SECULARISM VS GROWTH HYSTERIA
LWhatever the political debasement of the slogan of secularism, can we afford to unravel this national consensus based on common sense and the non- negotiable reality of India?
et us accept that secularism is a highly abused word in India. It has been reduced to a slogan, a form of tokenism, a mistress of convenience for every electoral bordello. Like litmus paper it takes on the colour that every cynical politician seeks to give to it. Every accusation made against it is partially true: Vote- bank politics, minority appeasement, scoring points over political opponents, and forging opportunistic political alliances. Its indiscriminate and mechanical overuse for transparently shortsighted political ends has deprived it of meaning. For the average person its reiteration evokes déjà vu, a sense that here we go again, parroting a word for expedient purposes without believing in it.
But India needs to pause to ask: If secularism has become a dirty word, has the original concept associated with it also become irrelevant? The answer to this question must lie in a dispassionate and objective assessment of the reality of India, beyond the compulsions of politics, elections, vote banks or the record of any one individual party or politician. Four of the world’s great religions were born in India: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism; Christianity found a home on the shores of Kerala hundreds of years ago; and the adherents of Islam belong to our country in greater numbers than almost anywhere else in the world. The significant point is that the proponents of all these faiths are not geographically segregated. They live in all parts of the country, cheek by jowl with each other. For instance, Muslims number over 120 million— almost 13 per cent of the population. In Jammu and Kashmir they are a majority ( 65 per cent); in West Bengal, Assam and Kerala they are over one- fourth of the population; in UP they number over 30 million and in Bihar a little more than half of that, which is still more than the entire population of Hungary or Greece. They have an important presence too in Karnataka ( 11 per cent), Andhra Pradesh ( 8 per cent), and Tamil Nadu ( 5 per cent). Nowhere are they isolated or cut off from the majority community. They are part of the national fabric, in inseparable ways, speaking the same language, watching the same films, eating the same food and sharing the same cultural traits.
Co- existence is, thus, an imperative, not an option in India. This was stated bluntly in one of Nehru’s first letters to chief ministers in 1947: “We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. That is the basic fact about which there can be no argument.” It is for this reason that Mahatma Gandhi’s devout piety, Nehru’s professed agnosticism, Ambedkar’s clinical rationality, Maulana Azad’s warm eclecticism and Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s sensible pragmatism worked together to create an India where people of all faiths could feel at home. Equally, the people of India grasped the simple truth that beyond the complexities of principle or ideology, there is no way to survive except by learning to live with each other.
Whatever the political debasement of the slogan of secularism, can we afford to unravel this national consensus based on common sense and the non- negotiable reality of India? I fear that we are beginning to do so the moment we posit governance and inclusiveness as polarities. Our country is crying out for good governance, and the failures of the UPA 2 have underlined this dramatically. But can governance ever be enduring or sustainable if it is pursued at the cost of an inclusive agenda, incorporating the notions of harmony and belonging for people of all faiths? An inclusive vision is not about tolerance alone; it is not about sufferance; it cannot be a frozen peace; it is not even about a comfort zone for other faiths. If we are to avoid the constant instability of communal acrimony and tension, the inclusive vision that India requires is one that proactively embraces the vibrant plurality of India.
We can be critical of the misuse of secularism. But we cannot, in the often contrived hysteria for the promise of governance at any cost, ignore the pluralism inherent in the idea of India. If we do so, we shall undermine a central pillar that has held our country together. The people of India want to swim away from the islands of religious exclusiveness towards the dividends of the secular mainstream. They do not want to be held hostage to communal divides which should become a matter of the past, unless they are given a new lease of life by decisions taken without due deliberation.
Cynicism is writ large in Indian politics. But the time has come for all political stakeholders to think afresh on the legitimacy and relevance of a secular India, however abused the word secularism has become. Pavan K. Varma, a former diplomat and author, is adviser to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar