Crime Against Humanity
Volume 2 An inquiry into the carnage in Gujarat -- Findings And Recommendations by Concerned Citizens Tribunal -Gujarat 2002
Secularism and the Constitution
The preamble of our Constitution begins with the expression ‘We, the People ofIndia’ and states that it is the ‘People’ who have resolved solemnly to constitute India intoa Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens,
– JUSTICE social, economic and political;
– LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
– EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;and to promote among them all,
– FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity andintegrity of the nation.
Although the ideal of secularism was added together with that of socialism expressly inthe preamble by the 42 nd Amendment of the Constitution enacted in January 1977, it wasimplicit in the ideal of democracy itself, for there cannot be democracy when any sectionof society is discriminated against on any account – be it caste, religion, race, language,territory, sex etc. Equality in the matter of exercising all democratic rights and the absenceof inequality among citizens on any account are the basis of a democratic regime. Secular-ism is thus the basis of democracy and a non-secular state cannot be democratic. Conse-quently, communalism, or the practice of discrimination against any individual or group ofindividuals in any form, in any walk of life is undemocratic and unconstitutional.
‘We, the people of India’ does not further mean ‘We, the Hindus’ much less, ‘We,the upper castes or the upper class’. It means the people of all castes and religions, therich and the poor, those living in the plains and on the hills, in Kerala as well as inKashmir and the North-East. The Constitution does not confer special favours onany social group or deny any rights to any group. Further, it is all the people of thiscountry who have accepted the Constitution and pledged themselves to constitutethis nation into a democratic, socialist and secular state. Not the Hindus, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas alone.
Social, economic and political justice, the liberty of thought and of expression,belief, faith and worship, the equality of status and of opportunity and the dignity of the individual as declared by the Constitution are to be ensured to all, irrespective ofthe social group to which they belong. Likewise, the fundamental rights are conferredon all and the directive principles have to be operational for the benefit of each andevery individual in the country.
Of particular significance in this connection are the fundamental rights enshrinedin Articles 14, 16, 19 to 22 and 25, 26, 27, 29 and 30. Together, they ensure equalitybefore law, equality of opportunity for education and employment, equal civil rightsand liberties, equal freedom of conscience and of opportunity for all to profess, prac-tice and propagate one’s faith and religion and also the right to the religious and thelinguistic minorities even to run and manage their own educational institutions.
The fundamental duties laid down in Article 51A are further binding on all citizensand none can ignore them. Of particular importance are the duties:
- to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions;
- to uphold and protect the unity and integrity of India;
- to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all thepeople of India transcending religious, linguistic and sectional diversities;
- to value and preserve our rich heritage and composite culture.
- and to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry andreform.
Inspite of the aforesaid express provisions of the Constitution, a section of Indiansociety continues to believe that the country belongs exclusively to those who professthe religion of the majority, namely, the Hindu religion, and that those belonging tothe other religions are aliens in this country. This way of thinking is further sought tobe spread, and deepened and perpetuated even by resorting to violence. What is dis-maying is that even among the so-called educated sections of society and those be-longing to the economically higher strata, many have become a party to this irrationalbelief and attitude, either due to sheer ignorance, or on account of the mistakennotion of superiority of their religion and of the inferiority of the other faiths, or, dueto some acquired prejudices or selfish reasons of their own.
It is therefore necessary to remind this section that Muslims and Christians in thiscountry are as much of Indian origin as are the Hindus. About 95 per cent of theMuslims and 99 per cent of the Christians of today are those who were originally Hin-dus and had voluntarily embraced their respective religions, even while the rest mighthave been converted forcibly or under duress. The higher castes and the higher classesembraced these religions to seek pelf, power and position under the regimes of the time,while the lower castes, who formed the vast majority, did so to escape the tyranny andexploitation of the caste system and of the rituals prevalent in Hinduism. Faiths likeBuddhism, Jainism and Sikhism were born as revolts against this very tyranny, inequality and inhumanity.
