Cartoon: TN Gov says Secularism is a Western Concept [and not needed] and his staff offer alternative clothes to his western gear | Sajith Kumar in Deccan Herald

 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYXbY9OW4AA_0j2?format=jpg&name=small

India: subaltern sells high on the market, so subaltern hindutva did well, does the imaginary concoction of subaltern secularism hold?

The pitch for subaltern secularism Premium
There is subaltern Hindutva, but the question in the 2024 general election is whether there can be subaltern secularism

Published - May 16, 2024 12:16 am IST

Varghese K. George

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-pitch-for-subaltern-secularism/article68179427.ece

India: In defence of secularism, in a time of majoritarian triumphalism | Yamini Aiyar

 Deccan Herald

In defence of secularism, in a time of majoritarian triumphalism
I believe, secularism remains central to the constitutional “idea of India”. It is an ideal we must reclaim and restore for the sake of our society, for the sake of our democracy.
Yamini Aiyar
Last Updated 04 February 2024

It may seem like an open invitation, after the events of January 22, to the troll army, to charges of being anti-national, anti-Hindu, a pseudo-secularist, topped up, of course, with abuses and threats of all kinds, to consider offering a defence of secularism in India today. Mocking secularism is the dominant spirit of our political moment. In the formal theatre of political party competition, no political party is willing to come out in secularism’s defence, preferring to use words like pluralism, tolerance. Secularism has no takers. In civil society, those who defend it are “pseudo secularists” charged with pursuing “Western ideals” eschewing our deep civilisational one.

[ . . . ]

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-defence-of-secularism-in-a-time-of-majoritarian-triumphalism-2878794

Indian Secularism: Ambedkar and the Chronicle of a Failure Foretold essay by Sankaran Krishna

 

Indian Secularism: Ambedkar and the Chronicle of a Failure Foretold

SANKARAN KRISHNA

As India steps into its 77th year of Independence, it has moved a considerable distance from its lofty founding vision of ushering in a new variant of secularism. The project to establish a distinctly Indian relationship between state and religion – neither a wall of separation; nor a fusing of the two – now lies in a shambles. The reason is as ubiquitous as it is invisibilised: the failure, wanton perhaps, to effectively dismantle the chronically hierarchical caste orderings that continue to direct, and scar, India’s social, economic, and political progress. In this Essay, Sankaran Krishna, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Hawai`i at Manoa, Honolulu, points out that the definitional limitation of secularism resulted in the creation of checkpoints confined to the major religions of pre-Independent India, whilst overlooking the massive inequalities within its religions, especially in terms of caste. The oscillation between prioritising collective rights at certain points, and individual rights at others, not only turned the tables on the voiceless but also ensured that powerful coalitions continued to direct the narrative.. Read more...

Announced: Religion & Secularism - Constitution Precept and Practice | Feb 26, 11 am on youtube

India: Why does BJP oppose the word secular? | SR Darapuri

-SR Darapuri National President, All India People's Front Speaking on Constitution Day in Parliament in 2015, BJP representative Rajnath Singh again reiterated that the inclusion of the word secular in the Constitution is unnecessary and has been misused a lot. He further defined secularism and said that it does not mean secularism but sect neutrality. Even before this BJP and its allies have raised similar objections to this word. It is known that the words secular and socialist were included in the Preamble of the Constitution in 1976 by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment. It is also noteworthy that under the Right to Equality in Article 14 of the Constitution, discrimination based on religion is prohibited by the state against any citizen. Apart from this, according to the right to freedom of religion in Article 25 of the Constitution, every citizen has the fundamental right to profess, practice and propagate his religion. It is clear from these provisions of the constitution that our state is completely secular. These provisions are so clear that there is no scope for any kind of doubt in them, the BJP wants to keep them confused in the definition. Being a secular state, all political parties are expected not to use religion in politics, which is also prohibited in the People's Representation Act. Similarly, it is the constitutional duty of the ministers and officers of the government to behave completely secularly in discharging their duties. But it is unfortunate that since independence till now neither our politics could become secular nor the people sitting on constitutional posts and administrative officers could become completely secular. The biggest example of this was our first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad. The first thing he did on assuming the office of the President was that he had replaced all the Muslim chefs (cooks) working in Rashtrapati Bhavan with Hindu cooks. His second act, which annoyed Nehru very much, was that after becoming the President, he went on a pilgrimage to Kashi and washed the feet of 200 Brahmins there and gave them dakshina. He probably did this because he was a Kayastha by caste, which is considered a Shudra in Bihar. Therefore, he thought it necessary to take blessings from the Vidvatjan Sabha of Kashi for his acceptance. Another act of his was to go for the installation of Shivling in Somnath temple after renovation, with which Nehru was very angry. Nehru's private secretary John Mathai wrote in his memoirs that the Somnath temple was renovated with the money that the then Agriculture Minister K.K. Munshi by increasing the price of sugar to the sugar mill association by Munshi in connivance with Sardar Patel, a part of it was received as a bribe. This information was received by Nehru when he could not do anything. Nehru's personal secretary MO Mathai has also written in his memoirs that when Dr. Rajendra Prasad entered Rashtrapati Bhavan, he had ordered many langurs (Monkeys) because he was a Hanuman devotee. Dr. Rajendra Prasad used to feed the langurs with his own hands. They also used to go to North and South Block near Rashtrapati Bhavan and used to pick up the tiffins of the employees and tear files. When their population grew, they used to reach even the nearby houses and cause damage but they could not complain because they were President's baboons. Later, when Dr. Rajendra Prasad left the Rashtrapati Bhavan after the completion of his term, all the langurs were caught and sent to the Delhi Zoo. Similarly, Babu Rajendra Prasad had also threatened to refuse assent to the Hindu Code Bill brought by Nehru and Ambedkar to give rights to Hindu women because he was against it as a Sanatani Hindu. It is also said that Sardar Patel wanted the Somnath temple to be renovated with government money, but Nehru did not allow it. In Nehru's absence, Sardar Patel had even got the Congress Working Committee to pass a resolution that Congressmen could become members of the RSS, but Nehru got it cancelled after returning from abroad. Similarly, Madan Mohan Malaviya, who was a staunch Hindu, used to take Gangajal with him whenever he went to England. When an Englishman visited him, he used to purify his room by sprinkling Ganges water on his departure. It is clear from the conduct of some of the above persons who held high positions that Indian politicians have never been completely secular. Our former Vice President Shankar Dayal Sharma had gone to pilgrimage with full official trappings. Not only this, all our government programs are completed only by Hindu religious rituals and worship of Gods and Goddesses. Whenever and wherever the BJP has come to power, it has introduced RSS for government employees. The doors of membership have been opened. From this, you can get an idea that how secular our governments and administrations have been in practice or are at present. By the way, Congress too has mostly been pretending to be secular. Its behaviour has also mostly been communal. It is known to all that the idols were placed in the Babri Masjid of Ayodhya in 1949 during the Congress rule. It was the Congress government that opened the locks of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone of the Ram temple there. Rajiv Gandhi started his election campaign from Ayodhya only after taking the blessings of Ram. In fact, Congress has always been playing the card of soft Hindutva, in which BJP later defeated it because BJP has always been doing politics of Hard Hindutva. Even on the issue of Ram Mandir, it went ahead of the Congress and won the battle by getting the Babri Masjid demolished. Some time ago in the Parliament, by interpreting the word secular instead of secularism, the BJP has again given the message that it is not ready to accept India as a secular nation because till now it has been doing the politics of religion and wants to make India a Hindu Rashtra. Even if BJP's definition is accepted that our constitution is only sect neutral but not secular, then it means that India is a religious nation. Now because Hindutva is the biggest sect, then only the Hindu religion can be the religion of the nation. Therefore, BJP is very muchafraid to accept the word secular, because by accepting it, its Hindutva politics will be in danger and its resolve to make India a Hindu Rashtra will remain incomplete. -- S.R. Darapuri I.P.S.(Retd) National President, All India Peoples Front www.dalitliberation.blogspot.com www.dalitmukti.blogspot.com

