BY SHAILENDRA AIMA
Kashmiri Pandits have prided themselves for several centuries as being learned, broad-minded and modern in several aspects of life and behavior. Besides, they have been astute in state-craft and most adjusting. Their adaptability has been an envy of their competitors as well as compatriots. To these qualities of head and heart, Pandits have also taken pride in the adage of being secular. In fact, it has been one of the Pandit luminaries, Jawahar Lal, who thrust the term not only on Pandits but on the entire Indian nation and state.
Genesis of Secularism
The Cambridge Advanced Dictionary describes secularism as “the belief that religion should not be involved with the ordinary social and political activities of a country” and secularist as when something is secularized, religious influence, power or control is removed from it. It synonyms are often atheism or agnosticism.
The term “SECULAR” was used for the first time about 1846 by George Jacob Holyoake to denote "a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life" The fundamental principle of Secularism is that, in his whole conduct, man should be guided exclusively by considerations derived from the present life itself. Anything that is above or beyond the present life should be entirely overlooked. Whether God exists or not, whether the soul is immortal or not, are questions which at best cannot be answered, and on which consequently no motives of action can be based. A fortiori all motives derived from the Christian religion are worthless. "Things Secular is as separate from the Church as land from the ocean" (English Secularism, 1).
What ever far one would stretch ones imagination, the word secular ends up connoting rejection of religion and religious considerations. It asserts the freedom from religion and the government imposition of religion upon the people, within a state that is neutral on matters of belief, and gives no state privileges or subsidies to religions. And in another sense, refers to a belief that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be based on what it considers to be evidence and fact, not on beliefs that secularists consider superstitious. Secularists hold that public policy should be free from religious influence.
Unfortunately, primary sources in the nature of collection of Holyoake’s own writings are not available – at least not easily. But, happily, wholly reliable material is available to show the unmistakable views of Holyoake and Bradlaugh. In 1851, a definite stage in the emergence of explicit secularism was reached by the founding of the Central Secular Society by Holyoake. The Society issued a statement of secularist doctrine proclaiming:
1. science as the true guide of man,
2. morality as secular, not religious, in origin,
3. reason as the only authority,
4. freedom of thought and speech, and
5. that owing to the uncertainties of survival we should direct our efforts to this life only.
George Holyoake was no less an atheist than Charles Bradlaugh. Holyoake had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for making the blasphemous statement that God should be retired. It should be remembered that Holyoake published 'The Trial of Theism' in 1858. It is also recognized that his coining of the word ‘secularism’ was an attempt to give atheism some respectability. In March 1870 there was between Holyoake and Bradlaugh a debate on the proposition that “the principles of secularism do not include atheism” Holyoake in support of the proposition canvassed that “… the secularist concerns himself with this world without denying or discussing any other world, either the origin of this, or the existence of that”.
Bradlaugh, on the other hand, held “that the logical consequence of secularism is the denial, the absolute denial of Providence”. In short, Holyoake said that ignoring God was enough; Bradlaugh insisted that God should be banished. This minor difference between them did not affect their common conviction that secularism demanded complete separation of the Church from the State and the abolition of all privileges granted to religious organizations.
The Indian Context
However, in the discourse on secularism in India, Dr. Radhakrishnan’s view of secularism is enough to inform ourselves on the subject:
"No group of citizens shall arrogate to itself rights and privileges which it denies to others. No person should suffer any form of disability or discrimination because of his religion but all alike should be free to share to the fullest degree in the common life. This is the basic principle involved in the separation of Church and State. The religious impartiality of the Indian State is not to be confused with secularism or atheism. Secularism as has been defined is in accordance with the ancient religious traditions of India". (emphasis provided).
At best this means that, in the Indian context, in a secular society everyone should be free to practice his or her religion. It means 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.
Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar, who, as the Chief Justice of India, had inaugurated the seminar on Secularism organized by the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi, delivered Kashinath Trimbak Telang Endowment Lectures in February 1970 on 'Secularism and the Constitution of India. On the subject he stated as follows:
"The word ‘secular’, like the word ‘religious’, is amongst the richest of all words in its range of meaning. It is full of subtle shades which involve internal contradictions, and of these contradictions the conventional dictionary meaning can scarcely give a correct view”.
The Constitution of India, till the 42nd Amendment in 1976, did not contain the word ‘secular’ except incidentally in Article 25(2)(b). Prof. K.T. Shah was the only member of the Constituent Assembly who made a valiant effort to get a provision regarding the secular character of India included in the Constitution. The following amendment, moved as Amendment No.366, was defeated on 3rd December 1948.
"The State in India being secular shall have no concern with any religion, creed or profession of faith; and shall observe an attitude of absolute neutrality in all matters relating to the religion of any class of its citizens or other persons in the Union.”
