Sacred Roots of Secularism Paulos
Mar Gregorios Even Marxists see today that religion needs reinterpretation. It may
(or may not) once have been the opium of the masses. Perhaps some Europeans
in the nineteenth century, including Marx and Engels, saw it that way. But
today, in twentieth century India, religion is anything but a soporific,
lulling the oppressed to quiescence and inaction. It rouses the vilest
passions and activates the most murderous hatred; it drives people to the
frenzy of loot and arson. In the name of Ram or Allah, people take the law
into their own hands and demolish ancient mosques, desecrate deities and
enter other people’s mandirs, with sinister defiance to commit sacrilege in
the sanctum sanctorum. Drunk, perhaps, but certainly not opiated. Ayodhya and the aftermath have shown us that Hindus and Muslims are not
very different at this point. Perhaps Christians and Sikhs are not either.
But is this religion? Is this what the Sanatana Dharma and the Quran teach? Would all this have happened if politicians had not entered the fray,
both in Ayodhya and in the aftermath? Ayodhya was not a religious issue to
start with. Politicians beguiled unsuspecting Hindus to think it was, in
order to get their votes. In the aftermath too, the politics of vote -
getting has fanned the flames of rioting. The aftermath story will not fully come out till at least ten years
later. Better so, since the situation remains frighteningly volatile. But the
few first hand reports the present writer has heard confirm the view that
some politicians have not yet turned saints. They use the situation to settle
old political vendettas. Is that politics? Is that what the Dharmasastras and the Shariath
teach? Clearly, the problem is not the simple mixing of religion with politics
as such, but the horrid marriage of decadent religion and rotten politics. Anyone can ask the question: What is Hindutva? What is Islam? Even the
second question is not so easy to answer, because opinions vary. The first is
notoriously difficult to answer. What is Hindutva? First, the word Hindutva is not at all in the Indian
tradition. It is a purely political word of recent creation. One searches in
vain for the word Hindu in the epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Even
the word India, one finds in Herodotus, but not in our classical Indian
tradition. The Samhitas or collections of scriptures usually are divided into four
aspects: jnana (Knowing Ultimate
Reality), yoga (method of
self-realisation), Kriya
(consecration of temples, deities etc.) and carya (personal discipline). Within these four aspects, there are
myriads of possibilities and no compendious account can be given. Any summary
of the Sanatana Dharma will be necessarily selective. My good friend Chaturvedi Badrinath will expound the original meaning
of dharma as that which upholds all reality, the undergirding principle of
all existence, beyond all mata and
sampradaya. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya,
who was President of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh when he died in 1968, in strange
and bizarre circumstances, thought along the same lines. The present writer
agrees with them both, and thinks that the essence of dharma is to be found in the quality of our relationship to
reality and to each other, rather than in any dogmatic teachings; also that
essence is, or at least should be, acceptable to Hindu and Muslim, Buddhist
and Jaina, Christian and Sikh, and even to those who profess no religion. The debate should centre around three points: 1. Which is the more correct interpretation of Sanatana Dharma, that of
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya or V. D. Savarkar’s notions of Hindutva and Hindu
rashtra as further expounded by M. S. Golwalkar? How do Mahatma Gandhi’s
teaching relate to the Sanatana Dharma and to Golwalkar? 2. Can any interpretation of Sanatana Dharma or of the Shariath justify
the demolition of the mosque or “structure” at Ayodhya, or the bloody
vandalism in the aftermath? 3. Are there elements common to Sanatana Dharma and the Shariath on
which all of us in India can agree and on the basis of which we can live
together as a pluralistic polity? What is Islam? What is its essential message? What sense can we make of
Swami Vivekananda’s dictum that the equality of all human beings propounded
by Vedanta is most practically achieved in Islam? It is practically impossible to get any agreement about the essence of
Islam among the diverse Muslim sects - Shias and Sunnis, Sufis and Wahabis,
Deobandis and Brelvis, Even more difficult is the gap in understanding
between the mullahs and maulavis on the one hand and the educated Muslim on
the other. Both are minorities among Muslims; the common people among the
Muslims of India are caught between the two. A scholastic summary of Islam would be the five aspects of iman or faith, in Allah, in Angels,
in the Quran, in God’s messengers, and in the last day of Judgement; and the
five practical aspects: the Shahadah or bearing witness to the One God, the
Salat or Namaz or prayer and worship the Zakat or acts of charity, the Sawm
or fasting and the Haj or pilgrimage. One reason why the maulvis do not want
to encourage too much secular western education is that they fear it might go
counter to many of these faith aspects and practical aspects. The maulvis do not want the spread of Western ‘secularism’ in our land.
Therefore they do not want Muslim children to have too much of this western
education. They are much more opposed to secularism and secularisation than
even the BJP or the Hindu Virat Sabha. The maulvis look upon the educated
Muslims as betrayers of the Islamic heritage, and have difficulty in
regarding even Aligarh Muslim University or the Jamia Millia Islamia or Jamia
Millia Hamdard as friends of Islam. Islam, in principle, encourages the acquisition of all knowledge. But
the maulvi thinks of Knowledge primarily in terms of kalam or theology. Is it possible to acquire modern scientific
and technological knowledge without accepting its secular basis? Can our
Muslim universities and other institutions of education pioneer projects to
develop an educational curriculum which imparts modern knowledge on the basis
of Islamic faith? Secularism as such is not going to solve the communal problem; in fact,
it will only confound the issue. Can our ruling elite see that far? Perhaps the Hindu Virat
Sabha and the Marxists can take some cues here. In order to build a genuinely
pluralistic, democratic, united India, what
is needed is not so much the promotion of either secularism or Hindutva, but
the provision of dharmic or true Islamic alternatives to the secular ideology
as a basis for knowledge. These alternatives should of course, be developed,
in open debate and in friendly dialogue among contending positions.
Secularism is no basis for the unity of Secular Democratic India. That basis
can come only from the pluralistic, mutually respectful co-operation of many
traditions. That is the essence of Sanatana Dharma, as we have practised it
in India for millennia, of course with sad and notable exceptions. (From: Indian Currents, Vol. IV, No, 19, p. 4)
|