When Jyoti Basu told V P Singh in the run up to the 1989 elections that while he (Basu) could ignore BJP he (VP) could not, he was telling him a political truth. He was also giving him a fine lesson in the crafty art of who could and needed to 'use' secularism as a political plank and how! That secularism is a strategy but not a creed is borne out by the actions of all the opportunists in the Indian political arena from almost the time of freedom struggle. Sir Syed and Iqbal belonged to the older creed who did not camouflage their politics and beliefs. While they lived, Jinnah roundly disagreed, castigating them for their religious perspectives. When it suited him he became a die-hard communalist insisting that religion was the very basis of nationalism. He had no answer when Gandhi, in that famous dialogue in letters in the September of 1944, asked him if his son, who had then converted to Islam belonged to a different nation. Jinnah remained silent, strategically. And of course, Jinnah could hardly be called a Muslim in the sharaee sense of word.
Jinnah was a secularist who found communalism useful. Today's India is burdened with communalists who find secularism useful. It helps them to extend or carve political constituencies and to hold on to them. Careers in politics and ideology are built around the secular profession without in the least trying to find any ideological consistency there. To be fair it is not the politicians alone who thus use the secular cover. Others employ it for diverse purpose. We have scientists who teach and research subjects like evolution without believing in the scheme, we have political thinkers who write longish thesis on the exploitations inherent in religion, on obfuscations of ritual and all the time observe those exploitative, obfuscative practices as matters of private faith. We have poets, suitably modernist, post-modernist and cerebral who religiously superscribe the sheets with Omkar, Allah and 786. And we have people who understand the idiom of religion alone. Understand and deal in it; support and stand for the planks when enunciated.
Remember the euphoria with which Farooq greeted late Rajiv Gandhi at the Parade Ground, Jammu, in 1987 to seal the Rajiv - Farooq accord? 'I the Musalman of Kashmir join hands with you the Hindu of India for....' gushed Farooq taking the late PM's hand. 'But I am not a Hindu', said Rajiv much like Galileo whispering 'iper si mov' at that infamous inquisition where he was made to renounce his discovery that earth revolves round the sun. The two, one avowal and another a disavowal, tell the tale of secularists in lurid detail. One needing to assert his religious rank, the other needing to downplay it, both playing to their respective galleries and constituencies. And none of them true to the creeds that are innate to them. So it is with the strategists who flaunt their secularism/communalism as it suits them, not as a creed, not as a reflection of their inner voices. But then, the 'inner voice' went mum with the death of Gandhi. Even as it lasted it did not quite convince the lieutenants of the Mahatma himself. But Gandhi was not a secularist, not a strategic secularist at all.
He was a religious man who believed that religion was not a thing to be used, to be exploited, to be flaunted as a strategy for personal and political ends. That is what all true religionists would be. If their religion and faith be true. Else, it is raging exploitation the 'opium' that the thakedars of religion once used to numb the masses and now politicians both secular and communalist are using to found political empires upon. In fact, it is the secularists who are using the plank of religion to opiate the credulous people more than the sworn communalists. It would help to if one remember that the world of Marx have been used as greatest opiate-more potent that any religion ever was, more exploitative than any thakedar ever desired to be-by his followers to found empires and to carve out a political appeal and constituency. Incidentally, most of the 'original secularists' the Marxists are devoutly religious, rarely forgetting to say their daily prayers. Of course secularism does not bar observance of religion or ritual.
Secularism is a refusal to use or
promote religion as a political plank. It forbids politicking on the basis
of religion; it means that the religious calling or inclination of people
would not be used in political calculations; it disapproves of policies
based on the religious considerations. The unfortunate thing about the
avowed secularists is that the whole secular politics of this nation for
quite a few decades has been thriving on these clear don'ts. Even the political
philosophy is moulded - often most grotesquely - to suit this strategic
use of the communal planks. But the secularists have not stopped there.
They have gone ahead and added the regional and casteist divisions to their
weaponry of political strategy. Today the secular plank is one bagful of
opportunist, communal, casteist, regional strategies that do not exclude
biases of race and color, all masquerading as the egalitarian promises
of justice, freedom and equality.