To be sure, neither this amendment nor the speech which Prof. Shah made in support of the amendment would have brought about a situation of “a wall of separation between the State and the Church”. But it would have put a brake upon the State functionaries freely using the State finance and the machinery for pilgrimages and other religious activities. Prof. Shah’s amendment would have also prevented the State media, especially radio and television, from broadcasting bhajans, prayers, religious discourses etc.
An early challenge to the theory and practice of secularism in India was provided by the episode involving the reconstruction of Somnath Temple in Gujarat. As is well known to students of Indian history, Somnath temple was destroyed in AD 1025 by Mohmed Gazni and the Shivalinga was broken into pieces. Since then the Hindu sentiment had been strongly agitated and reconstruction of the temple and the installation of a new consecrated lingam had been strongly desired by believing Hindus.
After India attained independence in 1947, moves were initiated towards the reconstruction of the temple. K.M. Munshi, in his 'Pilgrimage to Freedom' recalls that Sardar Patel, as Deputy Prime Minister, pledged the Government of India to the reconstruction of the historical temple and that the Cabinet, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, decided to reconstruct the temple at Government cost. But Gandhiji advised Sardar Patel not to have the temple constructed and suggested that sufficient money should be collected from the people for this purpose. This advice was accepted and a committee for overseeing the project was appointed under the chairmanship of K.M. Munshi. The decision of the Government, therefore, became irrelevant.
What followed is important. The Constitution of India came into force in January 1950 and in December of the same year Sardar Patel passed away. Munshi invited President Rajendra Prasad to perform the ceremony of the installation of the deity and requested him to accept the invitation only if he was sure of fulfilling the promise. This was because Munshi suspected that Jawaharlal Nehru might jeopardize the President's commitment. However, the President Prasad stood by his commitment and performed the installation function on 11th May 1951.
It seems Jawaharlal Nehru did not take well the association of Munshi with the work of the restoration of Somnath temple. For, Munshi says : “At the end of a Cabinet meeting Jawahar called me and said 'I don't like your trying to restore Somanath. It is Hindu revivalism”.
This Cabinet meeting was of 23rd April 1951 because in a letter which Munshi wrote on 24th April 1951, he recalls "Yesterday you referred to 'Hindu revivalism'...". This letter sets out the history of the restoration work with which, as the letter sets out, the States Ministry was closely associated.
This episode gives rise to some important questions. Was the Government of India justified in resolving to undertake the restoration work of a temple (though as a result of Gandhi's suggestion the money was not provided by the Government)?
If such a decision was taken in a Cabinet meeting over which the Prime Minister presided, was he justified in protesting to the President about the latter's participation in the function and in chiding Munshi for associating with a work of Hindu revivalism?
It is true that the Prime Minister's protest and rebuke occurred after the 'secular Constitution' came into force but no Government could have disassociated with the implementation of a decision taken by it.
These questions have been rendered irrelevant by the conduct of the later Prime Ministers (not excluding Jawaharlal's daughter) and the Presidents traveling at State expense to religious places and for religious functions.
M.N. Roy had already commented on this phenomenon in his article in 'The Radical Humanist' of 14th May 1950 as follows:
What is necessary is not facile profession of secularism, but a movement for the popularization of cultural values. The process of secularization, assuming that it is desired by the Government, cannot be promoted by legislation or executive orders. But men at the helm of affairs could help, if they did not willingly swim with the contrary current, as they do as a rule. The President of the Republic, Governors and Ministers of the States and the lesser are frequently taking leading parts in public religious ceremonies. This demonstrative religiosity is entirely different from religion as a part of one's private life.
A very comprehensive study of the Constitution of India and also of the social and cultural conditions in India with a view to determining whether 'India is a secular State' has been made by Prof. D.E. Smith in India as a Secular State. It has been rightly regarded as a pioneering study on the subject. Contrary to popular understanding, Prof. Smith does not assert that India is a secular State. To the question whether India is a secular State, his answer is a qualified ‘Yes’. The reason why he does not answer in the negative is that he poses the question, What is the meaning of the term ‘secular State’ in the Indian context? There were several features of the Constitution which were strongly suggestive of secularism. The prevalent cultural indicators were supportive of secularism.
On page 40 of his book, he formulated his famous table enumerating five characteristics of the three religions - Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam - which indicated whether they were favourable to the secular State. Of five factors, four were positive in the case of Hinduism and Buddhism while four were negative in the case of Islam - which meant that the possibility of an Islamic society becoming secular is practically nil.
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 Upanishada is sarva dharma samabhava, which means equal respect for all religions. The Upanishadas further go to assert “Ekam sada, viprah bahudha vadanti”, meaning, therefore, that the TRUTH is one, and that wise men define it differently.
