It is practically impossible to find a country which is neutral in terms of religious influence on culture and laws

Dear Editor, I respond now to a letter from the Swami Aksharananda in your edition of May 16 (‘While disagreeing with ideas the sanctity of the person must remain intact’). In my preceding letter I reminded the Swami that his depiction of the Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, as essentially and characteristically bloodthirsty, may offend followers of these faiths and is an obvious contradiction of his requirement that people publicly respect the faiths of others. He was asked in my letter to quote Quranic chapter and verse to support his charge that Islam orders or encourages inter faith, interethnic, or communal or any violence of any sort. It is the faith of peace.

Secularism as a political ideal approaches multi-confessionalism/multiculturalism. But to seal the state from simple anarchy, a clamantly secularist nation like France has had public controversy involving the state naming some faiths (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology) that are felt to be dangerous sects. It occurs elsewhere. The Witnesses are forbidden in Russia for example. Like freedom of expression, freedom of religious practice must be subject to the proviso that none are harmed by it, neither the practitioner nor anyone else.

Difficulties arise. It is practically impossible to find a country or region that is neutral and virgin in terms of religious influence on the culture and laws. In India itself there are states said to be majority Christian, in the north east and others, like Kerala, Goa and Pondicherry, which have large Christian minorities. Muslims, Jains, Buddhists, etc abound. There are Hindus in neighbouring countries outside of India. Clearly that country has had a history of conversion in and out of Hindusim and if the Swami ceases to limit the confessional definition of India to Hinduism, and “respects” the existence of other faiths and tendencies, it would have a positive influence on his attitude to conversions. Dr B R Ambedkar, the champion of the

Dalit untouchables, encouraged conversion out of Hinduism. He himself became Buddhist, thus lending living illustration to my remark about conversion “releasing” many of the unfortunates from the caste trap in which they were incarcerated.

The objection that the Swami mounts to my use of the word “release” in this context has to be explained with reference to the type of Hinduism he wants practised here. Does he want Hindus to be obliged, or to be free to practise all the strictures of caste rules such as not eating with people of lower castes, not being touched physically by some categories of persons, etc? Is he for this type of orthodoxy? Or is he okay with the relative abandonment of jati limits that have permitted the immigrants who arrived here to work as doctors and touch everyone, or bankers, or parliamentarians and mix with everyone.

The obligation to retain one’s religion, postive in many senses, may sometimes be negative as it may herd communities into the ridiculous and render co-existence difficult unless there is real public dialogue on these matters. Swami Aksharananda cannot conceal himself in the obscurity of non-explanation of these matters while failing to further describe and define for us and for the benefit of his co-ethnics exactly what he is advocating. Vagueness only causes more confusion.

In fact some of the non-Christian religions and cultures have features superior to the system we inherited. As a follower of Islam we can testify to the essential modernity of our faith in terms of human rights and science. But can we expect the state to modernise itself in keeping with the best of other faiths? Or should we live the alienation of a cultural regime that contradicts best practice because it is fixed in a 19th century and Christian worldview?

It is useless interpellating Henry Jeffrey, Priya Manikchand or other former or current Ministers of Education about this form of alienation. Like most of the colonised they are essentially grateful for the “civilsation” the current hegemony has brought. The matter was never on the nationalist agenda beyond the symbolistics of a national holiday, legitimation of pandit and magi and the monuments. Monuments to the dead, for the culture memorialised is effectively receding. The anthropology of the process of cultural change, including in the large and powerful states that rule the world is a major subject that a sociologist such as Swami Aksharananda is familiar with.

As a Muslim I am particularly conscious of the hegemony of the angloChristian legal and cultural regime. It has brought us much good, and, as all systems are imperfect, it bears its imperfections with it. The populace has perhaps lost the right to question the system in which we live. With time, from independence and republicanism to now, it reinforces itself, and the Christians, generally well-bred and modern men, are content to let us live their dominance without question. No chatree legislator or brahmin parliamentarian has raised the dust. I repeat, Hindus are willing to convert and occidentalise themselves at their own pace. The process has been observed with other cultures in other parts of the world. Yours faithfully, Abu Bakr