Upholding the Idea of India, amid an outcry
The core truth underlying the externally stated idea of India, one of an ancient civilisation, which respects, accommodates, even grooms, diversity, differences and peacefully embraces religious and cultural viewpoints contradicting its own home truths, codified for modern times in our Constitution, has been in the middle of fierce contesting as an axis and fault line in most of our topical debates.
The India that is Bharat, a union of states, which has since civilisation began been pluralistic, open to debate and divergence, of seeking a myriad different ways of worship and prayer, one which has seen unity in a million different ways of seeking union with a larger cosmic truth and creator, has been secular in a unique way for the rest of mankind to find inspiration.
In a world whose history has been shaped as conflict, an inevitable and unavoidable conflict of ideas, ideologies and worldviews, even a conflict of civilisations, slave to a belief that an irreconcilable conflict must define our politics, India has been secular enough to enable a polity that allowed, enabled and helped create and catalyse, on a Hindu foundational bedrock, three other major world religions — Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.
Indian secularism, far from ever being an ungodly denial of all theological truths, or a watertight separation of politics and religion, has been a unique cultural palimpsest, whose respect for all philosophies, cultures, religions and viewpoints has enabled the sustenance of a nation for over a score of centuries without any discontinuity as well as the prosperous growth of the primordial religion, Hinduism, despite centuries of rule by others.
For nearly a decade now, we were stuck by how the idea of India was under attack, of how we were unable to protect it, politically, or socially, or on different trenches of the war fronts, including our movies, our social media cloud, and our legal and constitutional systems.
But suddenly, we woke up to an ironic spectacle, where the BJP, explicitly stated for the world that it ‘respects all religions’, and sacked two of its spokespersons — Nupur Sharma, for her abominable comment against Prophet Muhammad, and Naveen Kumar Jindal (not to be confused with his namesake former MP of the Congress and an industrialist, who won a legal battle for the common India to use the National Flag) — not owing to a domestic uproar against them but a global backlash.
“The BJP strongly denounces insults of any religious personalities… is also against any ideology which insults or demeans any sect or religion,” it said, correctly, adding, “… the BJP respects all religions.”
Earlier, the Mumbai police registered cases against Ms Sharma for her comments against the Prophet, during a TV debate.
Even as Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu was on a tour abroad, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iran summoned the respective Indian envoys and stated their protests against the insult. Later, Saudi Arabia too joined, even as the Indian government dismissed such voices, of the spokespersons of the ruling party, as “fringe” elements.
The MEA will handle the fire, for now, but we must reflect on the entire flow of energy of the idea of India, in its imported form, hitting the bull’s eye. An ironic import that has taught us a home truth.
Indian secularism, far from ever being an ungodly denial of theological truths, or a watertight separation of politics and religion, has been a unique palimpsest, whose respect for all philosophies, cultures, religions and viewpoints has enabled the sustenance of a nation...