Secularism in India: A Society Facing Itself

Secularism in India:
A Society Facing Itself

By

B.E.N.

December 15, 2004


While the Republic of India is fairly young, only 56 years old, the civilization of India goes back at least 5,000 years9. When viewed in this perspective, the “recent” independence of India from British rule on August 14, 1947 further complicates and diversifies a society that is already a collage of humanity and culture. The splitting of British India into two separate states, Muslim Pakistan and secular India created a quagmire of issues and an Identity crisis for millions. Even after all the bloodshed and the movement of nearly 11 million Hindus and Muslims over the border, almost half of the subcontinents Muslim population still remains in India.

Today as India’s largest religious minority it accounts for 12% of the current population of 1,045,845,226 (July 2002 est.). India is also the home to other religions such as Christians (2.3% of population), Sikh’s (1.9% of population), and other groups including Buddhists, Jain, and Parses which total 2.5% of the population. These groups, while very large in physical size, are tiny when compared as a percentage and accentuate the largeness of the Hindu’s who comprise 81.3% of the population5.

To content with this staggering diversity, India's Constitution sought to shape an overarching Indian identity while acknowledging the reality of pluralism. This was done by guaranteeing fundamental rights, in some cases through specific provisions for the protection of minorities. These included the freedom of religion in Articles 25-28; the right of any section of citizens to use and conserve their "distinct language, script or culture" with Article 29; and the right of "all minorities, whether based on religion or language," to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice with Article 30. The problem of caste was addressed in the Constitution by declaring the practice of untouchability as unlawful per Article 17. To compensate and open up some opportunity, a percentage of admissions to colleges and universities along with government positions were reserved for the Scheduled Castes (untouchables) and Scheduled (aboriginal) Tribes in Article 335. Also to ensure adequate political representation, Article 330 gives the Scheduled Castes and Tribes reserved seats in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament, and in state legislatures proportionately to their numbers. These reservations were to have ended in 1960, but they have been extended every ten years by a constitutional amendment6.

India may be an officially secular state, but Indian society is controlled by religious identities and plagued by communal mistrust and hatred. The term communal, in India, refers mainly to the Hindu-Muslim conflict, and with memories of the “recent” partition still perpetuated, Hindu-Muslim tensions are constantly sustained by jealousy and fear. Year after year, several hundred incidents of communal violence and rioting are officially reported, with the number and intensity of late growing. December 1992’s destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya by Hindu fanatics led to rioting across the country and left some 1,200 people dead. In January 1993, Mumbai suffered a nine-day anti-Muslim campaign, which resulted in the death of more than six hundred people.

The radical Hindu political movement demands an official end to the secularism that India currently enjoys and wishes to replace it with a recognition of a Hindu state. This is a change in the basic principles of the Indian Constitution, which is a dramatic change from the original Indian ideal of a pluralist, tolerant and secular state.

Anti-Secularists contend that the problem with secularism is that it assumes that a secular state is essential for different religions to peacefully coexist within a nation. This premise contends that all religions are based on the idea of exclusivity and therefore will be hostile to one another. On top of this, they contend that the concept of organized religion is foreign to India. The English word religion does not have a literal translation in any Indian language. The closest Indian word is Dharma, which does not connote exclusivity. Even the term Hindu is a Persian word that refers to people living east of the Indus (Sindhu) river showing that the term Hindu in its original sense refers to all Indians. Therefore, Hinduism is not a homogenous religious group.

Secularism is a more comprehensive idea of a pluralist country compromising various religions, castes, languages and social cultures. Secularism allows a very important aspect of identity, that of a heterogeneous one.

With the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in India since the early 1980s, the Hindu consciousness has been heightened and has led Hindu nationalists to project India's massive Hindu majority as threatened. This nationalist movement is rooted in the late nineteenth century and is recently represented by a formidable list of organizations and parties. On this list is the powerful paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its revivalist associate Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the leading opposition political party. With a combined vision of a revitalized Hindu India, they content that India’s Hindu’s are treated unfairly by India's secularism2.

Hindu nationalists point out that unlike the Christians or the Muslims, they do not consider themselves to be the chosen race anointed by God to spread His Word. They do not think that all non-believers have been misled by Satan and will be damned to spend eternity in Hell. In fact, just as the concept of religion is alien to India, so too is the concept of Satan.
Secularism in India, however, does not separate church and state, instead it seeks to recognize and promote all religious communities. The Constitution guarantees freedom of worship and to establish and administer its own schools and traditions. The issue is to establish a fair democratic balance between the Hindu majority’s preference and the protection of the minority.
On the other hand, the anti-secularist movement contends that the fundamental problem with the idea of secularism is that it does not address the root problem of religious violence, which is religious bigotry. They point out that secularism has hardly made a dent in reducing religious bigotry. Case in point is that the Pope frequently states that all religions are not the same and that Christianity is the one true religion. Because of its failure to address the issue of religious bigotry, anti-secularists believe that secularism has not been successful in creating a society in which all religions can truly peacefully coexist7.

