End of India if secularism collapses as a casualty of communalism

(Published in: Deccan Herlad, 23 July 2008)

Secularism and nations survival

by V R Krishna Iyer

We should not allow obscurantism and bigotry to threaten national unity.


If secularism collapses as a casualty of communalism, humanism has no hope of survival as a basic creed of the nation. Today humanism is a fundamental duty under Article 51 A of the Constitution. So too is compassion for living creatures. They go together as a global vision. The Preamble gives paramount prominence to secularism in its supra-religious dimension. Independent India has a prolixity of religions but no savage rivalry or obdurate obscurantism among the several faiths is permissible in this country. Indeed, the tapestry of theological plurality, marred by terrorist multiplicity, is alien to our traditional liberalism.

Even atheism and agnosticism enjoy constitutional protection. But certain intimidatory forces rooted in communal competitiveness threaten the unity of India. They politically fuel terrorist antagonisms. Specious spiritualism such as violent godist bellicosity and bigoted outbursts corrode people’s fraternal co-existence. This divisive development disguised in religious drapery is a disaster since our communities have been living without fissiparous fights from time immemorial.

Our dynamic, socialistic democracy vests power in the people, and the people decide on the choice of the creative executive and the social justice-fired legislature. Who commands more votes and wins more seats rules the country in its humanist stature and federal structure. But an appalling evil vitiates elections. Communal campaigns manipulate the minds of the electorate.

Religiosity, with its intransigent intolerance, inflames the feelings of large numbers of looney sects, competing castes and furious followers of fanatic faiths. Secularism cannot but contest this malady. For this purpose, stern legislation and punitive action are firm measures. Indian secularism has a glorious dimension of all-embracing unity and universality — be it the profound Upanishads, the cosmic Christian commandments, the Islamic world brotherhood mandate or the global wonder of compassion for all life taught by Mahavira and the Buddha and the grand Sikhism of Guru Nanak.

Ambitious political strategists instrumentalise religion as a means of carving social space and economic dominion through indoctrinating crazy believers, particularly when elections arrive and ballots matter. Campaigners and candidates wear apparels of patriotism. Indeed, rampant communalism becomes a rabid force in politics, disguised as nationalism. A do-or-die struggle for secular swaraj is now an inalienable imperative.

Religious pluralism by itself is not an evil because each denomination projects a certain dimension of the Supreme which is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Different prophets and saints and seers perceive the Infinite Reality from different angles of perfection. But when religion degenerates into institutional theology, the Eternal Light suffers eclipse. Every religion has this insane infirmity. Hindutva is not an exception. Neither is Islam.

Christian bigotry obnoxiously pretends papal infallibility with communal narrowness. Even Sikhism and Buddhism can wear the apparel of militant-extremism although Guru Nanak and the Buddha were rare, revolutionary incarnations. Unfortunately, the eclectic culture and noble texture of India’s moral-spiritual estate suffered at the hands of competing claimants to Godhood. The task of national transformation is to restore divinity and humanity glowing as the Supreme Light.

Already we suffer divisive frailty economically because of the dependency syndrome. We will fall to pieces unless there is a burning realisation that secularism and social justice are a revolutionary policy indispensable to our survival. This is nationalism not the Manmohan brand of US vassal status or the Rajnath Singh doctrine of cultural nationalism — a baloney which stultifies Article 43 and the desideratum of a value-based family law, fair and uniform for Indians. Only he who swears by the solemn principle of one nation, one family and one law, is a patriot. Differences and hostilities do exist. But we shall overcome—Bharat Mahan shall never surrender!

(The writer is former judge of the Supreme Court.)