Secularism – A leash or shackle in Bharat’s neck? Epilogue

Imagine a hypothetical scenario. An unknown player has a nuclear bomb that it wants to use against a specific religious society.

Who will be the intended target and who will respond to the attack if the nuke is dropped on –

• Jerusalem

• Vatican

• Mecca

• Buddha Gaya

• Varanasi (or one of the many Hindu sacred sites)

How the response of say a secular USA differ from that of another secular nation India or Jewish Israel or an Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or Communist China in  each of the above scenario?

Would a secular India nuke the perpetrator when a nuclear bomb is dropped on Mecca? What happens to the entitlement of Indian Muslims, who make 15% of Indian population, over India’s nuclear policy?

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That brings us back to the philosophical question Caesar raises to his intellectual father in the movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”. 

So what would be a Dharmic solution to Caesar’s conundrum? A dharmic guru would have told Caesar about the concept of all pervading God-consciousness and swa-dharma. Perhaps the dharmic guru would have foretold Caesar about the animistic behavior that his intellect wouldn’t surpass when the grand-father to be ‘perceivably’ intimidated by the neighbor leading to the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes".

The purpose of a Dharmic Guru is to make Caesar understand the role of the leash until he is fully humanized and to free his consciousness from his animistic/beastly behavior forever. But he would not demand the dharmics to wear a leash/shackle so Caesar feels more at home.

The anti-heroes of Independent India behaved exactly like their Abrahamic masters, by shackling the dharmic Bharat with Secularism instead of liberating their under-developed minority brethren. 

Secularism – A leash or shackle in Bharat’s neck? Part 4- End of Secularism

What does the future hold for Secularism? Can it thrive against the pull of Christianity in Christian societies and can it constrain non-Christian societies perpetually?

There are four social laboratories we can study to understand Secularism's relevance and its future.

Europe: The European nations kept their Christian characteristics to this day despite their secular constitutions. These societies fund and support Christian proselytization around the world with active support from their secular governments under the banner of Human Rights and Non-Governmental organizations. 

USA: America is even worse when it comes to maintaining its secular credentials where some of the state governments still hold ban on abortions and female contraceptives. Christian laws and worldview are held supreme in the guise of democracy by the Christian majority in USA. With the help of its European brothers this Christian majority nation actively provides governmental support to its Christian religious organizations and crusades under the banner of multi-national organizations.

Turkey: Turkish society kept its secular façade as long as there was hope of it joining the European Union. But once this dream is shattered the Turkish society did not have any obligation to respect the hegemony of Christian west and started to represent its national character. In just a decade Turkey severed its secular (Christianity without Church) shackles and started participating in the regional Islamic politics. We can expect to see Turkey making visible and important display of its Islamic ambitions.

That brings us back to India.

India: While the national leadership never fulfilled the promises of secularism to its Hindu majority, the past decade has seen overt infringement of national interests and majority Hindu interests by the Christian and Muslim minority groups under the protection of the so-called secular forces. The Government of India crushed any and every movement by Indic-origin insurgencies (the manner in which the Khalistan movement was crushed) while making endless compromises when it comes to Christian insurgencies in the North East or Islamic insurgencies in Kashmir and rest of India (Indian Mujaheddin and SIMI).

Besides paying the Haj subsidy for the Muslims and Jerusalem subsidy to the Christians (by Government of Andhra Pradesh) the current political dispensation of India also allows minority religious intervention in key national interest areas.

It is a well-known and well recorded fact how Indian Muslim civil and religious organizations influence various political decisions of the state using their vote-bank politics. They were able to influence the well-seated (400 MPs out of 540 MPs) Rajiv Gandhi government to amend the Constitution so they can subvert a Supreme Court ruling in Shah Bano case as far as 1986 and how they resisted the Uniform Civil Code bill since 1947.

The Christian minority of India did no less to destroy the national unity since independence. They continue with their forced religious conversions without any forbearance, often using the international organizations like Human Rights and NGO groups to subvert any attempts of the states to control their indiscriminate proselytization practices. Most recent examples are the Christian missionary and NGO movement to subvert the Kudankulam Atomic Power Project with funds from American and European NGOs and the Catholic Archbishop Mar George Alencherry, who tried to influence the Catholic ministers of Kerala government in the case of Kerala fishermen murder by Italian merchant ship sailors at the behest of Pope.

Sooner than later the Indian Hindu majority will realize that the international community and external controlled religious groups are not following the rules they forced upon it under the guise of Secularism.

When that realization dawns it will not take much time for the Indian Hindu majority to break the shackles of Secularism and assert its Hindu identity and ethos as Turkish Muslim majority has demonstrated.

Secularism – A leash or shackle in Bharat’s neck? Part 3 National Cohesion in Secular India

The founding fathers offered two key benefits to the nation from accepting secularism as a foundation of Independent India. Firstly it is said to unite Hindus and secondly it is said to assuage the minority communities. Did the independent India reap these benefits from secularism?

The Hindu majority of independent India remained as united as it was during centuries of foreign rule. It formed no vote banks based on religion, kept its caste/clan based identities. The variations in Hindu majority are further exploited by the very congress system that promised to unite Hindu majority in return for it accepting Secularism in its civil and criminal social transactions. What secularism (Christianity without church) did in reality is that it slowly took away the civilizational memory from the newer generations of Indian Hindus. Hindu culture and heritage are fast losing their relationship to the local flora-fauna and are being analyzed from non-Indic ideological structures. The very Hindu-unity that is promised is getting systematically destroyed.

In fact secularism became a bane for Indian Hindus. The Hindu majority did not get any additional security in Independent India due to their secular laws. The secular laws does not protect Hindus in Punjab, Kashmir, North East, Kerala, Bengal, Orissa etc., Their unity is remained a mirage in secular India. The root cause of this is the fact that by definition secularism is nothing but non-Hinduism, then how can it allow Hindu unity?

At the same time the religious minorities of India did not feel any additional security in a secular-India. The most interesting aspect of this is the separatist movements in the Christian majority North-Eastern India. There is the perpetual Kashmir insurgency problem. Then there are two separatist movements with Indic roots – Khalistan movement in Punjab and Tamil Eelam demands in Sri Lanka. In all these scenarios the secular constitution of India could not calm down the ever anxious religious minorities of Indian union. The response of Indian state to these separatist movements is also something to be observed.

In spite of accepting secularism as the constitutional structure of independent India, it did not achieve much cohesion between the Hindu majority and religious minorities of independent India. There have been more than 50 notable religious riots in the nation. The worst religious riot in sub-continental history happened in 1947 under the watch of the very founding fathers of this nation. 

Secularism – A leash or shackle in Bharat’s neck? Part 2 - Secularization of India

Since there is no philanthropy involved in imperialistic politics, the British applied whatever governance model/laws that they followed in Britain to their Indian colony. Indiscriminate slave trade was conducted in India by East India Company until it was made unlawful in Britain in 1807. Similarly, secularism was introduced to India in the second-half of 19^th century as it became the governance model in Britain. For the British rulers, secularism ensured that they are not entangled in the historical burden of Hindu-Muslim social tension (even though they used this to make political gains), whereas for the Indian intellectual elite of the 19th century, which was a creation of the British rule, this is an opportunity to grow their power and influence for its making a departure from medieval (Islamic) polity in which the state was considered more or less the private property of the ruler.

The first secular act of British Government in India was the Religious Endowments Act in 1863, which appropriated the rents and produce of lands granted mainly for the support of Hindu temples. A similar act introduced for Muslim religious properties and trusts – conceded the Indian Muslims’ right to establish Wakfs and keep it separate from the state appropriation. It is important to note that there was hardly any Christian church property in India at that time.

Another secular act that had universal application for all Indians was the Child Marriage Restraint Act introduced in 1929. In addition to these laws, the British government of India codified and enacted various laws; separate for Hindus and Muslims, mainly in the realm of financial transactions.

The true secularization of India, especially in the sense of “Christianization of India without Church”, happened under the leadership of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru (JLN). A secularized version of Hindu law was codified and enacted into law (Hindu Marriage Act (1955), Hindu Succession Act (1956), Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act (1956), and Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (1956)) during his leadership. In this process, JLN trampled on various philosophical principles of Sanatana Dharma a.k.a Hinduism such as Vivaaha, Purusharthas and Asrama Dharmas etc., and replaced them with secular (read Christian Law minus Church theology) ritual aspects in their place.

JLN sold this secularism to Indian public in the guise of uniting the Hindu population, by standardizing the personal laws of Hindu majority. In their penchant for secularism the leadership of independent India ignored the fact that the unifying factor of Hinduism is not the locally developed rituals but the dharmic philosophies that all these locally disparate rituals represent and abide by.

The Christian minorities never needed a secular law because the so-called secular law is nothing but a Christian social contract minus the church.

JLN did not and could not press the Indian Muslim population to come under the secular uniform civil code because they squarely denied the government of India in interfering with their personal lives and religious beliefs.

Thus the secular leadership brigade of Independent India snatched away the Hindu dharmic philosophy from the civil relationships of majority Hindu population. 

Secularism – A leash or shackle in Bharat’s neck? Part 1

The other day I watched the movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”. The story is about a Chimpanzee called “Caesar” that received a gene-therapy drug, developed to improve the brain cell capacity in Alzheimer's patients, and achieves human-level intelligence. At first Caesar is un-aware of its social status but starts to resent the leash in its neck after seeing a family's German shepherd being restrained from coming after him. Caesar wonders if he deserves to be restrained like a pet, which might hurt itself and others due to its animal-level intelligence and low emotional-intelligence. Eventually Caesar revolts against its captivators by first exposing other Chimpanzees and apes to the same gene-therapy drug (it got) and then liberating them from the shackles of human civilization in order to lead a free life among its kind and build a civilization of his own.

*****

The European wars of religion conducted in the name of Christianity brought immense suffering and destruction to European Anglo-Saxon society. The Church played a significant role in this and the political response of the European society was to separate the Church from state affairs. This is called as Secularism – separation of Church and State in a Christian society.

The first non-Christian society that adopted Secularism is the modern state of Turkey (1923). The past incarnation of Turkey is Asia-Minor, which is the land bridge between Asian and European continents. This is the region that is much contested by the Islamic Middle-East/West-Asia and Christian Europe. As long as the Islamic Ottoman Empire lasted (1302-1922), this region remained the center of Islamic power. The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War, leading to the formation of the new republic, Turkey, in 1923. If this were to happen in medieval times, the Turkish society would have been converted into Christianity. Since the west itself separated the church from the state, a modern version of this political overlordism, Secularism, was accepted as the compromise option by both sides. This transformed the definition of Secularism from “separation of Church and State” to “Christianity without Church” in the modern geopolitical context.

The next major society that accepted Secularism is the Hindu-majority India (1947). Once again this Hindu majority nation (India) was colonized by Christian west and the only compromise option for India to get its independence is to accept Secularism (read the overlordship of Christianity without Church) as the governance model. It is pertinent to note out that half of Muslim-majority India, that became Pakistan at the same point, did not choose to become a secular state. Perhaps this is the compromise that the Hindu-majority India is forced into with Christian Britain in return for its support to convince the numerous princely states in favor of India.