Bangladesh's dysfunctional secularism | Bharat Bhushan (Business Standard, Oct 25, 2021)

Business Standard, Oct 25, 2021

Bangladesh's dysfunctional secularism

Bharat Bhushan

Despite Islam being declared as its state religion since 1988, Bangladesh’s nationalism has been primarily defined in a cultural and linguistic idiom and it sees itself as a secular nation. The ruling Awami League claims a commitment to the secular values on which the republic was founded and is considered “minority friendly”. As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party have had an uninterrupted tenure since 2009, one would think that secularism would have strengthened under her regime. Yet secular voices have become somewhat muted in Bangladesh.

The recent communal violence during Durga Puja is not unprecedented. A study by the human rights group Ain O Salish Kendra of Bangladesh records as many as 3,679 attacks on the Hindu community between January 2013 and September 2021 prior to the latest events. In these 9 years, 559 Hindu houses and 442 businesses were torched and there were at least 1,678 cases of vandalism and arson affecting Hindu temples, idols and places of worship. This is a disturbing statistic during the tenure of a government that has monopolised the minority vote.

More disconcerting is the fact that the government’s response to the current violence is less solicitous compared to its actions in 2012 when Buddhist monasteries were attacked in Ramu Upzila in Cox’s Bazar district. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had then ordered the Bangladesh Army to rebuild the 12 Buddhist temples and monasteries destroyed, allocating Taka 200 million for the project. She herself visited the affected areas. Two years later, the then Bangladesh President, Abdul Hamid, visited several rebuilt temples and made it a point to inquire about the wellbeing of the Buddhist community.

While there was a protest at the historic Shahbagh demanding stern action against those who attacked the Hindu minority, it did not last more than one and half hours. Moreover, the protestors were mostly Bangladeshi Hindus with little visible social support.

Sheikh Hasina has announced that the culprits will be “hunted down” and several arrests have been made. The communal violence in Bangladesh has been reduced to a law and order problem, ignoring its political nature. Successive governments have failed to take on the Islamists so that radical Islamism of the period before Partition has only grown with the rise of political Islam from West Asia to Afghanistan and foreign funding for Wahabi madrasas.

Political parties across the spectrum have also made use of political Islam for electoral ends. The Awami League government may have decimated the most prominent Islamist grouping the Jamat-e-Islami, but organisations such as Hefazat-e-Islam and Islami Andolan Bangladesh are allowed to function with the connivance of the State. The Awami League has had an opportunistic relationship with Hefazat-e-Islam in the past which wants Sharia law to be implemented in the country. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, on the other hand, has had an electoral alliance with the Jamat-e-Isalmi. Because of political patronage, Islamist preachers, religious groups and militants have managed to raise the ambient religious temperature in the country. In this milieu any perceived insult to Islam sets off violence targeting not only minorities but also liberal bloggers, atheists and secular intellectuals.

Yet the discrimination against minorities is neither as deliberate, nor systemic as the Indian Hindu right makes it out to be. The minority population is 12 per cent of the total – of these 9.6 per cent are Hindus, 1 per cent Buddhists, 0.5 per cent Christians and less than 1 per cent other ethnic minorities. Their share in government employment is not insignificant -- 5 to 7 per cent in the administration and about 10 per cent in the police force. In the higher echelons of the administration and the police, minority share is estimated by some to be much higher. For example, in Pirganj Upzila in Rangpur district, where 65 Hindu homes were torched in a village, the sub-district officer was a Hindu as was virtually the entire police chain of command.

However, there is undeniably a growing suspicion of the minority community that is new. Even those who hold secular views are not happy when delegations of Hindus and members of temple committees interact with the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka in the aftermath of communal riots and he then meets Bangladesh officials with their complaints. It is seen as an infringement of national sovereignty and interference in their internal affairs. It may well be within the mandate of the United Nations to act on its “right to protect” but can India take up the violation of human rights of minorities in Bangladesh peremptorily? It increases suspicion about the allegiance of Hindu and they get seen as India’s Trojan horse.

This belief is fuelled further by statements from Indian Hindutva leaders who view Hindus across national boundaries as their natural constituency. India’s own treatment of its minority population has also sharpened anti-Hindu feeling among Islamists in Bangladesh. Indeed, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina indirectly said as much when seeking the cooperation of India in fighting communalism. She cautioned the “neighbouring state” that “they must make sure that nothing is done there which affects our country and hurts our Hindu community.”

Yet Hindutva organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have upped the stakes by asking the UN “to send a peacekeeping force to Bangladesh” in the wake of the communal violence and compared the attacks to “the brutality of the Nazis”. The BJP has been quick to use the violence in Bangladesh to political advantage in the by-elections due in four state legislative constituencies– Shantipur in Nadia district, Dinhata in Coochbehar district, Khardah in North 24 Parganas and Gosaba in South 24 Parganas - on October 30. Three of them are within a 10 to 20 km radius of the border with Bangladesh. The BJP’s election propaganda for the by-election predicts that Hindus in West Bengal would face violence similar to their co-religionists in Bangladesh if they did not mobilise against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Such short-sighted communal propagandising by Hindutva ideologues has had a deleterious impact on Bangladesh. However, the larger blame still lies with Bangladesh’s dysfunctional politics which is the cause of a continuous slide in its secular ideals.

Announcement: Varieties of Secularism: A Comparative Perspective by Prof. W. Cole Durham Jr - 15th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture | 22nd Feb, 5:30 pm, Jawahar Bhawan, New Delhi

Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
cordially invites you to the
15th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture

on

“Varieties of Secularism: A Comparative Perspective”

To be delivered by:
Prof. W. Cole Durham Jr.
(Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law and Founding Director, Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University)

Chair:
Prof. Tahir Mahmood
(Distinguished Jurist Chair and Professor of Eminence, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Amity University)


Date: Saturday, 22nd February 2020

Time: 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Venue: Auditorium, Jawahar Bhawan, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi - 110001

Video of Public Lecture by Prof. Akeel Bilgrami on The Idea of Secularism in India and its historical meaning

Annual Lecture by Centre for Policy Analysis (CPA), Professor Akeel Bilgrami spoke about the idea of secularism in India and its historical meaning.

India: Whither Secularism: Democratic Society and Minority Rights

Whither Secularism: Democratic Society and Minority Rights

Ram Puniyani

We are living in times where the social norms, the values of Constitution have been violated times and over again. The increasing atrocities on dalits, the lynchings of minorities in the name of Cow-Beef have changed the social equations in a drastic way during last few years. This in a way is part of the ascendance of a politics of communalism which believes in narrow, sectarian religious identity as its defining point. This may get further worsened with the big mandate for Modi in 2019 elections. In the aftermath of elections leading to his return to power, Modi in his victory speech made certain observations which are very disturbing on one hand and also give an idea of shape of things to come.