Recent archaeological finds and other historical data confirm that Indian civilisationand culture began with the Dravidian alias Sindhu civilisation, which was one of themost ancient and advanced civilisations of the world. It is the Dravidians who are the original inhabitants of this land, and not the Aryans who came from the North about1,500 years after the Dravidian civilisation had already been fully established, andwas at the peak of its progress. The Aryans were a semi-nomadic, semi-barbaric andpastoral tribe when they arrived in this land around 1,500 BC. They raided theDravidians who were traders and agriculturists and who had settled on the banks ofthe river Sindhu, Harappa and Mohenjodaro being their major centres of settlement.The Aryans raided not once but several times over a period of years, massacred andlooted the Dravidians and abducted their female and male children, the former formarriage, the latter to serve in their armies. The peaceful Dravidians, who do notseem to have had any standing armed force, fell an easy prey to the semi-barbaricAryans and fled mainly to the South.
Later, as happened in the case of some of the other raiders on this land such asHuns and Shaks, the Dravidians and Aryans assimilated with each other. The presentIndian population has thus a mixed racial composition. That is why this country hasalways been looked upon as a land with a composite culture. The massacres, loot, andabductions of the natives were not new to this land, which was always vulnerable tothe raiders and the marauders from abroad, for a variety of reasons that need not begone into here. The point to be noted is that almost all the people of this countrytoday have been inhabitants of this land for centuries. None is an alien and none canclaim purity of race. Accidents of history, the exploitative and tyrannical caste sys-tem, the selfish and intolerant attitude of the privileged classes, the rise of indigenousrebellious religions like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, the arrival of religions likeJudaism, Christianity and Islam from abroad and the embracing of all of them by thenatives — all these have contributed equally to the distribution of the inhabitants ofthis land among various religious communities and sects. This distribution is not adivision and is certainly not one between natives and foreigners. Non-Hindus are asIndian as are the Hindus of various castes and sects.
Before the Partition of the subcontinent on religious lines, the total population ofthis country was about 30 crores, of which about 8.50 crores were Muslims and. It isnot necessary to consider here the population of the Christians, Sikhs, the Jains, theBuddhists, the Jews or the Parsees. Today, India has about 84 crore Hindus and 12crore Muslims. India has the second largest population of Muslims in the world, nextonly to Indonesia; Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are behind India terms of the sizeof the Muslim population.
What exactly forms the basis of a nation is certainly a fascinating subject for dis-cussion. But that need not tempt us to digress from the main issue here. Suffice it tosay that religion, though a major factor, is neither a necessary nor always a bondingelement. History is replete with instances of intra-faith wars between the Hindu king-doms, the Christian nations and the Muslim states and of violent conflicts betweendifferent sects of the same religion. When Hindu kings and Muslim kings fought with each other, their armies had sizeable proportions of Muslims and Hindus respectively, even as commanders and chiefs of their armies. While Hindu India and HinduNepal were never one nation, Muslim Bangladesh separated from Muslim Pakistanwithin a quarter of a century after a bloody war, mainly on the question of language.Besides, the lapse of 55 years after Partition should not allow us to forget that theMuslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh have the same legacy of the original Dravidiancivilisation as have the Hindus, Muslims and others (except Parsees) of this land.In this connection, it should also not be forgotten that Hindus have never been aunited community. The different castes, particularly the higher castes and the lowercastes, have been in continual conflict with each other and unfortunate incidents ofviolent attacks against each other occur frequently even today. Yet, it is a fact that thetwo-nation theory based on religion came to be propounded and the partition of thecountry was eventually effected on that basis.
In 1923, Shri VD Savarkar, then associated with the Hindu Mahasabha and wholater became its president, propounded his thesis of Hindu Rashtra (Hindutva). Ac-cording to this thesis, all Hindus were tied together by the bonds of a common father-land, ties of blood, a common culture and civilisation, common heroes, commonhistory and, above all, the will to remain united as a nation. Further, according to him,culture was inextricably linked to territory and the membership of the Hindu nationdepended upon the acceptance of India both as Fatherland and Holy Land. This ex-cluded Muslims and Christians who look to Mecca and Jerusalem respectively as theirHoly Land, although Shri Savarkar did not deny that they looked upon India as theirfatherland. In defining Hindu nationality, further, he underlined the importance ofHindutva, a religious, racial and cultural entity in which Hinduism as a religion formeda part of the whole.