Sociologist Ashis Nandy ('A Billion Gandhis,' Outlook, June 21) too finds it absurd that an inappropriate European import is being forced on India. Says Nandy, “To go to an Indian village to teach tolerance through secularism is a form of obscene arrogance to which I do not want to be a party,” acknowledging that tolerance is an inherent part of the Indian character, something the professional 'secularists' find hard to accept.
Patrick French writing on what keeps India united observes : “Once the British had conquered territory and painted the map red, it became easier to see what needed to be opposed. A common sense of pride and purpose grew, with khadi as the first truly pan-Indian symbol. The freedom movement evicted the alien rulers easily compared to the long and bloody battles for nationhood elsewhere in the world, giving an optimistic momentum that inspired the struggles of other occupied people…. After Independence, the new leaders wrote history in their own image, and set about uniting the country in a way it never had been united before. Jinnah's role in the nationalist movement, and the fact that his demand for Pakistan had been precipitated by the failure of the Congress to cut a deal with the Muslim League in the 1930s, or to recognize his representative importance, was edited away. Further historical elision was required too: it became necessary to pretend that the Muslim invasions of earlier centuries had been undertaken in order to contest political space and bring kebabs, qawwali and ice to the people of Hindustan. A reading of victorious contemporaneous texts gives a rather different impression, suggesting that conquering foreign lands and destroying idolaters' temples was a virtue in itself, …. Except for foreigners and a handful of academics, everyone knows this in private, but a situation has developed over time whereby it is difficult to say so publicly for fear of sparking a return to the days of violence, or encouraging the zealots who want to create an exclusively Hindu rashtra. More than half a century after Independence, with the raw wound still exposed and unhealed-in Kashmir, in Gujarat, … and in the failure to normalize relations with Pakistan-history cannot be faced squarely in case a genie is unleashed. The attempt by the NDA government to rewrite school textbooks was in part a response to this imbalance, but it was handled so badly and so crankishly that it made matters worse. The idea that an archaeological dig beneath the foundations of a mosque at the birthplace of a mythological figure might, if successful, provoke some sort of national revelation or realignment indicates the scale of the existing problem.”
The Dichotomy
It is clear therefore that Secularism in India is trying to exist between two glaring opposites. And in fact, instead of resolving the basic notions of nation building, it has unleashed a plethora of issues that is threatening the very survival of the Indian nation and the state. Central to this entire debate on SECULARISM is the Muslim question and the Muslim identity politics. The Nehruvian attempts at rewriting or contriving the history has become a hot topic for debate Whether it did any good or not, but it definitely has done a great havoc with his own community.
Prem Nath Bajaj, who is notorious for his Pakistani leanings, quotes Gandhi’s letter to him in his book The Kashmir Crucible. Gandhi writes, “In a Muslmaan state like Kashmir a Hindu ruler can rule only by abdicating”.
Maulana Mohammad Ali, a great freedom fighter and secularist had to say the following about Mahatma Gandhi, “However pure Mr. Gandhi's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman though he be without character”.
Ambedkar, who was to narrate this about-turn (of the Ali Brothers) with much relish in support of his thesis that Muslims cannot coexist with non-Muslims, recorded the sequel. "The statement created a great stir," he wrote.
Many did not believe that Mr. Mohammed Ali who testified to so much veneration for Mr. Gandhi was capable of entertaining such ungenerous and contemptuous sentiments about him. When Mr.Mohammed Ali was speaking at a meeting held at Aminabad Park in Lucknow he was asked whether the sentiments attributed to him were true. Me. Mohammed Ali without any hesitation or compunction replied: "Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mr. Gandhi." As the controversy swelled, Maulana Mohammed Ali gave his version of the reason for his statement.
In a letter to Swami Shraddhananda he wrote: “The fact is as … some Mussalman friends have been constantly flinging at me the charge of being a worshipper of Hindus and a Gandhi-worshipper. ….. I had, therefore, on several occasions plainly declared that in the matter of religion, I professed the same belief as any other true Mussalman, and as such I claimed to be a follower of the Prophet Mohammed (on him be peace) and not of Gandhiji. And further that since I hold Islam to be the highest gift of God, therefore, I was impelled by the love I bear towards Mahatmaji to pray to God that He might illumine his soul with the true light of Islam. I wish, however, to emphatically declare that I hold that today neither the representatives of Islam nor of the Hindu, Jewish, Nazarene or Parsi faith can present another instance of such high character and moral worth as Gandhiji and that is the reason why I hold him in such high reverence and affection. I deeply revere my own mother, and if contentment and gratefulness under all circumstances be the true meaning of Islam, I claim there is no person, howsoever well-versed in religion, who has understood it better than she. Similarly, I regard Maulana Abdul Bari as my religious guide. His loving kindness holds me in bondage. I deeply admire his sincerity of heart. But in spite of all this, I make bold to say that I have not yet found any person who in actual character is entitled to a higher place than Mahatma Gandhi …….But between belief and actual character there is a wide difference. As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any nonIslamic religion. And in this sense the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussalman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim irrespective of his high character even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself.”
