Jammu university convocation: Hamid Ansari calls on SC to help clarify and strengthen secularism, composite culture

Ansari wonders whether ‘more complete’ separation of religion and politics might not serve Indian democracy better

Written by Arun Sharma | Jammu | Updated: April 3, 2016 6:00 am

Jammu: Vice President Hamid Ansari with Chief Justice of India T S Thakur during 16th Convocation ceremony of University of Jammu on Saturday. (Source: PTI)

QUOTING from a report calling upon the Supreme Court to reflect how to protect minorities from majoritarianism, Vice-President Hamid Ansari Saturday urged the court to clarify contours within which secularism and composite culture should operate so as to remove ambiguities.

Addressing the 16th convocation of Jammu University here, Ansari also wondered whether a more complete separation of religion and politics might not better serve Indian democracy.

He said that a few years ago, in a volume published on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the Supreme Court, lawyers Rajeev Dhavan & Fali S Nariman had observed that “as we transit into the next millennium, the Supreme Court has a lot to reflect upon, and not least on how to protect the minorities and their ilk from the onslaught of majoritarianism”.

Unless the court strives to assure that the Constitution applies fairly to all citizens, Ansari said, the court cannot be said to have fulfilled its responsibility. “Is it therefore bold to expect that the Supreme Court may consider, in its wisdom, to clarify the contours within which the principles of secularism and composite culture should operate with a view to strengthen their functional modality and remove ambiguities?”

Any public discourse on India being a ‘secular’ republic with a ‘composite culture’ cannot overlook India’s heterogeneity, he added. “A population of 1.3 billion comprising over 4,635 communities… Religious minorities constitute 19.4 per cent of the total… Our democratic polity and its secular State structure were put in place in full awareness of this plurality. There was no suggestion to erase identities and homogenise them.”

Ansari said that the three accepted characteristics of a secular State were liberty to practise religion, equality between religions in State practice, and neutrality or a fence of separation between the State and religion. However, he said, their application had been contradictory and led to major anomalies. “The challenge, then, is to reduce if not eliminate these anomalies.”

Referring to the Constitution, the Vice-President said, “The State is prohibited to patronise any particular religion as State religion and is enjoined to observe neutrality… Programmes or principles evolved by political parties based on religion amount to recognising religion as a part of the political governance, which the Constitution expressly prohibits…”

Noting that secularism was “more than a passive attitude of religious tolerance; it is a positive concept of equal treatment”, he said observers have argued that pronouncements of the Supreme Court have “effectively vindicated the profoundly anti-secular vision of secularism” of some quarters. It has been argued for this reason, Ansari said, “whether a more complete separation of religion and politics might not better serve Indian democracy”.

“The difficulty lies in delineating, for purposes of public policy and practice, the line that separates them from religion… The ‘way of life’ argument, used in philosophical texts and some judicial pronouncements, does not help… identify common principles of equity in a multi-religious society. Since a wall of separation is not possible under Indian conditions, the challenge is to develop a formula for equidistance and minimum involvement. For this purpose, principles of faith need to be segregated from contours of culture since a conflation of the two obfuscates the boundaries of both.”

The Vice-President also emphasised the “constitutional principle” of equality of status and opportunity, saying, “This equality has to be substantiative rather than merely formal and has to be given shape through requisite measures of affirmative action… so that the journey on the path to development has a common starting point.”

Pointing out that one of the main ideals of the Constitution was justice, the Vice-President also quoted John Rawls to say, “Rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.”

Quoting K N Pannikar, Ansari said, “Whether India developed as a melting pot of cultures or only remained a salad bowl is no more the issue. The crucial question is whether Indian culture is conceived as a static phenomenon, tracting its identity to a single unchanging source, or a dynamic phenomenon, critically and creatively interrogating all that is new.”

Source: indianexpress

How India’s founding fathers saw the ‘nauseating principle of secularity of the State’

The Constituent Assembly still chose to be secular in a caste-ridden, Partition-scarred, newly independent India.