The thesis, besides being divisive, is ahistorical and unscientific. The obvious flaws,to state only a few, are that all the original inhabitants of the land have commonblood. But if blood is to be distinguished by religions or other social grouping, thenthere are no common ties of blood on account of the pernicious caste system. Conse-quently, there is also no common culture and civilisation. The lower castes were hardlyever allowed to play their role in the making of history. Their gods and heroes havealso been different. The caste system has always prevented social unity and eveninteraction and exchange among the Hindus and also among those who carried thecaste system with them when they converted into other religions. As regards the he-roes of the same castes, Rama and Ravana who are depicted as the enemies of eachother by one of the two great epics of the Hindus, namely the Ramayana, they areboth worshipped, in the north and the south respectively. According to this thesis,Indians living abroad can no longer look to this country as their Holy Land, while theBuddhists in other countries who look to Bodh Gaya as their Holy Land should beconsidered aliens in their own countries.
As regards the willingness to live together as a nation, this begs the question. Nopeople desire to be torn away from the soil and the surroundings in which they havebeen born and grow up unless they are denied the elementary right to live with dignityas human beings. Constant insecurity of life, the denial of equal status and opportu-nity, discrimination in the social, political, economic and cultural life of the nationand threats to their distinct language, faith, religion or culture alienate sections ofsociety from the mainstream of national life. Every nation has within it more sub-social groups than those based on race, religion, language etc. It is for the major na-tional group, which is in a position to dictate and dominate, to see that no social groupis discriminated against in any walk of life on any grounds. No nation is planned. Itemerges out of the feeling of togetherness, which is created by common hopes andaspirations, common apprehensions and a common stake in progress and prosperity.Bonds of unity and fraternity are to be built by chords, which have to evolve andgrow from within. They cannot grow when sectarian forces attempt to keep the peopleapart for one reason or another. The responsibility to keep a nation together lies withthe majority, by allowing no scope for the generation of any feeling of alienationwithin any social group; instead, the majority should take all steps to foster the senseof unity and integrity.
Further, while defining the meaning of the word ‘Indian’, Shri Savarkar has obvi-ously and completely ignored the Dravidian civilisation. According to his criteria,India will not be one, but many nations. Incidentally, those like Shri MA Jinnah andothers, who promoted and propagated Pakistan, also claimed this factor, among oth-ers, on the grounds that there were no common heroes, no common culture, civilisationand history and no common Holy Land.
In a conference held in Lahore in 1940, the Muslim League passed a resolutioncalling for the formation of a separate state of Pakistan for the first time, althoughthe concept of Pakistan was left vague, with no definite formulation of territorialboundaries. The demand for partition was, of course, based on religion, with Muslimmajority territories being grouped together as a nation. Some of the reasons for thisdemand were the same as those sanctified by the Savarkar thesis, which was mentioned earlier. During aliencolonial rule, communal forces from both the major religious groups, namely, Hindu and Muslim, did notparticipate in the freedom struggle, and while Muslim communalists welcomed the formation of Pakistan when itwas announced,Hindu communalists maintained a strategic silence. However, it was ultimately a Hindufanatic who, consumed with rage at the partition of the country, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi while holding himresponsible for this partition. While riots between the two communities did erupt during the course of thefreedom struggle, rocking thecountry from time to time, Partition triggered off a wave of violence — loot, arson,rape and massacre — unprecedented in the history of the world. The large-scale com-munal clashes resulted in the loss of no less than five lakh innocent men, women andchildren on both sides. The bitterness born during the pre-partition riots became venomous after the carnagein the days that immediately followed Partition. However, due to adroit handling of the situation by theleadership of the country at the time, the countrysoon witnessed the restoration of peace and the gradual harmonisation of relationshipsbetween the two communities. Were it not for the wisdom and foresight displayed bythe committed and secular statesmen who led the nation then, this amazing feat wouldindeed have been impossible to perform within such a short time.
However, the riots that took place just before and after Partition, and the carnagethat was witnessed then, fed communal forces in both communities and have kept theirfires burning until today – always awaiting an opportunity for conflagration. Over thelast 55 years, the smallest incidents, whether actual or rumoured, have been used aspretexts by which to fuel riots at one place or another. These years have also witnessedpre-planned and organised attempts by communal forces to disturb age-old peacefuland harmonious relations between the two communities in various places, which hadwithstood the test of time despite much provocation elsewhere in the country. Vestedinterests on both sides appear to concentrate on keeping communities divided, and theconflicts and tension between them constantly alive, and to thrive at the cost of theinnocent men, women and children of both the communities.