However, Hindu nationalists tend to project a majority that is in denial of the diversity that makes Hinduism, and India, what it is. The ideals of Hindutva, or Hinduness, would impose an oppressive conformity to individual Hindus as well to the other minorities. To achieve this political power, the Hindutva movement uses religion as its medium and claims that all Indians, regardless of their religion, are part of a Hindu nation. Whether by passing bills through the parliament to restrict mixed faith marriages, state sponsored reconversion campaigns or a movement to rewrite the history of India as a single Hindu utopia.

The movement has ambitions of political and cultural reform. Its rhetoric of Hindu supremacy, full of statements that foster the demonization of minorities and exaggerated threats to national identity, falls on sympathetic ears among many members of the conservative upper and middle classes8. This support has emboldened the movement and gained its ideologies into places of public office, from local government to Parliament.

The Muslim and Christian religions are coined as Semitic per the Hindutva theory of history and are foreign faiths introduced from outside of Hindu India by foreign aggressors. This isolationism of these faiths makes the Hindutva movement, philosophically, more than nationalistic but rather supremacist. This ideological definition of nationhood by membership in a specific race, culture, or religion is tantamount fascist4.

There are also some specific political characteristics that are associated with fascist movements. These characteristics include the use of violence, the victimization of a specific community within the population and the use of unconstitutional strong-arm tactics against certain groups for political gain.

Bal Thackeray, the leader of Shiv Sena and a Hindutva proponent, has explained that the use of mobs for extorting money for political use was understandable and stated that if Muslims, “behaved like Jews in Nazi Germany [there would be] nothing wrong if they were treated as Jews were in Germany1.”

The RSS (National Volunteers Union) is an ideological organization that has influence upon domestic conservative politics. During the Gandhi era, the head of the RSS, Madhav Golwalkar, once praised Hitler for demonstrating to the world, “how well nigh impossible,” it is for different races and cultures, “having differences going to the root,” to be assimilated into a national whole. Germany’s removal of the “Semitic Races,” Golwalkar goes on to say, “[is a] good lesson for us in Hindusthan [India] to learn and profit by3.”

While this is not widely publicized, Golwalkar is still a highly respected individual in Hindutva circles. The RSS continues to assert that in an India free of secularism, Muslims and Christians will return to their ancient faith and traditions of Hinduism. Those without the wisdom to do so would be suspect, and thus worthy of second-class citizenship. This unwillingness to accept Hindutva therefore would label those individuals not only as apostates but also as traitors.

The Hindutva activists try to recreate the past with a combination of fact and fantasy. Many contributions to Indian culture have been made from Islamic writers, musicians, painters and their works have all become completely integrated with those of the Hindus. This mixture of cultures is even evident in that Islamic theory and practice have influenced Hindu religious theory and practices. Islam has been practiced in India for so long that it must now be considered an Indian religion.

With the intensification of Hindu-Muslim antipathy, secularism in India will find itself challenged at all levels of society. India must face this challenge as a secular state to secure democracy, justice, and equality in a multicultural society. The political culture of mutual distrust and ever intensifying violence between Muslims and Hindus is an enormous danger for the state. Secularism as well as democracy is under attack in India by the communalism, excessive caste consciousness, and separatism that constantly threatens it. The state, in its response to this challenge, must not weaken the values of individual liberties that are at the core of its Constitutional commitment.


1. “The Threats to Secular India,” Amartya Sen, www.nybooks.com/articles/2621.
2. “International Religious Freedom Report,” US Department of State, www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2001/5685.htm.
3. “The Danger of Hindutva to Secular India,” S.R. Welch, www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2001/welch1.html.
4. “Is India Going the Way of 1930s Germany?” Arun Swamy, www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/2002/0203indhind_body.html.
5. CIA World Factbook 2002, www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html.
6. “India: The Dilemmas of Diversity,” Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., www.menic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/india/Hardgrave.html.
7. “Why India Should not be Secular,” Raju Agarwal, www.indiapolicy.org/lists/india_policy/2000/Dec/msg00104.html.
8. HinduUnity.org homepage with general statement and Hindutva agenda, www.hinduunity.org/aboutus.html.
9. Encyclopedic discussion on India, www.wikipedia.org/wiki.India.