book was written at the height of the Raamjanmabhoomi movement and was published in period of the Somanaath to Ayodhyaa Rathayaatraa.

External links

• Domenic Marbaniang, Indian Secularism
• Domenic Marbaniang, Secularism in India
• Secularism in India: A Historical Analysis (Unabridged Edition)
• Panthnirpeksh
• Secularism In India