The only persons who have benefited and are benefiting from the communal conflictsare firstly, the priests and the pundits and the mullahs and the maulvis. Not only does theirlivelihood depend on their respective religion, but their status, power and position areequally sustained by it. The priest of every religious group is an uncrowned king of hisfollowers. His word is law and his preaching is the last word in wisdom. His interpretation of the religious text is final and his pronouncements are the ultimate authority onevery subject. He is interested in expanding the empire of his followers and maintainingits identity strictly distinct from the others. Any blurring of distinction between hisfollowers and the others is perceived as harmful to his interests, and he loses no time inraising the alarm of ‘religion in danger’ the moment he apprehends or imagines anyintrusion in, or encroachment on, his regime.
Another class of people who have always benefited from communal disharmony ispoliticians, who look upon followers of their religion as their vote banks. Any harmony between different religious groups is detrimental to their interests. They have,therefore, no interest in bridging the gap between communities, but have, in fact, apositive stake in ensuring that it remains as wide as possible. When they have noissues, policies or programmes to offer the electorate, or when they are not interestedin these issues, or when they want to divert people’s attention from the real issues,which they are either unable to solve or the solutions of which are likely to affecttheir own interests, they resort to the easiest path, namely, an appeal to the religioussentiments of the people to garner votes.
This phenomenon is particularly commonamong politicians who have nothing in common with the people and their problems.Like the priests, they succeed in misguiding their ignorant co-religionists in the wrongdirection and towards the wrong goals, which are against the interests of the peoplethemselves. The capital asset of both priests and politicians is the ignorance of thecommon man, who is caught up in the humdrum of daily life and burdened with itsstrains. He falls as easy prey to appeals to his religious sentiments, which are manipulated by priest and politician for their selfish purpose. So far, that is how both thesegroups have succeeded in stoking the flames of communal hatred, bias and prejudiceand in triggering violent clashes whenever convenient to them. The blame for suchmisuse of the ignorance of the masses lies squarely on the responsible sections insociety who have so far failed to educate the people on proper lines.
Religious fanaticism among the people also has its source in the constant preachingand actions of communal organisations. Since they are interested in sharpening thedifferences between religious groups, it is in their interest to make their followershard-boiled, unreasonable and passionate followers of a manipulated form of thereligion concerned, a form which is, in fact, farthest from the actual tenets of thefaith. That is why it is a common feature, observed in every religious group, to unitewhenever the ‘religion in danger’ slogan is raised. Priests and politicians vie with eachother in mobilising people around this slogan, and they persevere in keeping the slogan alive all the time. This fostering of fanaticism is, of course, facilitated by the ignorance and the lack of awareness amongst the people. That is why vested interests havea stake in keeping ignorant as many people as possible and for as long as possible. Thisis the reason for their insistence on fundamentalist and fanatical notions and on follow-ing strictly every word handed down to them by the religious texts, custom and tradition. Any attempt at a scientific inquiry into these texts and traditions is not only frownedupon and resented, but those who attempt it are socially boycotted, persecuted andoften even physically eliminated. Fundamentalism and fanaticism thus continue to thrive,inspite of the advances made in science and technology.
Inspite of the clear declaration in the Constitution that this country shall be asecular state, the Hindu communal forces in the country have always preached thatthe country can only be a Hindu state and has to be governed as such. Those whoinsist on its secular character have been derisively nicknamed pseudo-secularists bythem. To buttress their contention, they argue that while others have been followingand supporting policies and measures to appease the minorities, particularly Muslims,they alone preach true secularism by insisting that no special favours be bestowed onthe minorities.
It therefore becomes necessary to examine the concept of secularism as is understood and accepted in this country and interpreted by the Supreme Court. The historical context in which the concept of secularism was born and therefore the mean-ing it bore initially were different from the present context and the usage it has cometo acquire today. The conflict between the King and the Church, which was ultimately resolved in favour of the former, formulated the well-known proposition:“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God, the thingsthat are God’s.” What this meant was that secular activities are the exclusive prerogative of the government while spiritual activities were the business of the Church, andthat one would not interfere with the activities of the other.
