Me secular, you communal

By Amba Charan Vashishth

In India actually, nobody knows what ‘secularism’ exactly means. The word ‘secular’, inserted in the Constitution in 1976, was never defined, deliberately perhaps. This has provided every political party and politician the right and freedom to accuse the other of defying secularism and indulging in communalism. In common parlance and practice it is ‘secularism’ what a political party claims itself to be doing while it is ‘communalism’ what its opponents indulge in. It is like every person finding fault with the other man’s looks, obviously because one cannot see one’s own face. In the looking glass, everybody appears pretty smiling seeing one’s own reflection.

In this country, the ‘secularism-communalism’ syndrome is as mysterious and unpredictable as are the ways of god. So look the ways of secularism-communalism. What one political party claims to be secularism, is communalism pure and simple to the opponent.

Take the case of Congress and the Left. They brand RSS, its sister organisations and even Bharatiya Janata Party as ‘communal’ only because they plead the cause of the majority community in general though, at the same time, they claim they stand for “appeasement of none and justice to all”. On its part, RSS and BJP charge the Congress and other political parties of indulging in “appeasement of minority/minorities”. This charge is also not entirely unfounded; something does stick on the parties charged against.

It is no exaggeration to say that ‘secularism’ has come to be linked to anything against the majority community of Hindus and Hinduism. If you are for the Ram temple at Ayodhya, you are ‘communal’; if you are for the mosque, you are secular. If you criticize the stand taken by UPA on the myth of Lord Ram and Ramsethu, you are a communal. All ‘seculars’ have taken the stand that Ram and Ramsethu are just myths. And so on.

If you champion the right to freedom of expression of the India-born writer, Salman Rushdie, or of Tasleema Nasreen, whose books have been banned in the country because these “hurt” the religious faith and sentiments of minority community, you are a ‘communal’ one and those denouncing these writers are ‘secular’.

But the situation is in the reverse gear when it comes to the paintings in the nude of Bharatmata and Hindu goddesses by M. F. Hussain. The ‘secular’ liberals beat their chests for safeguarding the constitutional right to freedom of expression for the latter. They think that the publication of Danish cartoons “hurts” the religious susceptibilities of Muslims but the Hussain’s nude paintings of Bharatmata and Hindu goddesses do not injure the sentiments of Hindus and Indian nationals.

Going by the argument of ‘secularists’, if championing the cause dear to the majority community is communalism, how is doing the same for the cause of minority community not communalism? That goes beyond logic. The only distinction one can make is that one is ‘majority’ communalism and the other is ‘minority’ communalism. The majority communalism cannot be an abominable act of sin and minority communalism something pious and sacred. Theft is a theft whether of Rs. one hundred or Rs. one crore. Murder is a murder whether of one man or of ten people. Either both the acts are crimes or pardonable acts. There could be no discrimination between the two acts.

The secularism of the Left parties too has gone through a metamorphosis and got infected with communal virus of being anti-Hindu. It has also joined the race for “minority appeasement”, another name to practise communalism in the garb of secularism. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has now launched upon its campaign for assiduously wooing the Muslim community. Till now, the faithful followers of communism, CP(M) included, had religiously followed the Karl Marx dictum: “Religion is the opium of the people”. But, for the first time, discarding atheism the CPI(M) unit in Kochi (Kerala) allowed its Muslim members to leave a party meeting for namaaz. On October 1, 2007 the Lanthaparambu branch committee of the party also served refreshments to its Muslim members to break their Ramzan fast.

The Marxist leadership has already started campaigning on issues dear to Muslims such as implementation of the Sachar Committee and Sri Krishna Commission recommendations. It also adopted a similar stand on Danish cartoons.

The Left supports the anti-Hindu stand of DMK and the Congress on Ram and Ramsethu issue. When Congress under pressure of public opinion, diluted its stand, the Left parties criticized it.

While Left is now looking to be condescending to followers of Muslim faith, it is not so with its members who are Hindus. Last year, hell broke out for West Bengal Minister Subhash Chankraborty who being a Hindu committed the “crime” of visiting a temple and offered prayers. There were demands for his dismissal from the Cabinet and expulsion from the party for violating party discipline and defying party ideology which decries religious beliefs.

So under the Left brand of secularism if a Hindu visits a temple and prays, it is an unpardonable crime, but a leftist Muslim has the unbridled freedom to leave his party function to offer namaz (prayer).

Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is the proud successor to the pre-partition Muslim League which propounded the theory that Hindus and Muslims belonged to two different nations and could not live together. This led to the partition of the country. The membership of IUML is restricted to Muslims only and it espouses the cause of this community alone. Yet, it claims itself to be a ’secular’ political organisation.

Going by the practice and precept of secularism and communalism, every political party in the country seems to be communal with the only difference that each claims itself to be secular and calls the other as communal.
This war between ‘communalism’ and ‘secularism’ has become perpetual and unending, with nobody winning, nobody losing. ***