I have quoted from Gandhi’s experiences, only because there couldn’t be more (un)secular a person than Gandhi. He was deeply religious and at the same time showed equal respect for all religions. And incase that is the definition of secularism in the Indian context, then this definition as well as the D.E. Smith formulations donot incorporate the Muslim world view.
“How to reconcile the (un) Secular and the Islamic world-views” is the perpetual dichotomy of the Indian secularists. They insist, implore and even browbeat on avoiding, ignoring and even forgetting the Muslim question, the wounds of which, persisting from partition in 1947 get carried over to Kashmiri Pandits’ cleansing and to every where around us. And instead of confronting the ideologues of two-nation theory, the Al Qaida, and their infinite off-shoots operating from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Iran, Malaysia, Sudan, Chechnya, et al; the secularists like Nehru get angry and denounce any act of Hindus as revivalist, obscurantist and fundamentalist. They not only indulge in Hindu bashing, they also end up providing excellent camouflage to the subversive antinational acts and propaganda.
Pandits & Secularism
As already stated Jawahar Lal Nehru was a great proponent of secularism. And since the Pandits in Kashmir looked up to him as their mentor and a role model, they also followed suit. It is a different matter that many Kashmiri Pandits with an intrinsic capacity to understand the inevitable did not tread the secularist path and committed themselves to complete integration of J&K with India. Nehru debunked them as communalists when they met him in Delhi in 1950 and asked them to support Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and to support the special status of J&K away from the constitutional frame-work of India.
Article 370 excluded the state of J&K from the Constitutional frame-work of India and gave J&K its own constituent assembly, its own Constitution and Flag. In fact, it created a nation within a nation, a de facto Muslim state in a federal India in the name of secularism, where the Muslim majority of Kashmir should enjoy all privileges and freedom of an independent nation. For accepting the suzerainty of the Indian Republic; they were guaranteed both physical and economic security against aggression and deprivation. Not withstanding the legality and finality of the Instrument of Accession that the Ruler of J&K signed with India, the Indian state cajoled the Muslim leadership of Kashmir in negotiating accession that was made conditional. It was a comic situation that wrought tragedy after tragedy upon the entire non-Muslim population of J&K state in the coming years.
The tallest secular leader of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah, had betrayed his hatred and abhorrence for the Kashmiri Hindus when he would openly proclaim the slogan of (raliev, Chsaliev ya galiev) – merge, leave or perish. It was again Sheikh and his competent team of Goebbels who successfully floated the myths of Pandit prosperity and their exploitation of Muslim masses. The Hindus were the pariahs whose exclusion from state and society was the requisite for Muslim empowerment and awakening. It was not only the Indian secularists who sided with the rank communalists of Kashmir in spreading these lies and canards, but even a section of opportunist Hindu leadership of the state, including some Pandits, prided themselves as secularists and liberals.
These so-called opportunistic, secularist Pandits even today don’t get tired of singing the songs of false bonhomie and secular traditions of Kashmir, which they claim to be “Kashmiriat”. They tell the uprooted exiled Pandits who are languishing in tattered camps, to return to Kashmir and co-exist with their Muslim brethren, while themselves enjoying a siesta in their plush air-conditioned suites in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, in the US or any other far away land. Many of them hobnob with the Muslim political establishments for seeking berths in Legislature or Cabinet. And when a victim protests, these secularists call him depraved, senseless, - “a typical batta coming from the smelly streets of Habbakadal”. Not only that they advice him on forgetting Kashmir, if he refuses to cohabit with Islamic precedence.
Secularism – to these Secular Pandits is :
(i) A false sense of Kashmiriyat,
(ii) A denial of Pandit assertion,
(iii) Belief in the Myth of Pandit disunity, and
(iv) Lack of pride and ignorance of his ethno-religious tradition.
These secularists would never engage the perpetrators, but would scrap the victims. And while talking about serious and structured dialogues, they would flee in the event of an informed, logical, coherent, thought-provoking cliffhanger meant at them. It is better that the Secularists, who are often rank opportunists, and many a time cowards, sense the mood and fall in line. What India needs especially at this moment are the aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance and courageous response? Timid and apologetic secular agenda is redundant in the context of both the Pandits and India.
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