Ipsita Chakravarty  · Today · 04:30 pm

Secular, an adjective, used in its current form since around 1300, means “living in the world, not belonging to a religious order” or “belonging to the state”. It has been derived from the Old French “seculer”, from the Late Latin “saecularis”, meaning “worldly, secular, pertaining to a generation or an age”, from the Latin “saecularis”, or “of an age, occurring once in an age”, from “saeculum”, the word for “age, span of time, generation”.


According to one theory cited in the etymology dictionary, its Proto-Indo-European roots lie in the word “sai-tlo”, where “sai” means to bind or tie, “extended metaphorically to successive human generations as links in the chain of life”. It is also the source for the French word “siecle” and for “ludi saeculares”, an Ancient Roman festival celebrated once in 120 years. In English, since the 1850s, it has stood for humanism, and for leaving god out of morality or ethics.


It does not strictly translate into the term “sect-neutral” in Hindi, as Home Minister Rajnath Singh suggested in Parliament on Thursday. Though in the political life of nations since the 19th century, it has come to mean a separation of religion from the state.


Of an age


    “Another word is thrown up a good deal, this SECULAR STATE business. May I beg with all humility those gentlemen who use this word often, to consult some dictionary before they use it? It is brought in at every conceivable step and at every conceivable stage. I just do not understand it. It has a great deal of importance, no doubt. But it is brought in in all contexts, as if by saying that we are a secular State we have done something amazingly generous, given something out of our pocket to the rest of the world, something which we ought not to have done. We have only done something which every country does except a very few misguided and backward countries in the world. Let us not refer to that word in the sense that we have done something very mighty.”


 – Jawaharlal Nehru, Constituent Assembly debates on August 12, 1949.


    “The specious, oft-repeated and nauseating principle of secularity of the State. I think that we are going too far in this business of secularity.”


 – PS Deshmukh, Constituent Assembly debates on August 11, 1949.


Evidently, the Constituent Assembly argued a lot about secularism during the three years that it hammered out the Indian Constitution. There was general consensus that they were writing out a secular state, but not about much else.


During one session in 1949, HV Kamath moved an amendment to have the Preamble start with “In the name of God”. He was shot down – even if the god was not specific to any religion, it left out unbelievers. Brajeshwar Prasad, another member, proposed that “socialist” and “secular” be introduced in the Preamble. “Socialist” was ridiculed and “secular” fell by the wayside along with it. But the idea of a secular state still retained a powerful imaginative pull.


The Constituent Assembly debates somehow refract back to the origins of the word secular, to the living human choice made in a particular time and place, in a longer historical continuum. The debaters took an inherited Western idea and tried to work out what it meant to be secular, how best to be secular in caste-ridden, Partition-scarred, newly independent India. The version that emerged was peculiarly of an age.


Scholars through the decades have pointed out how it diverged from accepted definitions of secularism. Perhaps that is why the Constituent Assembly stopped short of using the word in the first place.


No concern or equal respect? 


    “It would have been enough if it had been said that the State should not interfere with any religion. Or, we could have said that the State should have a spiritual and moral outlook, instead of saying that it should be secular. The introduction of these words has created a lot of misunderstanding.” – Jagat Narain Lal, Constituent Assembly debates on November 25, 1949. 

As Shefali Jha has pointed out, much of the debate was a struggle between two theories of secularism, “no concern” and “equal respect”. The first dictated that the state stay away from religion, that faith be a private matter or, more radically, a matter strictly confined to the private sphere. It privileged the rights of the individual citizen over the recognition of separate communities. Nation states that evolved in the 19th century, Jha says, promoted individual rights so that older allegiances withered away, leaving behind only the loyal citizen.


But it was argued that such a state could not adequately represent a society with deep traditions of religion. Besides, the West, with its arid conception of secularism, was in crisis. It was for India to show the regenerative potential of spiritual and mystical streams of thought. The state that took shape would not interfere in religion. But it would respect all religions, which would also find a place in the public sphere.


The wellsprings of tolerance that allowed this plurality were often cast as a Hindu tradition. But it was also conceded that all faiths had inner resources of tolerance. JB Kripalani defined tolerance as the “acceptance, to some extent, of someone’s beliefs as good for him”. It was this acceptance that would prevent religious conflict.


