—Syed Ahmed Ali
India is a nation where diverse beliefs coexist. At every 2 kms, various languages are spoken, and at every town, believers of different religions can be found. India’s Constitution guarantees freedom of religion under Articles 25 to 28, ensuring every citizen the right to profess, practice, and propagate their religion.
As India is a secular country, it is understood that religion is a matter of individual faith, which cannot be mixed with official activities.
The case of S.R. Bommai v. Union of India articulated that “Secularism is considered a fundamental feature of the Indian Constitution.” Therefore, all religions and citizens have the right to practice their own beliefs. For example, Indian Muslims can follow the Indian Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937, which continues to be the law of the land for modern Indian Muslims. In the mid-1950s, a Union civil code was passed for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsees, as well as Indian Christians and Jews.
However, in recent decades, the Government has played an increasingly important role in promoting one religion. Top leaders holding high positions are involved in spiritual functions, changing emblems, renaming roads, sending circulars to all Indian institutions, and engaging in many more such activities, even though the Constitution clearly outlines boundaries for religion.
To understand the opinions of young Indians on the issue, we engaged in a dialogue with Syed Ahmed Muzakkir, a Research Scholar at Indiana Purdue University, USA, and Kidiyoor Nihal, Former National Secretary of SIO India.
Syed Ahmed Muzakkir, Research Scholar, Indiana Purdue University, USA
The matter of religion and state is of great debate, not merely since the European Renaissance, but since eons, and in different cultures. Ranging from rule by religious figures to abhorrence of religion and its sanitization from public space, all forms and combinations of religion-state mix can be seen in different experiences around the world throughout the ages. The European Renaissance framed this discussion as a dichotomy between the secular and the religious, where it is presumed that the existence of one precludes the existence of the other and that one has to be chosen over the other. However, this is a false and untenable dichotomy, a fact borne by repeated experiments all over the world.
A central question pertaining to this is whether the matter of religion and politics be resolved by a constitutional document law or some other edict? What has been observed repeatedly is that it’s not so. No form of constitutional or legal check or mechanism can act as deterrence until those ideas are internalized and reflected in the value system of a society. This is because the politics of a country is a reflection of its social dynamics, its norms and values, its ethos and institutions. Without factoring in this aspect, no discussion can do justice to the debate.
Indians are deeply traditional people and everything they do is a reflection of their religious and cultural values, and politics is no exception. India today is marked by increasing economic challenges, extreme inequality, and socio-economic exploitation of every conceivable form. This inevitably leads to collective anxiety and insecurity, where people’s frustration can be channeled and weaponized for political gains, using whatever is the common denominator of legitimacy in that society, which in the Indian context is its religio-cultural tradition. The rise of Hindutva has to be seen in this context, as a form of religious-cultural expression of the frustrated majoritarian community in the arena of politics, turning the population into a frenzied mob at the hands of populist leaders promising deliverance and great success.
One of the hallmarks of Indian society is its rich diversity, be it religious, ethnic, linguistic, or any other. Because of this, there is no one standard set of reference for the social dynamics of this great and vast nation. Keeping this in mind, the framers of the Constitution decided that India shall have no one religion as a reference, rather the state shall be equidistant from all religions, favoring none over the other. This form of secularism, which is not anti-religion but rather ambivalent between all religions, was preferred by the Constituent Assembly taking cognizance of the great Indian diversity. Hence, the mixing of religion and politics in India is inevitable pragmatically, therefore it was thus resolved constitutionally.
How should the unbridled majoritarian populist mobocracy that Indian politics today has devolved into, be reigned in? This is a matter of much debate and frankly not so easily resolvable. However, three things need to be factored in, and addressed, in any solution that is to be formulated. One is to address the extreme socio-economic inequalities that plague Indian society, from casteism to crony capitalism. The second is to build bridges at a personal level between the communities that exist in Indian society, which have been drifting apart for a while and oftentimes consciously pushed so. Third is a collective reform of the Indian society, to have an ethical reference and moral compass, without which no co-existence or real development or even the imagination of diverse and plural India is possible.
Kidiyoor Nihal, Former National Secretary of SIO India
We live in a country where secularism is the fundamental ethos of our country. The Constitution, which reflects our aspirations and trajectory, upholds the principle of secularism as a cherished value. Saying that our secularism isn’t allergic to religion as countries like France. Here the connotation of secularism is that there wouldn’t be discrimination based on any religion, and the State wouldn’t have patronage of religion.
In this present milieu if we analyze the things unfolding, in Faizabad, Ayodhya where a Masjid, which stood for centuries was razed to the ground, a chariot yatra was carried out to flare communal sentiments across the nation, where the Supreme Court terms it, “egregious violation of rule of law” is now being celebrated as Civilizational endeavor to build a bhavya Ram Mandir.
There are many things to unpack. First, the wiping out of memory and thereby history and replaced with the story of valor and sacrifice for the goons and henchmen who desecrated the holy place. Secondly, the hypocrisy of the present government wherein they placed a hijab ban to maintain uniformity in the classroom and the head of the State turned priest for the so-called official national event. Finally, it is important to underscore that, usually in any Nation-state, there is an “other” who is created and the Hindutva forces are using cultural nationalism as an enabler to realize this project.
The “Ram Mandir” project has been at the center and the journey from single digit number to full majority. The project inauguration has exposed the instrumental use of religion, wherein the top seers of the Hindu community have refused to join the celebrations, terming it a political move. Our Polity needs a more nuanced discussion and engagement to understand the vast rubric of Indian secularism and the role of religion.
