Indian Secularity against Fundamentalism

Last update: 2025-01-21 15:21:39

 

On 11 September 1893 Sri Vivekananda gave a memorable speech at the World Parliament of Religions. As a representative of the religious and cultural traditions of India, Vivekananda expressed the hope that all the religions of the world, as different paths by which to reach the same God, would be able to cooperate and live in harmony. His words inaugurated a new era of religious tolerance and harmony: ‘I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth’.[1] He exhorted his audience to begin a new chapter in human history founded upon mutual respect and tolerance: ‘Sectarianism, bigotry and their horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair….I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or pen’.[2] His source of inspiration was some words taken from Bhagavad Gita, one of the holy books of Hinduism: ‘Whatever path men travel/ Is my path:/ No matter where they walk/ It leads to me’.[3]

This spiritual tradition was also the bedrock of the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and his commitment to the independence of India. With his style of life, his actions and his speeches, Mahatma Gandhi inspired a way of living that was completely extraneous to violence. The source of his strength lay in the following words, which he himself uttered: ‘Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul force or the power of Godhead within us. Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has to be pursued in face of violence raging around you’. Gandhi continued by saying that a living faith in non-violence is ‘is impossible without a living faith in God. A nonviolent man does nothing save by the power and grace of God’.[4]

 

The Stuff the Asian Peoples are made

 

Without participating in this ultimately syncretist approach, the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia emphasises the riches of the religious traditions of Asia and identifies certain specifically Asian values which, naturally enough, are also India ones: ‘The people of Asia take pride in their religious and cultural values, such as love of silence and contemplation, simplicity, harmony, detachment, non-violence, the spirit of hard work, discipline, frugal living, the thirst for learning and philosophical enquiry. They hold dear the values of respect for life, compassion for all beings, closeness to nature, filial piety towards parents, elders and ancestors, and a highly developed sense of community…it can still be said that Asia has often demonstrated a remarkable capacity for accommodation and a natural openness to the mutual enrichment of peoples in the midst of a plurality of religions and cultures’.[5]

For his part, Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in Economics, emphasises that the two great Emperors of India, Asoka (III second century BC) and Akbar (sixteenth century), in different epochs prescribed tolerance for all religious traditions so that all the faiths could live together in India. Asoka, who spread Buddhism in various lands of Asia, was very respectful of the religious traditions of those who did not adhere to his spiritual tradition ‘For he who does reverence to his own sect, while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his sect’. Akbar also imposed that ‘no man should be interfered with on account of his religion, and anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him’.[6]

It was into this Indian cultural fabric characterised by non-violence, by respect, by harmony and by cooperation that the forces of violence slowly made their way.

 

The Wound of Partition

 

Sown a long time ago, the seeds of violence remained latent for a long time. The Mogul invasion created an atmosphere of hostility between the followers of Hinduism and the faithful of Islam, but it was the division of India and Pakistan in 1947 that decisively aggravated the conflict. In order to impede the granting of independence, the British in power encouraged the leaders of the Muslim community to create a division within the independence movement which in the end was responsible for the partition of India. This division produced great bloodshed and both communities unleashed violence against each other. The fire smouldering under the ashes was drawn upon to set in motion a terrible conflagration that destroyed the lives of thousands of people. Despite the appeals of Gandhi to stop the violence, everywhere there were mass killings and devastation. People had to flee their country because of their religious loyalties. From that moment onwards violence spread in India and the radical elements in both communities began to kill for futile reasons.

The Muslim percentage of the population, which in 1951 was 10%, today has increased to 14%. This has generated the suspicion in some fundamentalist Hindu leaders who think that in a not too distant future Islam will outnumber Hinduism. Many Indian Muslims continued to maintain their fondness for Pakistan even after it became an independent nation. This has contributed to raising doubts about their loyalty to India in the hearts of some Hindu leaders. All these factors have come together to create hostile feelings between the two religions, nourishing rivalry between Pakistan and India but also hostility within India between increasingly militant Hindu groups and a sizeable Muslim minority.

 

The History of Contested Kashmir

 

The second reason for hostility between Hindus and Muslims is connected with the question of Kashmir which exploded immediately after the partition of India and Pakistan. The conflict broke out when in October 1947 the Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir asked for help from India to crush an internal revolt and also agreed on the annexation of his principality by the Indian Union. Pakistan, which saw Kashmir as a part of its territory because of the Muslim majority which lived in it, reacted by sending in its army and the hostilities led to open war. After the intervention of the UN in 1948, the controversy degenerated again into war in 1962 (the Sino-Indian war), in 1965 and in 1971, without counting the constant tensions which have existed since 1989.

 

The Mogul invasion created an atmosphere of hostility between the followers of Hinduism and the faithful of Islam, but it was the division of India and Pakistan in 1947 that decisively aggravated the conflict

To this was added a wave of terrorist attacks. In Mumbai there were eight in 1993 and one in 2006, and this last was on a large scale. In this last attack, which aimed to produce Western victims, 172 people were killed. These attacks were attributed to Islamic terrorist groups. From the moment of their emergence, the Hindus began to associate Islam with violence and terrorism and the gap between the communities of the two religions expanded irremediably.