There were several arenas in which the debate between the two models of secularism played out. For instance, the assembly had to choose between freedom of religious worship, or the individual’s private right to belief and prayer, and freedom of religious practice, which involved the public performance of faith and the right to propagate it; between a uniform civil code which erased the personal laws of various faiths and a jurisprudence that allowed for variations in civil law.


Jha shows how the Constituent Assembly gravitated towards the equal respect theory, but how the borders between the two forms of secularism were often blurred. So we got a state which allowed freedom of religious practice, provided protections for personal laws, recognised linguistic minorities and allowed religious instruction in schools, but which rejected political safeguards for minorities.


National integration, it was felt, would take care of it by absorbing minorities into the political mainstream. “I want to tell the House, Sir, that there is no minority in this country,” said Tajamahal Husain. “I do not consider myself a minority. In a secular State, there is no such thing as minority.”


Principled distance


    “The draftsmen seem to be torn between two rival ideals: one suggesting the Constitution for a wholly secular State, in which religion has no official recognition. On the other hand, there seems to me to be a pull – somewhat sub-conscious pull, if I may say so – in favour of particular religions or denominations, whose institutions, whose endowments, whose foundations, are sought to be protected.”

     – KT Shah, Constituent Assembly debates on November 30, 1948.

As secularism evolved in India, equal respect did not always mean equal distance from all religions either. Rajeev Bhargav points out how Indian secularism has had to defend itself against charges of differential treatment. There were two main contentions.


First, the state insulated Muslim personal laws but reformed the Hindu code, abolishing child marriage and polygamy, modernising laws of inheritance. Several articles of the Constitution directly acted against the caste system of the Hindus. Not only did it muddy  the lines of separation between faith and state, it clearly showed different degrees of familiarity towards the two religions, which could be read as discriminatory towards Hindus and protective of Muslims or vice versa. Second, the Constitution allowed for group-specific social rights for religious minorities. They enjoyed, for instance, enjoyed certain autonomies over educational institutions run by them.


To both objections, Bhargav puts forward the rationale of principled distance, which distinguishes between equal treatment and treating everyone as an equal. The state could not be blindly neutral or equidistant from all religions. To achieve certain constitutional ideals of equality, it had to act on behalf of discriminated populations. Religious minorities had to be protected, just as the entrenched inequities of the Hindu caste system had to be wiped out.


Choosing secularism


This, then, was the sum of our secularism, born of violence, oppression and mistrust. Born also of the hope that India could be a plural, equal society, in spite of the appalling evidence of Partition and the brutalities of the caste system. Secularism in India has been about making this choice, over and over again, in spite of all odds. To hold it to preconceived formal standards or to quibble about the absence of the word in the original Preamble seems pedantic.


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Source: scrollin

Why Nehruvian secularism is still alive and kicking, despite BJP's body blows

Nehru birth anniversary

Thanks to the first prime minister, secularism remains a value that any party contending for power must claim to espouse.

Shoaib Daniyal  · Nov 14, 2014 · 02:30 am

In the first two decades after India gained independence, Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru dominated the affairs of the new state. The so-called Nehruvian Consensus that emerged operated around three major issues: parliamentary democracy, state-led economic development and secularism.

As of today, the debates around the first and the second issues have been settled quite comprehensively. Parliamentary democracy has succeeded in India better than most would have predicted and conversely, state-led economic development has been junked almost entirely. The fate of the third issue – secularism – is more contentious, with powerful political groups arranged against it, even as it somehow manages to maintain itself in the political discourse.

Given the near monopoly of the Nehruvian Consensus during its time, it is often forgotten just how precariously placed Nehruvian secularism was when it started out in 1947. There was, of course, the bedlam of Partition and the passions it gave rise to, making secularism look fantastic – even woolly-headed – at the time. Moreover, the Congress of 1947 was a largely right-wing party. Time and again, whenever the party’s left and right factions clashed, the right won.

Socialists were sidelined

In 1949, sidelined completely within the party, the socialists led by Jayprakash Narayan had to leave the Congress. The next year, Vallabhbhai Patel’s candidate PD Tandon became president, alarming Nehru to the extent that he refused to participate in Tandon’s Working Committee. Moreover, even within the Congress’ right wing, the Hindu conservatives led by Patel had outflanked the secular right led by C Rajagopalachari.