Once religion was divorced from the business of state, the state ceased to be iden-tified with any particular religion or its practices, and the religion (Protestant or Catholicin the specific historical context) that the individual king or queen practised variedwith the incumbent of the office. Thereafter, the open hostilities against and theharassment and persecutions of those who professed and practised the tenets of areligious order other than that of the ruling king or queen ceased. The persecution ofrival religions or sects had also its own unsavoury history as a backdrop to the ulti-mate affirmation and the triumph of the principle of the observance of secularism inthe governance of the state. As a logical corollary, all religions and sects were treatedequally with their followers free to profess, practice and propagate their faith.
The undisturbed and unhindered practice of one’s faith later came to be recognisedas a part of fundamental human rights — the freedom of conscience and also theright to freedom of speech and expression. Both these rights are basic to any mean-ingful scheme of democratic rights of the people and one cannot think of any demo-cratic regime without them. A nation which enthrones any particular religion as thereligion of the state not only relegates the other religions and religionists to a second-ary status, but also negates the basic tenet of democracy in that it denies them theequality of status and of the rights so essential to democracy. It disqualifies itselffrom being a democratic nation.
There are at present two different modes of practising secularism. In the USA, aleading secular state, the state keeps itself equidistant from all faiths and does notfavour even giving grants to educational institutions where religious prayers are recited.On the other hand, the secular practice accepted in this country, which is also endorsedby the interpretation of secularism given by the apex court, is different from the USvariety. In India, instead of equal indifference to or equal distant from all religions as inthe USA, we follow the principle of equal favours or equal protection to all religions,sects and faiths. Whether a religion is of the majority community or of the minority, isimmaterial for the secular state, all religions being treated as equal and no religion orreligious practice being adopted by the state in the governance of the country.
We have been following this meaning of secularism in all our state affairs, since theinception of our Constitution. In fact, this was the concept of secularism advocatedand promised to all sections of our society during the freedom struggle, and evenbefore Independence, this was the way the then elected provincial governments ad-ministered the country. It is strict adherence to this concept of secularism that promptedthe then national leadership to reject the two-nation theory as well as the demand tomake this country a theocratic state by adopting the religion of the majority, namely,the Hindu religion as the state religion. People belonging to different religions, sectsand faiths could come together to struggle for freedom because of this promise by theleadership of the then dominant national political party, namely, the Indian NationalCongress. The secularism of the kind we have been practising in this country has thus been an article of faith with us, and not a mere provision in the Constitution. It is alsoan essential part of the basic structure of our Constitution. The defiance of secular-ism in any manner, by word or action, is thus a defiance of the Constitution itself.
The persons who met in the Constituent Assembly knew too well that they wouldhave to deal with a conflict-ridden, pluralist society. So they provided for secularismas a value. The major inarticulate premise of the constitutional scheme has beensecularism until the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution, when it was made explicitas one of the objectives. Secularism as a concept came into existence during periodsof early capitalism, as a response to the misery inflicted on the poor by unregulatedworking conditions. In fact, the dictionary defines secularism as a doctrine that moral-ity should be solely based on regard to the well being of humankind in the present lifeto the exclusion of all considerations drawn from a belief in God or in a future state.Secularism was later eclipsed by the emergence of Socialist thought.
Thus secularism is included in the objectives set out in the Preamble, the Articlepertaining to abolition of untouchability, bonded and child labour and almost all ofthe Directive Principles in the Constitution. This is how the Supreme Court definedSecularism in the crucial SR Bommai case, a decision rendered in the backdrop of theAyodhya controversy. Now that ethnic claims and conflicts abound all over the worldthere is a necessity for the world body to bring forth an International Covenant onsecularism in plural societies within states.
The refusal to see any good in others, the claim of the superiority of one’s faith andthe inferiority of other faiths, the all-out attempts to maintain separate identities, theanti-social policy of exclusiveness and the irrational interpretation of traditions and astrict adherence to the religious texts, all tend to thwart the development of the scien-tific temper and the spirit of inquiry, which in turn prevents individual and socialprogress. Mankind today needs the acceptance of an an all-embracing humanism, notsectarian indoctrination. A religion bereft of humanism is no religion at all and areligion which preaches humanism can never be sectarian.
