Reimagining secularism

The tragedy of the destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, was amplified manifold during the bhumi pujan for a new Ram temple at exactly the same site by PM Modi on August 5, 2020. The PM of a constitutional republic performing the role of a yajmana for a Hindu ritual at a site of bloodshed, conflict and an SC-ruled resolution has led to a lot of lamentations over the death of constitutional secularism, with many commentators writing out its death certificate and some others insisting that it is still alive and has only gone into a deep coma. If it is dead, it has to be understood how it was born. The concept of Indian secularism was not a British colonial construct but a native impulse, born out of genuine humanity and the practical necessity to defeat colonialism. Indian secularism was a reaction to the colonial project to defeat the national movement by creating, fostering and weaponising communal identities.

The demons of identity politics unleashed by the colonial government were waging a million mutinies within, which would have ensured complete chaos and the continuation of foreign rule had the Gandhian nationalist glue of communal amity not worked even to the extent it did. And it was this spirit of camaraderie, patriotism and Gandhian hope that transformed itself into Indian secularism. Had it been a vestige of colonial rule like the railways and the army, or a British copy like the parliamentary system, then Rajendra Prasad would have been sworn in holding a copy of Gita by some Shankaracharya, making him promise to protect the saffron parivar. And that is exactly what the British did in Pakistan.

For, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation oath in 1953 was administered by the Archbishop, who asked her, ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?’ And Pakistan was part of Elizabeth’s territories according to this oath.

The British legacy, thus, was clearly not the reason for India becoming a secular republic, nor can the left liberal elite appropriate the idea of the composite nationhood. It was a desi pre-modern phenomenon much like Gandhi’s charkha, non-cooperation, Ram Rajya, the vaishnava jan to and ishwar-allah hymns that united a destroyed nation, which had no confidence or resources to fight the biggest empire in the world. Whereas the British, looking at this movement through the proselytising prism of the practitioners of a Semitic religion, did not or refused to understand the underlying truthful intent of the Gandhian brotherhood. Ironically, the British symbolised and epitomised modernity, while Gandhi, the naked fakir, was dubbed pre-modern.

But what remains unsaid is that beneath the flying machines and computing robots, there is the collective pre-modern unconsciousness in every society, which gets reflected in atavistic fears, turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque, Babri Masjid into a temple, forcing the Bible Belt in the US to turn against a black president, gay marriage or the dilution of gun laws. The pre-modern is everywhere; in the Vatican, in Israel, in the Arab world, in Iran, in tiny Sri Lanka; and in equal measure in every temple, church and mosque. But when the pre-modern gains control of the levers of political power, what it manages to unleash is the evil within us in gargantuan proportions.

It was with great difficulty that Gandhi converted the pre-modern, trying to create a language to converse with it, to pacify and tame it. He was not successful all the time but there was a constant effort to converse with clashing pre-modern identities for peaceful, respectful coexistence. It was this conversation that got stopped with his assassination. All that the Congress governments and other mainstream parties, particularly the Left, had attempted since then was to use half-baked ideas of secularism — devoid of any conversation with the pre-modern Indian — merely to practise politically immoral acts of duplicity while seeking power.

The latest bhumi pujan is no special rupture considering that Jawaharlal Nehru merely wrote a letter instead of legally getting the trespass into Babri Masjid on the intervening night of December 22 and 23, 1949, nullified and the issue closed forever. It was the same Prime Minister who undemocratically dismissed the Kerala state government in 1959 because the regressive forces of the Church and a caste organisation wanted it so. Thus, the death of constitutional secularism was foretold even before the Constitution came into force. But what has altered since then is that we have a political force that converses with the pre-modern to provoke, to inflame and to feed its insecurities. The success of this Hindutva force is directly proportional to the hypocrisy of the Congress and the Left-wing parties.

It is to the credit of the Gandhian engagement with the pre-modern that Hindutva has taken so long to strike roots. If Indians were simplistic, bloodthirsty goons, then what stopped them all this while? Aren’t the Church, the Ulema and the RSS the same? Aren’t they all trying to mobilise, politicise and weaponise religious and group insecurities? Unless the non-Hindutva political parties answer these questions to converse with the Indian pre-modern, simultaneously eschewing the temptation to manipulate the pre-modern, the Hindutva forces will keep defeating them. But if a new post-Gandhian language can be created, a new India is a possibility. It is also a necessity because, as Rahat Indori wrote, if there is a fire, it will burn down all the houses, not just mine.