Rajagopalachari and Nehru concurred on the issue of secularism and this was one of the reasons why Nehru supported Rajagopalachari’s candidature for India’s first president. However, in the end, Patel managed to get his candidate Rajendra Prasad elected instead. True to form, one of Prasad’s first major acts as president was to inaugurate the Somnath temple – hardly the best start for a state that was struggling to define itself as secular.

Nehru, however, used his immense personal popularity to overrule the party machine and push his agenda. When violence broke out in Bengal in 1949, members of the Hindu right, led by Patel and SP Mukherjee wanted a forced communal exchange of populations to “settle” the issue, thus taking the unprecedented step of denying natural citizenship to people on the basis of religion. Thankfully, Nehru ensured that modern, liberal notions of citizenship prevailed in India. In April 1950, Nehru signed the “Delhi Pact” with Pakistan’s prime minster, guaranteeing that religion would not bar a person from citizenship.

Women's rights

Later on, Nehru would take on the Hindu right, within and outside of his party, on the Hindu Code Bills, a series of measures modernising Hindu Law, targeted mainly at guaranteeing women’s rights. So bitter was the opposition from the conservatives that President Prasad refused to support his own cabinet on the matter, causing a minor constitutional crisis. Again, Nehru used his popularity to get the bills through, at one stroke modernising the personal laws of 80% of the population – easily his most monumental achievement.

Of course, the Nehruvian Consensus on secularism has been on the retreat for more than four decades now. It first frayed at the edges in the states, where laws restricting religious freedom were passed in the shape of anti-conversion laws. Theological considerations also snuck into criminal legislation as cow slaughter was banned across large parts of the country. Matters reached a head when the Hindutva demand to build a Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya became the central political issue of the day in the late 1980s and ’90s. Of course, today the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh, is the largest political formation in the country. While the later Congress has let Nehruvian secularism atrophy due to neglect and political expediency, the BJP places itself in direct ideological opposition to it.

Nevertheless, much attenuated as it is, Nehruvian secularism is still a factor in the way our politics is played out. For one, secularism is still a legitimate rhetorical peg in public debate and discussion. Both the BJP and Congress might default on it in practice, but it is still held up as an ideal. Even in the Ram mandir salad days of the early ’90s, the BJP never thought of replacing secularism in its rhetoric – it just claimed that its secularism was better and that of the Congress’ “pseudo” or fake.

Rhetoric shapes actions

This might seem like a minor quibble but in a democracy public rhetoric has a major part to play in shaping the actions of the state. As long as secularism is an ideal that the republic aspires to, it can act as a check against the actions of politicians who might not agree with the concept per se.

Therefore, the secular bedrock that Nehru laid down in the 1950s and ’60s means that it is unthinkable for, say, the Hindu Code Bills to be turned back now or for anyone to propose that Indian citizenship be now based on religion. Modi has himself toned down his communal rhetoric from his days as chief minister, the Nehruvian influence at the Centre still being far stronger than in the states. Overall, the BJP seems to have followed a similar trend after capturing the Centre: 25 years ago, it was sure that the construction of a “Virat Ram Mandir” was its goal. But now that the goal is within its grasp, it does not seem so keen on actually going through with it.

Of course, there is nothing permanent in such an arrangement. Socialism was also, till less than three decades back, a universal rhetorical tool employed by almost the entire polity but it has vanished quite comprehensively from the landscape. Nevertheless, for today, on Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary, while his legacy of secularism might be much weakened, it is still a significant factor in India’s political discourse – and, hopefully, will be for some time.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.inIn the first two decades after India gained independence, Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru dominated the affairs of the new state. The so-called Nehruvian Consensus that emerged operated around three major issues: parliamentary democracy, state-led economic development and secularism.

As of today, the debates around the first and the second issues have been settled quite comprehensively. Parliamentary democracy has succeeded in India better than most would have predicted and conversely, state-led economic development has been junked almost entirely. The fate of the third issue – secularism – is more contentious, with powerful political groups arranged against it, even as it somehow manages to maintain itself in the political discourse.