He stated that this election campaign has unmasked the deceitful claims of secularists and that said that now they can’t mislead the country. As per him secularism as a mask has been destroyed in these elections and that secularism was a cover for minority appeasement. He states that minorities have been deceived and cheated by the parties claiming to be secular.

This statement is not just in the euphoria of victory. For communalism it has been a deeper agenda to do away with the practice of secularism. It is true that there had been aberrations and weaknesses in the practice of this concept, with fallacies like the reversal of Shah Bano judgment or opening the gates of Babri mosque for Shilanyas. The assertion that minorities have been appeased is a total lie. The reports of Gopal Singh Commission, Rangnath Mishra Commission and Sachar Committee tell us about the worsening plight of the Muslim minorities. Some fundamentalist elements within Muslim community have been promoted but the Muslim community as a whole has on one hand been economically marginalized and on the other been subjected to social insecurity. Going beyond the obvious one need to understand as to why the shortfalls in the practice of secularism have dogged our nation?

Secularism has been defined and interpreted a various ways. In Indian context ‘Sarva Dharma Sambhave’ has been the major interpretation. Also that state will not interfere in the maters of religion and religion (clergy) will not dictate and state policy has been the major understanding of this concept, secularism, which is core and integral part of the concept of democracy. Some examples of this are in order. In the wake of demand for renovation of Somnath Temple, Gandhi said that Hindu community is capable of building its own temple. While his disciple Nehru did follow Gandhi’s path in times to come. Same Nehru later called the dams, industries and universities as temples of Modern India.

Gandhi in his own way puts it up brilliantly when he says, “Religion and state will be separate. I swear by my religion, I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to with it. The state will look after your secular welfare…”

Social scientist Rajiv Bhargava points out that secularism “…combats not just discrimination and other worse forms of inter-religious domination such as exclusion, oppression and humiliation. It is equally opposed to intra-religious domination, i.e. the domination (of women, Dalits, dissenters) within every religious community”

Secularism did not have smooth march in India. It came up with the rising classes during colonial period. The classes which came up with the changes like industrialization, communication and modern education. They called the process of comprehensive change as ‘India as a nation in the making’. The streams like those represented by Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar and Gandhi made it the foundation of their political ideology and struggle for better society. They stood for Indian nationalism. While the declining classes of Landlords and kings shaken by the changes in social fabric and loss of their earlier hegemony came up with communal politics. This communal politics in turn had a bifurcation, Muslim communalism and Hindu communalism. They dreamt of Muslim Nation and Hindu nation respectively. As Professor Bipan Chandra points out Communalism regards a community of one religion as a nation. In India it went through different phases of mild, moderate and extreme communalism. Its understanding is that people of one religion have similar interests, which in turn are different from those of other religion, and so the religious communities are made to pitch against each other. This politics regards the ‘other’ community as a threat to its’ own self. At the same time the intra societal hierarchies are put under the carpet, as the deeper agenda of these groups is to maintain those hierarchies of caste and gender.

One of the weaknesses of practice of secularism in India has been the tremendous opposition from communalism which has been on a rise. While in Pakistan, Muslim communalism was strong right from the beginning; in India it has become stronger during last four decades or so. Its strength has been founded on the polarization, which is an outcome of communal violence. Its issues are those of identity issues like Ram Temple, Love Jihad, Ghar wapsi and Holy cow-beef. It is this communalism which has stood as a counter to the secular ethos of the country; it is this which is the major obstacle for secularism being properly implemented. There are many factors which have been conducive to and helping in the promotion of divisive politics of communalism, one of them being the non completion of secularization process, the process whereby the power of landlord-clergy duo is abolished in a society marching towards democracy.

In India, due to colonial rule, the national movement had to direct its energy primarily against the colonial rulers, while the landlords-kings, to be later joined by some elite-middle classes, continued on the margins, giving the life breath to communalism, leading to partition of the country among other negative phenomenon in the society. Surely India’s plurality and diversity, though currently under cloud, will not let the secular values being eclipsed by the sectarian politics, which is currently on the prowl.

धर्मनिरपेक्षता, प्रजातान्त्रिक समाज और अल्पसंख्यक अधिकार [Article on Secularism today]

धर्मनिरपेक्षता, प्रजातान्त्रिक समाज और अल्पसंख्यक अधिकार

-राम पुनियानी

हम एक ऐसे दौर से गुजर रहे हैं जब सामाजिक मानकों और संवैधानिक मूल्यों का बार-बार और लगातार उल्लंघन हो रहा है. पिछले कुछ वर्षों में दलितों पर बढ़ते अत्याचार और गौरक्षा के नाम पर अल्पसंख्यकों की लिंचिंग ने समाज को झिंझोड़ कर रख दिया है. इस सबके पीछे है सांप्रदायिक राजनीति का परवान चढ़ना. यह वो राजनीति है जो संकीर्ण, सांप्रदायिक और धार्मिक पहचान पर आधारित है. सन 2019 के चुनाव में नरेन्द्र मोदी को जबरदस्त जनादेश मिलने के कारण, हालात के और ख़राब होने की आशंका से इंकार नहीं किया जा सकता. सत्ता में वापसी के बाद, मोदी ने अपने भाषण में जो कुछ कहा, वह अत्यंत चिंताजनक है और उससे आने वाले दिनों वे क्या होने वाला है, उसका संकेत भी मिलता है.  

श्री मोदी ने कहा कि इस चुनाव ने धर्मनिरपेक्षतावादियों के झूठे दावों को बेनकाब कर दिया है और अब वे इस देश को गुमराह नहीं कर सकेंगे. उन्होंने कहा कि इस चुनाव ने धर्मनिरपेक्षता के मुखौटे को तार-तार कर दिया है और यह दिखा दिया है कि धर्मनिरपेक्षता, अल्पसंख्यकों के तुष्टीकरण का दूसरा नाम है. उन्होंने कहा कि धर्मनिरपेक्ष होने का दावा करने वाली पार्टियों ने अल्पसंख्यकों को धोखा दिया है और उनके साथ कपट किया है.

इन बातों को विजय के नशे में झूमते एक व्यक्ति की अति-उत्साह में की गयी टिप्पणियां मान कर नज़रअंदाज़ करना एक बड़ी भूल होगी. धर्मनिरपेक्षता का अंत, हमेशा से साम्प्रदायिकता का लक्ष्य रहा है. यह सही है कि धर्मनिरपेक्षता की अवधारणा के कार्यान्वयन में कई कमियां रहीं हैं. धर्मनिरपेक्षता के नाम पर शाहबानो मामले में अदालत के निर्णय को पलटने और बाबरी मस्जिद के दरवाजे खोलने जैसी गंभीर भूलें की गईं है. परन्तु यह कहना कि अल्पसंख्यकों का तुष्टिकरण हुआ है, एक सफ़ेद झूठ है. गोपाल सिंह और रंगनाथ मिश्र आयोगों और सच्चर समिति की रपटों से पता चलता है कि मुसलमानों की सामाजिक-आर्थिक स्थिति न केवल ख़राब है बल्कि गिरती ही जा रही है.

मुस्लिम समुदाय के कुछ कट्टरपंथी तत्वों का कितना ही भला हुआ हो परन्तु आम मुसलमान, आर्थिक दृष्टि से बदहाल हुआ है और समाज में अपने आप को असुरक्षित महसूस करता है. हमें इस बात पर चिंतन करना ही होगा कि हम हमारे देश में धर्मनिरपेक्षता के दर्शन को ज़मीन पर क्यों नहीं उतार सके.

धर्मनिरपेक्षता की कई परिभाषाएं और व्याख्याएं हैं. भारतीय सन्दर्भ में ‘सर्वधर्म समभाव’ धर्मनिरपेक्षता की सबसे स्वीकार्य व्याख्या है. इसके साथ ही, राज्य का धार्मिक मामलों में हस्तक्षेप न करना और धर्म (पुरोहित वर्ग) का राज्य की नीति में कोई दखल न होना भी धर्मनिरपेक्षता का हिस्सा है.

धर्मनिरपेक्षता, प्रजातंत्र का मूल अवयव है और दोनों को अलग नहीं किया जा सकता. इस सिलसिले में कुछ उदाहरण दिए जा सकते हैं. जब यह मांग उठी कि सरकार को सोमनाथ मंदिर का पुनर्निर्माण करना चाहिए तब गाँधीजी ने कहा कि हिन्दू समुदाय यह काम करने में सक्षम है. गांधीजी के शिष्य नेहरु, उनकी बताई राह पर चलते रहे. नेहरु ने बांधों, कारखानों और विश्वविद्यालयों को आधुनिक भारत के मंदिर बताया. 

गांधीजी ने धर्मनिरपेक्षता की अत्यंत सारगर्भित परिभाषा देते हुआ लिखा, “धर्म और राज्य अलग-अलग होंगे. मैं अपने धर्म में विश्वास रखता हूँ. मैं उसके लिए जान भी दे दूंगा. परन्तु यह मेरा व्यक्तिगत मामला है. राज्य का इससे कोई लेना-देना नहीं है. राज्य आपकी दुनियावी बेहतरी का ख्याल रखेगा....”  

समाज विज्ञानी राजीव भार्गव लिखते हैं कि धर्मनिरपेक्षता... “न केवल भेदभाव, बल्कि धार्मिक वर्चस्व के और भी विकृत स्वरूपों जैसे बहिष्करण, दमन और तिरस्कार की खिलाफत करती है, बल्कि वह प्रत्येक धार्मिक समुदाय के भीतर वर्चस्व (यथा महिलाओं, दलितों या असहमत व्यक्तियों का दमन) का भी विरोध करती है.”

भारत में धर्मनिरपेक्षता की राह आसान नहीं रही है. यह अवधारणा, औपनिवेशिक काल में उभरते हुए वर्गों के ज़रिये आई. ये वे वर्ग थे जो औद्योगिकीकरण, संचार के साधनों के विकास और आधुनिक शिक्षा के प्रसार के साथ अस्तित्व में आये. इन वर्गों ने देश में हो रहे समग्र परिवर्तनों को ‘भारत के राष्ट्र बनने के प्रक्रिया’ के रूप में देखा. भगत सिंह, आंबेडकर और गाँधी जैसे महान व्यक्तित्वों ने धर्मनिरपेक्षता को अपनी राजनैतिक विचारधारा और एक बेहतर समाज के निर्माण के अपने संघर्ष का आधार बनाया. ये लोग भारतीय राष्ट्रवाद के हामी थे.

इसके विपरीत, अस्त होते वर्गों जैसे राजाओं और जमींदारों ने सामाजिक बदलावों और अपने वर्चस्व की समाप्ति की सम्भावना से घबरा कर, सांप्रदायिक राजनीति का सहारा लिया. सांप्रदायिक राजनीति आगे चलकर दो धाराओं में बंट गयी - हिन्दू साम्प्रदायिकता और मुस्लिम साम्प्रदायिकता. वे क्रमशः हिन्दू राष्ट्र और मुस्लिम राष्ट्र के निर्माण का स्वप्न देखने लगीं. जैसा कि प्रोफेसर बिपिन चन्द्र लिखते हैं, “साम्प्रदायिकता, धार्मिक समुदाय को राष्ट्र का पर्यायवाची मानती है”. भारत में साम्प्रदायिकता का दानव विकराल रूप धारण कर चुका है. साम्प्रदायिकता की विचारधारा मानती है कि एक धार्मिक समुदाय के सभी सदस्यों के हित समान होते हैं और वे दूसरे समुदाय के हितों से अलग होते हैं. और इसलिए, एक धार्मिक समुदाय, दूसरे धार्मिक समुदाय का स्वाभाविक तिद्वंदी होता है. सांप्रदायिक राजनीति के पैरोकार मानते हैं कि ‘दूसरा समुदाय’, ‘हमारे समुदाय’ के लिए खतरा है. यह राजनीति, धार्मिक समुदायों के भीतर के ऊंच-नीच पर पर्दा डालती है और जातिगत व लैंगिक पदक्रम बनाये रखना चाहती है.

भारत में बढ़ती साम्प्रदायिकता, धर्मनिरपेक्षता के लिए एक बड़ी चुनौती है. पाकिस्तान में तो मुस्लिम सांप्रदायिक ताकतें शुरू से ही बहुत मज़बूत थीं. भारत में साम्प्रदायिकता, पिछले चार दशकों में मज़बूत हुई है. और इसका कारण है, सांप्रदायिक हिंसा से जनित धार्मिक ध्रुवीकरण. राममंदिर, लव जिहाद, घरवापसी और पवित्र गाय जैसे पहचान से जुड़े मुद्दे, भारत में साम्प्रदायिकता को हवा देते रहे हैं. साम्प्रदायिकता, देश के धर्मनिरपेक्ष चरित्र के लिए एक बड़ा खतरा है. वह इस देश को सच्चे अर्थों में धर्मनिरपेक्ष बनाने की राह में एक बड़ा रोड़ा है. साम्प्रदायिकता की विघटनकारी राजनीति को बढ़ावा देने वाला एक बड़ा कारक है देश के धर्मनिरपेक्षीकरण की प्रक्रिया का समाप्त न होना. धर्मनिरपेक्षीकरण वह प्रक्रिया है, जिसके चलते प्रजातंत्र की ओर बढ़ते किसी भी समाज में पुरोहित-जमींदार वर्ग की सत्ता और वर्चस्व समाप्त होता है.

भारत में औपनिवेशिक शासन के कारण, राष्ट्रीय आन्दोलन की ऊर्जा मुख्य रूप से औपनिवेशिक शासकों का विरोध करने में व्यय हुई और राजा और जमींदार - जिनके साथ बाद में उच्च मध्यम वर्ग का एक हिस्सा भी जुड़ गया - हाशिये पर तो खिसक गए परन्तु उनका प्रभाव समाप्त नहीं हुआ. वे ही आगे चल कर सांप्रदायिक राजनीति के झंडाबरदार बने. इस राजनीति ने अंततः देश का विभाजन किया और समाज में कई नकारात्मक प्रवृत्तियों को जन्म दिया. परन्तु यह निश्चित है कि सांप्रदायिक ताकतें, भारत के बहुवाद और उसके विविधवर्णी चरित्र को कभी समाप्त नहीं कर सकेंगीं. उनकी हार हो कर रहेगी. (अंग्रेजी से हिन्दी रूपांतरण अमरीश हरदेनिया)

India: How to rescue genuine secularism | Rajeev Bhargava (May 28, 2019, The Hindu)

The Hindu, May 28, 2019

How to rescue genuine secularism

by Rajeev Bhargava

The government must focus on its primary business; to prevent religion-based violence, oppression and discrimination

One word conspicuous by its absence not only from the election campaign but perhaps from the entire political discourse in recent times was secularism. Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought it back in his victory speech. Most political parties in the last 30 years had practised a naqli (fake) secularism, he said. His great achievement, he implied, was to have unmasked these fake secularists and single-handedly dismantled secularism. Until now, for Mr. Modi, fake secularism has been the handmaiden of minority appeasement. Next day, however, he spoke of winning back the trust of the minorities, who, he said, have been deceived and cheated by other parties. With this, fake secularism was given a different meaning; it does not pamper but cheats minorities. In other words, it does not satisfy their real needs, but only gives the illusion of doing so. Here, Mr. Modi acknowledges that Muslims are a deprived lot. So, what, according to Mr. Modi, is asli (genuine) secularism? The answer he gives is the inclusion of minorities in ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’, which is translated by his party as ‘justice to all, appeasement to none’. To this he added ‘sabka vishwas’, winning the trust of all.

Fears of minorities

On the treatment of minorities by other parties, the Prime Minister is partly right and partly wrong. Wrong, because the insecurity amongst minorities is created largely by Mr. Modi’s own political supporters. Lynchings in the past few years and the fear such random violence creates are only the tip of this gigantic iceberg. Right, because when in power, most non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parties have done little more than provide security. Now, the condition of feeling safe and secure must not be underestimated. Freedom from fear is important, and to live in the fear of being lynched only because you are a Muslim is a very real unfreedom indeed. Yet, political parties have not helped Muslims with their vikas. Some have even pampered the orthodoxy within their communities and have done little to bring them out of their ghettos. So, this secularism is partly fake because it has often meant tolerating minority communalism, and hobnobbing with the most selfish and conservative spokespersons of the multiple Muslim communities of India.

It is very sad indeed that in the election campaign, these ‘fake secularists’ failed miserably to speak up for Muslims. Perhaps they were terrified that if they spoke of the legitimate interests of Muslims, they would be immediately branded as pro-Pakistan, anti-national or anti-Hindu. Yes, ‘fake’ secularism has failed the minorities and the people of India, but the BJP and its supporters, particularly the so-called ‘fringe’, must take a lot of blame for that. This needs course correction and the nation would be grateful to the Prime Minister if he began that process.

But is the secularism propounded or implied by the Prime Minister genuine? At least in theory, ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’ gets one thing right: no individual citizen should face discrimination on grounds of religion. Basic amenities, good health, education, housing and employment should be available equally to all, regardless of their religion. If he succeeds in this endeavour, he would make great strides towards realising secularism.

However, secularism combats not just discrimination and other worse forms of inter-religious domination such as exclusion, oppression and humiliation. It is equally opposed to intra-religious domination, i.e. the domination (of women, Dalits, dissenters) within every religious community. For instance, the fight against the hierarchical caste system in India, quite like the struggle against the church in European history, is integral to the fight for secularism — a point noted by both Ambedkar and Nehru. Equally important for secularism is opposition to religious fanaticism and bigotry. Neither of these is explicitly captured by ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’.

Misunderstanding secularism

That Indian secularism is not anti-religious is widely understood — but not that it is simultaneously against both forms of institutionalised religious domination. How did this misunderstanding develop? First, the struggle against inter-religious domination (a defence of minority rights, opposition to majority and minority communalism) became separated from the fight against intra-religious domination (religion-related patriarchy and caste domination, fanaticism, bigotry and extremism). Then, this intra-religious dimension was jetttisoned from the meaning of secularism and, much to the detriment of its overall value, secularism began to be identified, by proponents and opponents alike, exclusively with the defence of minority rights.

This opened the door for viewing secularism first as a tool to protect the interests of Muslims and Christians, of no relevance to Hindus, and then for twisting it to appear as pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu. The strength of Indian secularism — its advocacy of minority cultural rights — was easily made to appear as its weakness and the burden of its defence, rather than be shared by all citizens, fell on the shoulders of minorities and ‘pro-minority’ secularists. This is unfair. Secularism is needed as much to protect Hindus from intra-religious domination, from their ‘fringe elements’, as well as from proponents of religion-based caste and gender hierarchies. And required equally to protect minorities from their own orthodoxies and extremisms. Asli secularism plays that role. Naqli secularism protects fanatics and legitimises gender and caste-based domination.

Secularism today has other problems. One is its intellectual failure to distinguish communitarianism from communalism. Communitarianism simply notes that an individual is at least partly defined by his or her religious/philosophical commitments, community and traditions. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to claim that one is a Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Christian/atheist etc, and to take legitimate pride in one’s community or be ashamed of it when there is good reason to be.

Communalism is different. Here one’s identity and the existence and interests of one’s community are viewed, even defined, as necessarily opposed to others. It is communal to believe or act in a way that presupposes that one can’t be a Hindu without being anti-Muslim, or vice-versa. Communalism is communitarianism gone sour. It is to see each other as enemies locked in a permanent war with one another. Every decent Indian national should be against communalism. But no one should decry legitimate forms of communitarianism. It is simply wrong to conflate communitarianism with communalism.

Attention must also be drawn to another problem of Indian secularism. Our education system often fails to distinguish religious instruction and religious education. No publicly funded school or college should have religious instruction, best done at home or in privately funded schools; but reasonable, decent education should include elementary knowledge of all religious traditions. A deeper understanding of these traditions is vital, for it would enable students to discern their strengths and weaknesses and identify what in them is worth preserving or discarding. But Indians come out of their education system without any critical understanding of their religio-philosophical traditions. As a result, a defence of our own religious traditions or critique of others is shallow and frequently mischievous. This too is fake secularism.

What is to be done?

What then must be expected from real, genuine secularism? Justice to all citizens, affirmation of all reasonable religious identities, rejection of majority communalism, careful defence of legitimate minority rights only when accompanied by a robust critique of minority extremism, and a critical appraisal of religions with a deeper, empathetic grasp of their traditions. The government’s primary business is to prevent religion-based violence, oppression and discrimination. Perhaps, those outside the government should attend to its other functions. Together, we may just rescue our genuine secularism.

Rajeev Bhargava is Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi

India: Reclaim the concept of secularism | Yamini Aiyar

Hindustan Times, May 13, 2019

Reclaim the concept of secularism
The Congress, once the custodian of secularism, has pushed it to the margins of political discourse

Yamini Aiyar

The coarsening of debate in the campaign is an extension of what has become the new normal in public debate in India. Aided in no small measure by the new modes of communication that social media allows, the space for careful argumentation and reasoning has shrunk giving way to an increasingly partisan endorsement of ideas(PARWAZ KHAN/HINDUSTAN TIMES )

India has reached the final phase of what has been a long, treacherous and toxic election campaign. All eyes are now on May 23 and what the election outcome portends for India’s future. For many, a resounding electoral majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to embolden the party and its affiliates to pursue unencumbered its majoritarian project. A coalition (with or without the BJP) may serve to slow down or even put brakes on this project. Either way, May 23 is likely to be a definitive moment in India’s democratic trajectory.

But beyond electoral outcomes and the short-term changes this may bring, the political discourse emerging from these elections points to a much deeper and more fundamental shift unfolding in our public sphere. And it is this columnist’s contention that, regardless of the election outcome, India’s future as a secular democracy will depend significantly on how these shifts are mediated and whether we can rebuild a new political consensus that upholds core democratic values and serves as an effective ideological counterpoint to the current majoritarian turn.

Political scientist Suhas Palshikar has argued that since 2014, India is witness to the emergence of a new party system with a new set of dominant ideas and sensibilities that are beginning to shape our political culture and public life. For Palshikar, electoral defeat could puncture the BJP’s march toward crafting this new ideological hegemony. But I would argue that the electoral discourse in the 2019 campaign is a clear indicator that this new party system, more specifically the ideological hegemony it has sought to achieve, is slowly taking root, and this will require more than an electoral defeat to resist.

There are two specific ways in which this new ideological dominance has articulated itself that are worth highlighting.

First, the coarseness of electoral debate. From “Chowkidar chor hai (Gatekeeper is a thief)” to “Bhrastachari #1 (Corrupt No 1)”, this election has seen politicians of all colours indulging in coarse name-calling. But it is the BJP, perhaps on account of nervousness, that has led the charge in eschewing all norms of civility in this election. Led by no less than the prime minister himself, BJP leaders have taken to using blatantly communal and divisive language to appeal to voters. Given the party’s ideological convictions and the rhetorical strategies it has adopted to craft its political hegemony, this coarsening of debate was perhaps only to be expected. But the Election Commission’s failure to act on complaints and the relentless, repeated and increasingly blatant violations of the Model Code of Conduct in political rallies and election speeches, risk normalising the coarseness of political debate in our public culture.

Importantly, it erodes the possibility of the electoral sphere functioning as a space for realising the somewhat precarious democratic promise of political accountability for performance.

This coarsening of debate in the campaign is an extension of what has become the new normal in public debate in India. Aided in no small measure by the new modes of communication that social media allows, the space for careful argumentation and reasoning has shrunk, giving way to an increasingly partisan endorsement of ideas. In its quest for ideological dominance, the BJP and its affiliates have successfully leveraged this shrinking space to appropriate and ascribe new meaning to the core values — secularism, nationalism — that have shaped India’s post-Independence democratic project.

The second issue is secularism. The greatest casualty of the shrinking space for public reasoning is secularism. In an election campaign that has been so blatantly communal and where most opposition parties have sought to define their political positions in contrast to the BJP’s majoritarian project, the absence of a robust defence and even the mere mention of secularism in election debates are ominous. The Congress, through its manifesto, has sought to position itself as an alternative to the “pernicious ideology” that “tramples on the essence of a multicultural country”. But it has carefully avoided the language of secularism, pushing the concept to the margins of its discourse.

But a majoritarian political agenda cannot be credibly resisted without a robust reclamation of secularism. Arguably, the crisis in secularism predates the present political regime, which is why it has been vulnerable to appropriation and abuse, leaving its defenders bereft of a vocabulary to debate its cause.

In an important essay titled “Secularism under Siege”, political scientist Neera Chandhoke argues that this crisis is a consequence of conflating the social process of secularisation with political norms of secularism. Chandhoke argues for the need to reinscribe secularism as an integral component of democracy. In pursuance of its ideological agenda, the BJP has sought to equate secularism with some notion of anti-Hindu and anti-national. But by choosing silence over debate and actively seeking to reaffirm its Hindu credentials, the Congress has in fact legitimised the BJP’s ideological project. India’s democratic future lies in our ability to wrest, reclaim and reinvent the concept of secularism. And this election is unlikely to create the conditions to do just this.

Yamini Aiyar is president and chief executive, Centre for Policy Research

India: Begusarai, metaphor of a secular crisis | Varghese K. George

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/begusarai-metaphor-of-a-secular-crisis/article27072809.ece?homepage=true

Begusarai, metaphor of a secular crisis

Varghese K. George

more-in

General Elections 2019

For the minorities secularism is a survival tool, for the elite it is an ideology. In caste competition, it could be a tactic

Begusarai, in the Gangetic plains of Bihar, has long been a stronghold of the Communist Party of India (CPI). Kanhaiya Kumar, the firebrand young leader and former president of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union, is the CPI candidate from the Begusarai Lok Sabha constituency. Over the past five years, he has become a national icon of resistance against Hindutva. His candidacy has so inspired opponents of Hindutva that they raised all the money that he could legally spend in campaign through crowdfunding — ₹70 lakh. Actors, academics and activists, an array of people from India’s secular, liberal universe campaigned for Mr. Kumar. So did enthusiastic youngsters from all over the country. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi personifies the march of Hindutva in India, Mr. Kumar personifies the resistance to it. And the fight for Begusarai has larger messages than the fortunes of the candidates in the fray.

Collapse of binaries

However, this binary world as imagined by the elite was processed differently in Begusarai, which went to the polls on April 29. “We want Narendra Modi as Prime Minister and Kanhaiya Kumar as MP,” said Binod Singh, a 26-year-old belonging to the same upper caste Bhumihar community as the candidate. This view is broadly representative of a significant section of Mr. Kumar’s Bhumihar supporters, though the BJP’s candidate is also a Bhumihar.

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In Begusarai, it’s a battle between ‘beta’ and ‘neta’

 In the triangular contest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the CPI and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Begusarai, the latter two are avowedly opposed to the BJP’s Hindutva politics. The RJD is in alliance with the Congress and some other small outfits representing Dalit and backward communities. Its candidate, Tanveer Hasan, is a respectable modernist leader who lost in 2014 but stayed active in the constituency since.
How the principles of secularism and social justice, both components of progressive politics, interacted in electoral politics could be understood in terms of the intense competition among caste-based interests groups for political power over the decades. In the era of Congress dominance in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the upper castes that controlled the party roped in Dalits and Muslims with the rhetoric of justice and secularism, but excluded the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from power. The rise of Hindutva changed this dynamic, as the upper castes were the first to abandon the Congress for the BJP. The emergent OBC politics, with Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav at the helm in Bihar and U.P., respectively, offered an alternative to Muslims as the Congress collapsed. With the support of Muslims, the OBCs realised their decades long yearning for political power.
The Muslim-OBC social combination, with the Yadavs at its core, not merely ended the upper caste hegemony, but also crushed its vehicle, the Congress party. There is no normative exposition or pursuit of secularism in this context, but social justice parties were against Hindutva for its Manuwaad, or upper caste dominance.
From the social justice perspective, the opposition to Hindutva can be summarised thus: upper castes allied with Muslims to exclude OBCs initially; when they abandoned Muslims for Hindutva, OBCs challenged Hindutva, made a social coalition with Muslims that proved enduring, and won power. Muslims were unwitting participants in this caste competition.

Progressive, oppressive

The elite, vernacular and English, articulated the standards of secularism, but remained disconnected from the dynamics of caste aspirations at play in the electoral arena. The ideologues and leaders of this elite, the Nehruvian and the Marxist streams, have been primarily upper caste. It would be unfair to question their intentions or commitment but the accident of their birth limited their appeal among the subalterns. The role of Bhumihars in Bihar politics is instructive. Several doyens of the Communist movement were from the community, which also had the progressive poet Dinkar among its ranks. But the landowning community also mobilised a private army called the Ranveer Sena, which launched murderous attacks on Dalits in waves of violence in the 1990s, simultaneous with the Muslim-OBC political partnership, and as a reaction to it. If Brahminism denotes hegemony, Bhumiharism represents violent oppression.

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My fight is against the politics of polarisation: Kanhaiya Kumar

 That being said, the CPI’s Bhumihar candidate won nearly two lakh votes in Begusarai in 2014, which evidently included votes of Dalits and OBCs, for the politics it represents. This wider appeal has been significantly strengthened by Kanhaiya Kumar’s candidacy, notwithstanding the presence of ‘Modi-Kanhaiya’ voters among his supporters. But the nearly exclusive control of the CPI by a single caste makes it suspect in the eyes of subalterns whose politics it professes to advance. Of the five seats that the CPI wanted to contest as part of the RJD-led alliance, four were for Bhumihars, according to Shivanand Tiwari, RJD leader.
The Muslim elites could bargain with the upper caste-controlled Congress and the backward caste RJD and Samajwadi Party for favours and representation, but their power to do so is in decline with the rise of Hindutva. In any case, the material condition of average Muslims is the lowest compared to other social groups, though the Hindutva narrative portrays them as undeserving recipients of secular appeasement. Even for Muslims who do not subscribe to secularism as a principle, it is a survival strategy in a Hindu majority country. The rise of Hindutva has correspondingly meant a decline in Muslim representation in politics. Security has increasingly become the sole expectation of Muslims from secularism. But the RJD and the SP continue to field Muslim candidates, and in Bihar and U.P., there are constituencies where Muslims can win.
Begusarai is one such, but the contest between the CPI and the RJD put the community in dilemma. An upper caste communist’s verve to take on Hindutva is evidently more than a vulnerable Muslim could achieve, and the community supported Mr. Kumar in significant numbers. For security, Muslims are willing to surrender their claim of representation — which, ironically, is the implied demand that Hindutva makes to the community in exchange for security. If Muslims abandon a Muslim RJD candidate, the OBCs and Dalits would rethink their attitude towards Muslims — and the secularism-social justice axis, which has been a speed-breaker for Hindutva, could collapse.
Politically ambitious OBCs and Dalits prefer Hindutva in which they have representation to a secular nationalistic project that is thoughtless of those ambitions at best and exclusive at worst. Lower caste politics is broadly indifferent to the rhetoric of secularism and their opposition to Hindutva is primarily from a social justice perspective. Many champions of lower caste interests would even grudge that Muslims are indifferent to their struggles against Manuwaad. Hindutva 2.0 under Mr. Modi has cleverly used this dynamic for its rise, by offering them representation though no significant political power.
A progressive politics, of which secularism is a part, and agnostic of all considerations of caste and religion, may be an ideal worth pursuing, but questions of representation for different social groups within it is extremely critical.

The road ahead

In the arena of caste competition, secularism could be an effective tactic; for the minorities it is a survival tool, and for the elite it is an ideology. Reconciling these differing, though not necessarily contesting, perspectives, is essential but difficult as the contest between the RJD and the CPI shows. For secular politics to be sustainable as a winnable electoral platform, it must merge with social justice politics. That requires a negotiation between the self-interests of different social groups as they subjectively perceive them with the normative claims of that politics articulated by the elite. Though they have overlapping traits, their accents are different, and there is even a subterranean hostility with one another. Begusarai is a metaphor of that crisis of Indian secularism.
varghese.g@thehindu.co.in

India: The formula that the state must remain equidistant from all religions is proving to be unworkable | Mohammed Ayoob

 The Hindu

The irrelevance of secularism

Mohammed Ayoob March 30, 2019

The formula that the state must remain equidistant from all religions is proving to be unworkable

A debate has flared up, especially after the Supreme Court’s Sabarimala judgment, on whether the state should leave religion alone. I believe in the Indian context, it is more pertinent to ask whether religion can leave the state alone. The relevance of this question is underscored by the unique definition of secularism espoused by the founding fathers of the Constitution, namely that the Indian state must be equidistant from all religions while allowing religions equal space in the public sphere.

Question of definition

For several reasons this definition of secularism has created a lot of confusion as to what the term stands for. First, the formulation was impractical, given the huge numerical disparity in the religious composition of the Indian nation. This demographic inequality paved the way for the intrusion, and now proliferation, of majoritarian religious symbols, idioms and practices in the state’s domain.

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 Second, given the congenitally religious nature of Indian society and the consequent political import of identity based on religion, political parties, almost without exception, found it convenient to use religious sectarianism to advance their fortunes. The success of the Muslim League in hiving off Muslim majority areas from the rest of the country in 1947 on the basis of a religio-sectarian agenda gave a major fillip to Hindu nationalist organisations, such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Thee parties were already active in the pre-Partition political arena but were of marginal importance during the freedom movement. The demographic transformation of independent India, as a consequence of Partition, into a Hindu majority of around 80% paved the way for the emergence of Hindu nationalist parties spawned by the RSS — first the Jan Sangh and then the BJP — as major political players in the country.
The Congress itself had a Hindu nationalist component that had been overshadowed by the ideology of composite nationalism because of the towering personality of its leading exponent, Jawaharlal Nehru. This ideology began to decline from the early 1960s with the deterioration in Nehru’s health. The decline was temporarily halted in the late 1960s during the first few years of Indira Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister by the influence on her of her mentor, P.N. Haksar, an uncompromising secularist. But it became clear that she was not above playing the religio-sectarian card. She did so successfully in order to return to power in 1980.
Rajiv Gandhi continued in his mother’s footsteps in the aftermath of her assassination by giving a free hand to marauding mobs that massacred thousands of Sikhs in Delhi. He subsequently followed a policy of dual appeasement: first getting Parliament to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Shah Bano case and then by opening the Babri Masjid, which had remained closed since 1949, to allow Hindu religious rites to be conducted in its premises.
Nonetheless, despite the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee interregnum that saw the Gujarat massacre of 2002 (in picture), the fiction of the secular state was maintained as long as the Congress remained in power in New Delhi. The accession to power on its own steam of the BJP in 2014 removed the secular veneer almost totally. The intrusion of religion into the state’s arena in the form of donning of religious garb by state functionaries while carrying out state duties and participation in religious rites while acting in their official capacity has now become common. The proliferation of cow vigilantism and the anti-Muslim rhetoric of some of the BJP’s leading lights provide further evidence of this trend.

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Understanding secularism in the Indian context

 

Blatant appeals now

The appeal to religious identity, always a part of India’s political landscape, has now become much more blatant. The Congress, impressed by the electoral success of the BJP apparently based on its Hindu nationalist agenda, has become the B-team of the latter by embracing soft Hindutva as compared to the BJP’s hard Hindutva. Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s flaunting of his caste and religious affiliation while visiting dozens of temples in States where elections were held recently are indications of how far the Congress has changed from its heyday under his grandfather.
One cannot blame politicians of either the BJP or the Congress for taking recourse to majoritarian nationalism for this is what currently sells in the electoral market. Politicians are, above all, interested in attaining power and the route to power today seems to lie through Hindu nationalism, whether hard or soft. If one needs someone or something to blame, it is the definition of secularism, or lack of it, adopted at the time of Independence.
The framers of the Constitution, Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar included, failed to erect an unbreachable firewall between state and religion that would clearly prevent the intrusion of religious idioms, practices and agendas into the political arena and insulate the state from the religious sphere. One can understand why they failed to do so. The innate religious nature of Indian society and the after-effects of Partition on religious grounds precluded this option. However, in this context, to call the ideological foundation of the Constitution secularism, although the term was not explicitly included in the document until 1976, has done great harm to the concept. It has done even greater disservice to the country by thoroughly confusing the public as to what the term denotes.
The formula that the state must remain equidistant from all religions, the unique Indian definition of secularism, is clearly unworkable. The sooner we realise this reality the easier it will be for all concerned to come to terms with the current trajectory of Indian politics. It is time to jettison the use of the term rather than confound the Indian public even further as to what ‘secularism’ really means.
Mohammed Ayoob is Senior Fellow, Center for Global Policy, Washington, DC, and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University

Video of 11th Dr Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture "Secularism: Its Meaning and the Need for it" delivered by Prof Irfan Habib [speaking in hindustani]

Reject Punjab’s life term for sacrilege | Editorial in Economic Times

The Economic Times

Reject Punjab’s life term for sacrilege

August 25, 2018, 7:44 am IST ET Edit in ET Editorials | Economy, Edit Page, India 

 

The government of Punjab has done the nation a disservice by seeking to add a section to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that would make even reasoned debate of theology a crime that warrants life imprisonment.
The Centre should reject the recommended change to the IPC. The colonial-era law already contains two sections, 295 and 295A, which provide for two-year and three-year prison terms, respectively, for damaging or defiling any place or object held to be sacred by any class of people and for hurting the religion or religious sentiments of any class of people. Punjab now proposes 295AA with life imprisonment for “injury, damage or sacrilege” to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Geeta, the Quran and the Bible.

The Akali Dal government of Punjab had proposed a similar law for defiling the Guru Granth Sahib, in the wake of repeated incidents of deliberate attempts to incite religious fury by strewing torn pages and mangled copies of the Sikh holy book in different parts of Punjab. The Centre had turned down the proposal on the ground that it was not secular. The present amendment incorporates the holy books of other major faiths and, so, seeks to clear the secular bar. This is the wrong response to deliberate attempts by anti-national forces to provoke religious disturbance. The political class should unite to ask people to be on guard against such provocation, and seek their cooperation to defeat anti-India moves. Sensible politics and law enforcement are the right response, not tougher laws liable to abuse.
To have such a law on the statute book is to invite abuse: the law on sedition is a case in point. Sedition cases have been rife across the land, in spite of repeated Supreme Court rulings that only active incitement to violence against the state constitutes sedition.

India: Punjab’s sacrilege law defiles the sacred, messes with the secular

The Indian Express

A blasphemous law

Using state power to enforce the sacred, Punjab’s sacrilege law defiles the sacred, messes with the secular.

Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta | Updated: August 25, 2018 12:16:29 am

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The blasphemy law also messes with secularism. A liberal state needs two sensibilities.  The Punjab government’s proposal to amend Article 295 of the Penal Code is deeply regressive and will have deep ramifications beyond Punjab. The proposed amendment gives life imprisonment for whoever causes injury, damage or sacrilege to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bhagwad Gita, the Quran and the Bible. As we have seen in the case of neighbouring Pakistan, the progressive strengthening of anti-blasphemy laws during the Seventies was a sign of a toxic combination of greater intolerance and authoritarianism. Does India want to traverse the same road?
Holy books like the Adi Granth are sacred. They are sacred not just for their content. They express the highest truths about Ultimate Reality. The “Sat” in “Ek Omkar Sat Nam” brilliantly combines both Truth and Existence. But in the Sikh tradition, the Book is also treated iconically, with elaborate rituals around its sacred treatment, often to the point where it is not easily disseminated. But using state power to enforce the sacred, both defiles the sacred and messes with the
secular.

The article defiles the sacredness of the Book, the eternity of the Word because the status of the Book now becomes an artefact of state power. It is if the song of Krishna, or the word of Mohammad, or the teaching of the Gurus, now need the imprimatur of state violence to secure their sacredness.
Rather than being luminous, potent and transcendent texts, their status is now reduced to a section of the Indian Penal Code. It also gives defilers of these texts more power: It is in effect saying these books can, in fact, be defiled by some rearrangement or even a burning of a copy. So much for the indestructible Word. The greatest heresy is to think that the word of God needs protection from the mortal state. The sacrilege to the book is not its burning, it is this law.
But this law also messes with secularism. A liberal state needs two sensibilities. The first is that many good things are good and derive their authentic meaning precisely from the fact that there is no coercion behind them. The second is that my beliefs and faith, even if entirely sound, do not by themselves provide sufficient ground for the state using its coercive power to enforce them. The argument that the state needs to use coercive power in deference to religious sentiments (however sincere those sentiments might be), is a piece of illiberal and dangerous nonsense. I may respect something, but it does not give sufficient warrant for the state to enforce this belief or sentiment on others. Religious sentiments need not be illiberal; but they become illiberal when they become the basis for the state enforcing the idea that everyone has to defer to those sentiments. In India, we are constantly expanding the circle of deference to religious sentiment. Contrary to what the Punjab government says, making religious sentiments the basis for law, is a recipe for competitive political mobilisation and conflict, not of peace. This law is also deeply authoritarian. The idea of life imprisonment for acts of injury to the book is neither about deterrence, nor piety. It is simply about the state making a show of its power because it can.
The law also messes with history in bizarre ways. In order to show that the law was not directed at a particular religion, the act includes texts like the Bhagwad Gita in its ambit. The law is still sectarian in that it protects four texts, and the state has decided which texts get protection. But whatever the glories and importance of the Bhagwad Gita, the idea that the state now creates a new liturgy of respect around that text in the same way as the Adi Granth or the Koran, is the state taking over the right to define the significance of these texts in its own way. It is in effect converting the text to what it has never been.
Defenders of the amendments say that the text will not lead to the closing of spaces for criticism, since the act of injury to the text is narrowly defined. But this is plain nonsense. One of the tragedies of modern Sikhism is simply that the religion of extraordinary ecumenism and wondrous detachment has become often seriously internally intolerant. Part of this is political: The SGPC wanting to maintain as much of its monopoly over the religious organisation as possible. But if you talk to serious Sikh scholars you will quickly find out just how difficult it is to do serious critical scholarship in this area: Scholars have been traumatised by their communities. I have personally known scholars who will not write critically on intra-Sikh politics for fear of reprisals.
Often the issue is simply that the scholarship dealing with the character of the text is considered “injurious” to the text, a defilement. In another context, even our courts have held rearranging Basava Vachanas in a different order (to give a more “feminist” reading) was offensive to the Lingayats. Given this context, any law that empowers the state to give upto life imprisonment for injury to the book is about nothing but creating a pall of fear. Its effect will not be the number of prosecutions; its effect will be more palpably felt in people not even daring to push the boundaries of protest.
When the original IPC was discussed in the 1920s, our leaders were far more conscious of its possible infringement on liberty. Now the political class legitimises any infringement on liberty with the imprimatur of majoritarian sentiment behind it. It is true that in Punjab there were acts of desecration of several religious texts. But there are enough existing laws to deal with those who would want to maliciously generate enmity between communities. Second, the motives of these desecrators are mixed. But if they have a political purpose, it is to make sure that they can use religious sentiments to destroy India’s liberal democracy. By caving into those fears, by treating Indian citizens as infantile creatures of passion who cannot be educated for liberty, we are unwittingly aiding their political agenda.
It should also worry a democracy that no political party has opposed or called out the authoritarian character of this bill. Congress and AAP are now both legitimising “religious sentiment” as itself a valid argument (think Ayodhya). For, caving in to some nebulous argument about religious sentiments does not just make us destroy both religion and the state, it also produces political cowardice of the highest order.