Before discussing Indian secularism in its current form, it is important to track its evolution after independence, or more importantly since partition, as argu-ably the partition played a more decisive role in the development of post-inde-pendence India’s attitude toward religious tolerance than did indepost-inde-pendence.
More specifically, I would like to explore the other possible paths India could have taken after the partition, which was a defining event with the potential to change the Indian trajectory. I do this not to meander in the realm of the hy-pothetical, but because a strategy is as much about choosing what to be, as it is about choosing what not to be. Any path India did not adopt is some-what illustrative of Indian thinking, if not also a product of the circumstances in which India found itself.
The Yugoslavia scenario
I have personally always been intrigued by the case of Yugoslavia. It is hard to find two countries in the Cold War era as diverse as India and Yugoslavia.
Each represented a multinational state harboring different peoples, religions, languages, and most importantly different identities and imagined communi-ties. Moreover, in the days of the Cold War, India’s first prime minister, Jawa-har Lal Nehru, and Yugoslav President Jose Broz Tito (along with the leaders
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of Egypt, Ghana, and Indonesia) launched the Non-Alignment Movement.
Nehru and Tito clearly shared a vision and had deepened their political ties during that time.
Let me now introduce the elephant in the room: India survives, but Yugosla-via disintegrated. Ethnic and religious tensions engulfed the country, and the 1990s saw bitter conflict, genocide, and rape in the former Yugoslavia. What had Yugoslavia gotten wrong to disintegrate so spectacularly? Was there a formula that was working in India and could be emulated in other states?
The questions seem obvious; the answers do not.
Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson present a demographic analysis of Yugoslavia and note that “dramatic change in ethnic composition is the result of the war.” 5 Using survey data and statistical analysis methods, they show that in the case of Yugoslavia “religiosity has by far the greatest negative influence on [ethnic]
tolerance.” 6 In addition to religiosity, the authors draw attention to elite ma-nipulation’s indirect role in flaring tensions in the Yugoslav state.
Assessing India under the same lens, and using partition as the moment of dramatic change in the demographic composition of independent In-dia, one can say that tensions increased because of partition and were not necessarily a cause thereof. Ayesha Jalal beautifully makes the elite ma-nipulation point in her “Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia”
and describes partition as the result of an unsuccessful power-sharing compromise between Nehru and Jinnah.7 What followed in independent India was predictable: once the Islamic state of Pakistan had been created, hyphenated communities — most notably Indian Muslims — lived “under the sign of a question mark.” 8 The idea of partition itself had not been palat-able, and the poor logistical management by Britain that (according to unof-ficial sources) left 1 million dead during partition made matters even worse.
Indian Muslims’ allegiance to India was immediately questioned and many were treated as spies of the new Pakistani state. These fears, however under-standable, created a vicious circle fuelling anxiety. India was on the verge of a “Yugoslavia” and could have plunged into a civil war, with the country first breaking into religious, and perhaps subsequently along cultural and lin-guistic lines.
India owes this survival to two factors. First, Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist, not a Muslim fanatic.
The 1984 anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards are testimony to how unstable the situation could have become had a member of one of India’s many non-Hindu minori-ties pulled the trigger. Unwittingly, her assassination by a Hindu immedi-ately put Hindu nationalism in check. No political leader — however religious
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he or she may have been — was willing to side with the ideology that killed the Mahatma. The creation of a separate Hindu state was out of the question, as was the idea that all of the Muslims should be sent to Pakistan. Second, as discussed earlier, secularism, in whatever form, was the centerpiece of the In-dian state. It was not possible to refute Jinnah’s two-nation theory without proving that Hindus and Muslims could indeed coexist. This curbing of Hindu nationalism and the simultaneous urge to prove to the world the foundations of India prevented it from succumbing to a civil war.
The Soviet Union scenario
Adopting a Soviet model would have meant that India would not only have had to distance itself from religion, but, in fact, even persecute the expression of religions, applying the same degree of state-led hatred toward each.
It is interesting to note that, much like the Russian people in 1917, the Indian people in 1947 were deeply devout. Despite the secular semblance of the In-dian freedom struggle’s rhetoric, the liberation was littered with countless examples of the gods being used to summon Indian nationalism against British colonial rule. Copland cites these cases: Lord Ganesh’s festival was politicized in the state of Maharashtra, Goddess Durga became the symbol of the struggle in Bengal, and the Muslim Khilafat movement was encour-aged.9 After all, Gandhi himself “donned the attire of a Hindu ascetic.” 10 In fact, he was not addressed by his name Mohandas, but as the Mahatma, which in Hindi and Sanskrit literally means “Great Soul” and has religious connotations.
Doing away with the religious overtones of the Indian freedom struggle as well as the contradictions it presented to the concept of western secularism would not have been easy. The “elimination of religion” 11 and its replacement with atheism would not have been acceptable to the people, and its implemen-tation would have required a Soviet-style dictatorship and persecution model of confiscating religious properties, freezing funds and assets, and making it
“illegal to pray.” These were not to be the ways of a newly independent coun-try striving to be a democracy.
Moreover, the devoutness of the people meant that religion could be used differently to consolidate political gains. As Copland points out: “even the ag-nostic Nehru bowed to public religious sentiment by including an instruction in his will that some of his cremated remains should be interred at the conflu-ence of the Ganga and Jumna rivers at Allahabad, a site sacred to Hinduism.
Knowing the voters as they did, all Indian politicians of that era felt obliged, regardless of their personal preferences, to at least present themselves to the public as believers.” 12
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The Israel scenario
Israel is another good example to consider. Even though post-partition demo-graphic trends in India differed from the post-creation demodemo-graphic trends in Israel (because of the mass influx of Jews into the Zionist state), today’s Is-rael shares one important trait with India. Both states have a dominant (Hindu or Jewish) majority and a significant Muslim minority. The latest Israeli census reveals that the state is 75 percent Jewish and 17 percent Muslim, with other minorities making up the rest. Similarly, the 2011 Indian census reveals that India is 80 percent Hindu and 13 percent Muslim, with other minorities making up the remaining 7 percent of the population.
Israel’s is a peculiar case because it does not have a formal constitution.
The Israeli state, while clearly Jewish, guarantees all citizens freedom of reli-gion by law, which it derives from its declaration of independence.
Since taking the Israeli path would involve the Indian state identifying itself with one religion (quite likely, Hinduism), it would once again negate the foun-dations of the Indian state. Therefore, the Israeli scenario, though possibly appealing in its operational sense, would not have worked for the Indian state in its nominative sense.
The American scenario
As mentioned, pure secularism is the separation of state and religion. In that sense, as Ahmet Kuru argues in “Politics and Religion in Secular States,”
America embodies “passive secularism” as the state displays neutrality to-ward all religions.
Kuru mentions another type of secularism: assertive secularism — such as the one practiced in Turkey — where the state more proactively holds a secular worldview and confines religion to the private sphere.13
This is a model that India indeed could have adopted. It did not involve Hindu nationalism, from which Indian leaders wanted to distance themselves, and it also adhered to the values of true secularism, whether in a passive or assertive form. However, it seems that in adopting much of the language from British co-lonial administrative and governance documents, such finer thinking got lost.
India and secularism
Having examined the post-independence scenarios of what could have been, let me now talk about what actually came about, and why. Once again, I will use pure secularism as a benchmark to measure Indian secularism.
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Izhak Englard in “Law and Religion in Israel” points out that the Israeli legal system “is not a system of separation between state and religion as prac-ticed in the U.S.A.” 14 At the same time, Gary Jacobsohn argues that Israel has a “visionary secularism,” where despite its identification with one religion, the state gives “equal protection” to other religions.15 Clearly, the definitional problem that plagues Indian secularism appears to be a feature of all multicul-tural societies.
Let me begin examining the Indian constitution. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion as a fundamental right to all citizens. On the face of it, this appears to be as secular as, say, the American constitution. However, unlike the first amendment of the American constitution, which specifically argues for the separation of state and religion, the Indian constitution does not actu-ally include the word “secular” in its text. It was introduced in the preamble to the Indian constitution only in 1976 under the 42nd amendment. So why does a state that prides itself in being secular — and indeed draws its founda-tion from that principle — not explicitly call itself “secular”?
Copland points out that the term “secular” was deliberately omitted by Nehru, who understood what true secularism was, and did not want it included in the constitution, because he recognized Indian secularism as a different breed. He cites one occasion when Nehru said, “May I beg with all humility those gentlemen who use this word [secularism] often to consult some diction-ary before they use it?” 16 Such words from one of the architects of the Indian nation and its constitution indicate the frustration over the lack of separation of state and religion that existed since the early days of independence.
I would like to now go into the origins of this discrepancy. Next, I would like to show ways in which the Indian constitution digresses from the principles of secularism, not only in ways of separating state and religion, but also in its equal treatment of citizens. Finally, I would like to offer an alternative vision for Indian secularism — another hypothetical exercise, but one with which I hope to extract lessons for India and other multicultural societies.
Origins of post-independence Indian secularism
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted that “in India, the extreme Hinduizing of the national identity, denies the secular state constitution.” 17 This puts the very process of constitution drafting in question.
Copland criticizes the drafting process by drawing attention to the fact that
“over half of the final Indian document was lifted verbatim from the last colo-nial constitution of 1935.” 18 Indian scholar K. M. Panikkar warned that India was “not writing on a clean state.” 19 This raises the question: did the authors
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of the Indian constitution not realize that they were willingly or otherwise importing the “divide and rule” tactics of the British crown? British law was characteristically unsecular. Here, I do not wish to infer that they were neces-sarily propagating unsecular practices, but for ease of governance they did continue some of the policies that prevailed in India even before and then during British rule: treating citizens differently in the eyes of the law. When a civil matter was presented to the British, they relied on a pundit to resolve issues concerning Hindus and a maulavi to settle issues concerning Muslims.
Indeed, they had learned that decoding India’s religious complexities would be time-consuming and dangerous, and that it was best to continue a policy of treating the people of India on the basis of the religion they belonged to, so as not to rile them on delicate religious grounds that might spark unwanted unrest. Moreover, the British saw this intervention as essential, because it allowed them to reform some of the socially backward practices, especially among India’s Hindu majority. The Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act (1927) and The Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) were examples of this.20 After independence, the spotlight shifted to those who drafted the Indian constitution. This was the chance to study various constitutions (as they did) and come up with a code of conduct that could erase divisive structures that had carried over by applying uniform laws and treating all citizens equally.
Yet, using the same text as the colonial document seems counter-productive to that cause. Whether it was the lack of effort or imagination, one may never know. Let me illustrate the constitution’s divisive nature in two-ways: a. In-corporating different codes for different religions; b. mirroring the structure of the caste-based Hindu society in the country’s most important document.
First, in the spirit of retaining the metaphorical pundit and maulavi, India did not adopt a uniform civil code. The debate on whether this adoption is essen-tial or not continues, and each side swears by its point of view. Experts like Werner Menski argue that the Indian constitution may contain “some impor-tant lessons for European lawyers specifically in terms of managing cultural diversity through plurality-conscious legal intervention, rather than the tradi-tional insistence on state-centric legal uniformity.” 21 This indeed is a powerful idea and sounds like one that could solve many problems of an increasingly globalizing and multicultural world. However, its effectiveness is yet to be proved in India.
While I am personally opposed to the idea of pluralistic laws — because they create social silos by preventing interactions between members of differ-ent religious groups — I do understand that Indian leaders back in 1947 may have needed this tool to show their commitment to a pluralistic society. But here the secularism logic begins to fall apart. If a uniform civil code is ab-sent, the lawmakers representing one of the three branches of the
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ment (i.e., the state machinery) must essentially get involved in deciding the fate of a matter depending on Hindu, Islamic or other laws. I cannot think of a practice that is more unsecular. Moreover, this opens a can of worms.
Does treating Hindus and Muslims differently by law not amount, at least to some degree, to accepting Jinnah’s principle of the two-nation theory, that the two groups are fundamentally different? Furthermore, if each community has its own set of laws, doesn’t the Indian constitution create a multi-nation theory of its own? Of course, as discussed earlier, India did not descend into civil war on religious grounds because of the curbing of Hindu nationalism and because of the fundamental nature of the birth of the Indian state. Still, as I see it, the Indian constitution writers (inadvertently?) left Indians divided along religious lines in the eyes of the law, which has repercussions to the present day. The argument that such an oversight was deliberate because it allowed politicians to contest elections along divisive lines may not be too far from the truth.
Second, state interference was considered essential because Indian leaders at the time believed that Hinduism needed to be reformed. But let me point out that the Sati Prevention Act, which aimed to abolish the practice of burning a Hindu widow on the pyre with her husband, came into effect only in 1987, i.e., forty years after independence. Clearly, reform was not the priority of those who drafted the Indian constitution and made the laws. More damag-ingly, reservations for poorly-defined “backward” classes were introduced to reform the Hindu society’s outdated caste system. At first, these reserva-tions in public office and educational institureserva-tions were to span ten years as affirmative action to allow these “backward” classes to catch up. However, reservations have only continued and in some states those elected through reservations comprise over 50 percent in legislative bodies. Some recommen-dations to increase reservation quotas, like the ones proposed by the Mandal Commission in 1989, “prompted self-immolation of Brahman [so called ‘upper-caste’] students in Delhi.”22 What is even more alarming is that reservations, as initially envisioned at the time of drafting the constitution, were put in place only for “backward” Hindus and did not apply to those “lower-caste” Hin-dus who had converted to the more equal religions of Islam and Christianity.
Crowded out by reservations, “upper caste” Hindus regularly seek certificates proving that they belong to “lower castes” so as to redeem the privileges the constitution guarantees. Had the reservation system worked, India would have seen a gradual phasing out of this preferential treatment. The fact that these divisions have only deepened, and that other religious minorities who feel left out are now requesting quotas for their communities, is proof that politics have hijacked the idea of a secular India and the constitution blesses these divisions in the name of equality of citizens and neutrality of the state.
Bringing the underprivileged sections of society into mainstream India should have been achieved in the form of economic assistance over a fixed
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period of time. This would have sprung India toward social equality, not on the basis of divisive caste-based politics, but on the basis of need-based class assistance.
It is hardly a surprise that Copland describes the “story of secularism in In-dia” as one that is “studded with contradictions which need resolving.” 23 Over the years, the lack of a uniform civil code and the absurd Hinduiza-tion of the constituHinduiza-tion have let religious- and caste-based tensions simmer in India.
What could have been
This is another hypothetical exercise but one that I deem necessary, simply to avoid the trap of justifying history. Just because something happened does
This is another hypothetical exercise but one that I deem necessary, simply to avoid the trap of justifying history. Just because something happened does