Given the near monopoly of the Nehruvian Consensus during its time, it is often forgotten just how precariously placed Nehruvian secularism was when it started out in 1947. There was, of course, the bedlam of Partition and the passions it gave rise to, making secularism look fantastic – even woolly-headed – at the time. Moreover, the Congress of 1947 was a largely right-wing party. Time and again, whenever the party’s left and right factions clashed, the right won.

Socialists were sidelined

In 1949, sidelined completely within the party, the socialists led by Jayprakash Narayan had to leave the Congress. The next year, Vallabhbhai Patel’s candidate PD Tandon became president, alarming Nehru to the extent that he refused to participate in Tandon’s Working Committee. Moreover, even within the Congress’ right wing, the Hindu conservatives led by Patel had outflanked the secular right led by C Rajagopalachari.

Rajagopalachari and Nehru concurred on the issue of secularism and this was one of the reasons why Nehru supported Rajagopalachari’s candidature for India’s first president. However, in the end, Patel managed to get his candidate Rajendra Prasad elected instead. True to form, one of Prasad’s first major acts as president was to inaugurate the Somnath temple – hardly the best start for a state that was struggling to define itself as secular.

Nehru, however, used his immense personal popularity to overrule the party machine and push his agenda. When violence broke out in Bengal in 1949, members of the Hindu right, led by Patel and SP Mukherjee wanted a forced communal exchange of populations to “settle” the issue, thus taking the unprecedented step of denying natural citizenship to people on the basis of religion. Thankfully, Nehru ensured that modern, liberal notions of citizenship prevailed in India. In April 1950, Nehru signed the “Delhi Pact” with Pakistan’s prime minster, guaranteeing that religion would not bar a person from citizenship.

Women's rights

Later on, Nehru would take on the Hindu right, within and outside of his party, on the Hindu Code Bills, a series of measures modernising Hindu Law, targeted mainly at guaranteeing women’s rights. So bitter was the opposition from the conservatives that President Prasad refused to support his own cabinet on the matter, causing a minor constitutional crisis. Again, Nehru used his popularity to get the bills through, at one stroke modernising the personal laws of 80% of the population – easily his most monumental achievement.

Of course, the Nehruvian Consensus on secularism has been on the retreat for more than four decades now. It first frayed at the edges in the states, where laws restricting religious freedom were passed in the shape of anti-conversion laws. Theological considerations also snuck into criminal legislation as cow slaughter was banned across large parts of the country. Matters reached a head when the Hindutva demand to build a Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya became the central political issue of the day in the late 1980s and ’90s. Of course, today the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh, is the largest political formation in the country. While the later Congress has let Nehruvian secularism atrophy due to neglect and political expediency, the BJP places itself in direct ideological opposition to it.

Nevertheless, much attenuated as it is, Nehruvian secularism is still a factor in the way our politics is played out. For one, secularism is still a legitimate rhetorical peg in public debate and discussion. Both the BJP and Congress might default on it in practice, but it is still held up as an ideal. Even in the Ram mandir salad days of the early ’90s, the BJP never thought of replacing secularism in its rhetoric – it just claimed that its secularism was better and that of the Congress’ “pseudo” or fake.

Rhetoric shapes actions

This might seem like a minor quibble but in a democracy public rhetoric has a major part to play in shaping the actions of the state. As long as secularism is an ideal that the republic aspires to, it can act as a check against the actions of politicians who might not agree with the concept per se.

Therefore, the secular bedrock that Nehru laid down in the 1950s and ’60s means that it is unthinkable for, say, the Hindu Code Bills to be turned back now or for anyone to propose that Indian citizenship be now based on religion. Modi has himself toned down his communal rhetoric from his days as chief minister, the Nehruvian influence at the Centre still being far stronger than in the states. Overall, the BJP seems to have followed a similar trend after capturing the Centre: 25 years ago, it was sure that the construction of a “Virat Ram Mandir” was its goal. But now that the goal is within its grasp, it does not seem so keen on actually going through with it.

Of course, there is nothing permanent in such an arrangement. Socialism was also, till less than three decades back, a universal rhetorical tool employed by almost the entire polity but it has vanished quite comprehensively from the landscape. Nevertheless, for today, on Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary, while his legacy of secularism might be much weakened, it is still a significant factor in India’s political discourse – and, hopefully, will be for some time.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin