April  2003 
Year 9    No.86

Debate


Secularism: Enlightenment ideal

In India, the achievements of the freedom struggle represent only half the battle; the war for equality and secularism is still to be fought 

BY GAIL OMVEDT

It has taken me some time to understand the expanded meaning of "secularism" in India. In the US,the preferred term is "freedom of religion" — meaning freedom of all groups to practice the religion of their choice (so far as it does not infringe on others’ freedom), and freedom from religious tyranny. This came to be an ideal in the US because so many were immigrants, often fleeing from religious tyranny. Most, however, came from countries where some "enlightenment" values had already been achieved; they sought mainly economic and social well–being in the new land.

In India, though, "secularism" means more than this. Indeed, dharma nirpeksh or sarva dharma samabhav seem to me to be inadequate as translations. "Secularism" is attacked so strongly by the Hindutva forces in India because of its expanded meaning, because it aims to establish a society not only free from religious tyranny, but one aiming at equalitarianism, rationalism and progress.

There are, I think, four main components to this term.

The first is an orientation to reason and experience, rather than to religious insight, spiritual authority or ritualism as guides to shaping our social life. Freeing rationalism and science from their bondage to tradition or to priestly–kingly restrictions has been a major part of all attempts by societies to move forward.

In Europe, this process began with the Enlightenment, though it had deep roots in cultural tradition. It began with the first translation of the Bible into European vernaculars, so that people could read it in their own language and judge for themselves the truth of what their priests told them. It began with scientific experimentation, which found itself — sometimes tragically as in the case of Galileo — posed against church establishments.

In India, too, the roots of rational and experimental inquiry have been deep, going back to the time of the Lokayatas and to Buddha, who told his bhikkus that they should be "lamps unto themselves"; it found a base in much of the teachings of the Bhakti radicals who posed their own "experience" and "authority" against caste hierarchy and ritualism. And it was taken up during the time of the war for freedom against colonialism. Independent India was seen as a society to be founded on rationalism and science, and not on millennial–long traditions of spiritualism.

The second major component of "secularism" is what we today might call "multiculturalism" — the recognition that the cultural and religious traditions of India have been multiform and varied, including not only the various forms of what is now called "Hinduism" but also religions whose reach stretched east and west beyond the subcontinent. Buddhist traditions tie India to her southern and eastern neighbours; Islamic traditions became a part of Indian life, culture and architecture and established bonds with neighbouring lands to the west and north. Christian traditions linked India to Europe and the Americas. The idea was not that human life should be free from religion, but that the varying religious communities should be able to live together and develop in peace and prosperity. The Indian genius would shape and transform each religious tradition and be enriched by it.

A third component is equalitarianism. Values of equality had existed from ancient times in India, always in struggle against the values of hierarchy, of varnashrama dharma, of Brahmanic authority. They had been infused with Buddhism, and later in different ways from Islam, especially through the Sufi movement. One of the earliest "manifestos of human rights" I know of in India comes from the early 17th century Sant Tukaram, who sang, "Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, Chandala all have authority — and men, women, children; even prostitutes!"

This was a proclamation for both spiritual equality and equality as human beings, for Tuka saw humans as capable of creativity and development. Sant Ravidas had also imagined an ideal realm, a classless and casteless "Begumpura" where there were no taxes, no property, and where all were free to walk where they wished — an important ideal for those bound by caste restrictions.

All of these were linked, during the independence period, with the idea of secularism and creating a new society. This was often expressed in terms of "socialism" or sometimes as "social democracy" but the idea was one of humans building a society where all could achieve freedom and prosperity. No longer was time to be conceived of as circular, moving from catastrophe to utopia and back again, but as history. Utopia was not something in the future, to be legislated by benign priest–kings or divinities, but as something built by toiling human beings working together in the world as it is.

A fourth component, finally, was universalism: through reason, science, democracy, India was to be part of the world movement towards a more just society. This was a particular concern of Nehru, who sought to realize it through earlier participation in anti-imperialist leagues, later through the non–aligned movement. Again, it had roots in earlier traditions, back to the time when Buddhism had been the first missionary religion and the Buddha had told his followers to teach the dhamma, for bahujan hitaya, bahujan sukhaya.

All these varied aspects went in- to the making of the idea that we call secularism. All of these are under threat today by the forces of Hindutva. They seek to retreat from rationality towards a mystification of India’s "timeless traditions"; they want to destroy multiculturalism under the name of building a "Hindu Rashtra"; they want to ignore equalitarianism with spurious concessions to Dalits and OBCs but maintaining an elite control; and they want to reverse universalism by retreating to an ideology that claims to link the "Holy Land" and "Father Land" and treats the subcontinent as the limit to human vision.

As concerned democratic forces seek to defend these values, they look again to the "founding fathers" of India’s independence, Gandhi and Nehru. However, I have come to feel this is a mistake in the case of Gandhi. Gandhi’s efforts to hold together Hindus and Muslims came to rest on a belief in the timeless characteristics of these as religious communities — the Khilafat was to symbolise Muslim demands, "Ram Raj" was to symbolise Hindu demands, and in doing so, the orthodox elements in both cultures were stressed. He opposed Ambedkar’s call for conversion on the grounds that Dalits should stick to their "ancestral religion"; but in doing so refused to come to grips with the anti–equalitarian and oppressive elements of that tradition.

All of his statements on the issue show that he believed that Dalits themselves had little mind of their own to make such choices — as a reading of a recent article by MV Nadkarni in the Economic and Political Weekly makes clear, Gandhi thought that Dalits and even his wife were "mindless cows" when it came to spiritual thinking.

Nehru himself believed quite profoundly in rationality and scientific values. However, like most leftists in India, he remained limited by the economistic tendencies in Marxism. He saw Gandhi’s emphasis on ending untouchability only as a kind of diversion; he thought the problems of Dalits and shudras were those of agricultural labourers and poor peasants, that industrialisation would automatically solve the problem. In this he was mistaken.

For these reasons, the true foundation for the values of secularism in India today lie in the traditions of Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar, Iyothee Thass, Acchutananda and others. It was these who established "truth seekers’ societies" and "self respect" movements while the elite reformers were founding their "Arya" and "Brahmo" samajs. Phule could appreciate the equalitarian tendencies of Islam and see its role in freeing converts from slavery to Brahmanism, though his own preference was for a theistic "sarvajanik satyadharma." First Iyothee Thass, and later Ambedkar led millions of low–caste Indians to a revitalised and rationalistically understood Buddhism. Acchutananda hailed a purified Bhakti movement as the original, pre–Vedic religion of the indigenous inhabitants. And they all looked to building a prosperous society based on equalitarian and democratic values. To the end of his life, Ambedkar proclaimed the French revolutionary values of "liberty, equality and fraternity."

In the US, one battle was fought against British rule: the War of Independence. But the greater battle was the Civil War, which was fought against internal slavery. Similarly in India, the achievements of the freedom struggle represent only half the battle; the war for equality and secularism is still to be fought. 

(Gail Omvedt is a scholar and social activist.)


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