 

 

Hindu Radicalism

 

Hinduism has also produced its radicals. The radical ideology of groups such as the RSS (Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh, ‘The National Voluntary Organisation’) and the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad, ‘Hindu World Council’), instilled in their followers a profound hostility towards Muslims and Christians. The inspirer of these groups and the ideologue of Hindu nationalism was Vinayak Savarkar, who in 1928 published a pamphlet entitled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu. In the view of Savarkar, a Hindu was a person who saw India as his homeland and Holy Land, something that obviously excluded Muslims from belonging to India, their holy land being Mecca.

Other Hindu nationalist groups arose from the RSS and together they formed the so-named Sangh Parivar (‘Family of Organisations’) and the nationalist party, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, the ‘India People’s Party’) of Narendra Modi, who won the last elections.

However, although the militants of the RSS campaigned for Modi and laid stress on the classic themes of Hindu nationalist rhetoric (the construction, on the site of the mosque that was destroyed in 1992 in Ayodhya, of a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Rama; the elimination of separate legal codes for Muslims; laws against the conversion of Hindus to ‘non-Indian’ religions), the youngest voters who voted for Modi did so because they were fascinated by the economic growth of Gujarat, of which Modi was the governor.[7]

What we are witnessing today is not so much the rebirth of religion as communalism, according to which a community of believers does not have in common so much belonging to a religion as social, economic and political interests

The aggressive nature of Hindu fundamentalism was seen in action in the year 2008 when unchecked violence was unleashed against the Christian populations of the district of Kandamal in Orissa. Christian churches and institutions were destroyed, people were mutilated and killed, and international protests against this brutal slaughter were many in number. The origins of this tragic event lie in the killing of the Hindu Sanyasi [monk: editor’s note] Swami Lakshamanada, an important leader of the Vishva Hindu Parishad. The work of Maoist groups, this killing was attributed to Christians and this helped to incite an enraged Hindu mob which attacked Christian homes and churches, creating an atmosphere of great terror. Many people had to flee, abandon their homes and their possessions, and seek protection and refuge in the nearby forests. Priests and nuns were brutally attacked and thirty-eight people were killed in disturbances against Christians that had been fomented by the heads of the BJP. According to estimates, over 1,400 homes and 80 Christian places of worship were destroyed. As one analyst observed: ‘what we are witnessing today is not so much the rebirth of religion as communalism, according to which a community of believers does not have in common so much belonging to a religion as social, economic and political interests’.[8]

 

Religion, Politics, Caste

 

The rise of fundamentalism is linked to the phenomenon of the politicisation of religion. As any observer of the political and cultural scene of India knows, membership of a religion is a central element in the life of every Indian. Nothing happens in the lives of Indians without there being a reference to the religion of each individual. One can, therefore, imagine the upheaval that political parties can generate in society when they try to exploit religion for their own ends. Religion thus becomes a reason for separation and division rather than unity and integration.

The leaders of some political parties have used this shortcut to obtain success and power and have politicised the religion of their adherents. This system involves sowing fear and distrust in the hearts of their own followers and emphasising in a disproportionate way the advantages enjoyed by the followers of other religious groups. In this scenario, the alliance between the extremist groups of each religion and the political parties becomes a serious threat to peace and harmony in society.

Despite the advances that have been achieved on the economic front there is still a great deal to be done on the social front and on the front of the relations between communities of different religions. In India, communities and castes remain within their boundaries and authentic integration has not yet been witnessed. The face of the new India is marked by the drama of communal disorders which are often caused by the fact that an entire community is held to be responsible for the crimes committed by a minority. The governing class must rise above partisan approaches and make the common good prevail over a section. It must act in favour of a united India which assures liberty of worship to all religions and to all groups.

What Asoka, Akbar and Mahatma Gandhi said and did should become the lifestyle of all Indians. As the analyst Krishna Kumar emphasised: ‘the Indian Moslems…should raise themselves above the petty concerns of material injustices and should not entertain any bitterness, envy, or anger against the majority community’. But ‘the majority community must always provide constitutional guarantees that the minority rights will be respected, not trampled’. Kuma also observed that ‘liberty entails a responsibility to justice. Let no one’s freedom become someone else’s torment’.[9] What Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg remains of contemporary relevance and valid for everyone: ‘Malice towards none, charity for all’.

The secularity envisaged by the Constitution of India respects the equality of all religions and does not imply their removal from the public scene. In an article written in The Hindu of 6 June 2014, the leader writer Hasan Suroor stressed the need to respect the secular tradition of India in order to impede the rise of religious fundamentalism and radicalism: ‘The Indian brand of secularism never discouraged religiosity or the celebration of religion’.[10] Secularity can thus act as a bulwark against communalism and fundamentalism which want to reduce minorities to servitude. Amartya Sen is also convinced the secular tradition codified by the Constitution of India is the best antidote against the whims of a violence that exaggerated adherence to a communalist mentality could unleash: ‘The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in India, demands symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of the state’.[11] This is the pathway.

 

 

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