Author: Arvind Sharma
Publication: Outlook
Date: January 7, 2008
Introduction: Asymmetrical secularism as practised
in India breeds intolerance of both arrogance and resentment.Modi's victory
is a rejoinder to its evils.
The decisive victory of Narendra Modi will
be viewed by those opposed to him as a setback for secularism and a sordid
victory for communalism. The fact, however, that Gujarat continues to produce
the same electoral outcome so convincingly and successfully should involve
some introspection. To view the outcome solely in Manichean terms may be morally
comforting but could be analytically inadequate. How has Modi succeeded in
'fooling' all the people all the time (until now)? In the face of conventional
wisdom such a persistent outcome is not possible.
Could it be that the so-called polarisation
is not between the two communities but between two forms of secularism, in
which one of the communities has become symbolic of a certain kind of asymmetrical
secularism as opposed to the genuine product?
Secularism can be practised at several levels.
It could take the form of the neutrality of the state in relation to religion,
when a wall of separation sets the two apart. The fact that India has no state
religion serves to illustrate this form of secularism. Or it could take the
form of impartiality of the state in relation to the various religions. Thus
the Indian government regulates both Hindu endowments and Waqf property. Or
it could take the form of harmony among religions being promoted by the state.
An asymmetry seems to pervade the whole issue
of secularism in India at the moment and the verdict of Gujarat is arguably
the most recent expression of this state of affairs. The prime minister publicly
states that Muslims have the first claim on the resources of the country,
a statement one could well imagine emanating from across the border, from
an Islamic state. He must have had poor Muslims in mind but that unexceptionable
sentiment was poorly expressed. He doubtless possesses a similar sympathy
for poor Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and others but they went unrecognised,
and the neutrality of the state was easily compromised. Although the state
regulates religious institutions of both-Hindus and others-its regulation
of such matters is constrained by the rights of the minorities enshrined in
the Constitution. There are, however, no such constraints when it deals with
the majority religion.
Such asymmetry is even more glaring in the
discourse on secularism. The Hindus who perished in the train in Godhra experienced
death without martyrdom, while Afzal Guru, a convicted terrorist, becomes
a martyr without death, a martyr for secularism. The prime minister openly
lashes out at the chief minister of a state as communal, but is not considered
so himself even though his government was all set to order a headcount in
the armed forces according to religion. The killings in Gujarat are invoked
with talismanic frequency but a sinister silence surrounds the issue of Kashmiri
pundits. When the so-called communalists try to focus on development as the
electoral agenda, it is the "secular forces" which prevent this
from happening, when the merchants from Venice label them merchants of death
and so on.
Asymmetrical secularism breeds religious intolerance.
It breeds the intolerance of arrogance in those who benefit from it, and the
intolerance of resentment in those who are at its receiving end. It creates
the paradox of both the majority and the minority nurturing grievances simultaneously.
It pushes the members of all religions into the narrow confines of their own
traditions. Fanaticism consists in standing so close to one's own religious
tradition as to be blinded by the intensity of its luminosity, instead of
seeing the whole world transfigured in its light.
(The writer is professor of Comparative Religion
at McGill University, Montreal)
