Second fundamentalist continues..

Tunisia: Bigamy is totally prohibited by the Tunisia Law of personal Status (s. 18).

Registration of all marriages, including those contracted in conformity with Shariat formalities, has been made compulsory in Iran, Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia.

There is no reason why such law cannot be adopted in India.
The first feeling that we must inculcate therefore in our country is that all of us have an intimate connection with India’s Hindu past. Eighty two plus per cent of India’s population are, of course, Hindus, but even our largest minority, the Muslims should consciously accept that their ancestry is mostly Hindu. They have every right to remain good and true Muslims but they must learn not to condemn their Hindu past. This includes literature, sculpture, music, language, and the cultural aspects of our ethos. If today a Muslim for example learns Sanskrit, the Muslim Fundamentalists view him with suspicion, and regard him already half-way to becoming a Hindu. If a Muslim father names his son “Suryaprakash” instead of “Aftab”, he would stand condemned in the eyes of these fundamentalists even though the two words mean the same.

In other words, reactionary secularism has been used as a cover for the Muslim Fundamentalists, to snap the organic ties of present day Muslims with their Hindu ancestry, thereby contributing to the further polarization of the two communities. Indonesia has shown that such a snapping of ties is not essential to Islamic beliefs.

India must remain committed to secularism, but this has to exclude the aggressive left as well as the reactionary versions. Then what do we mean by secularism? While Nehru, who popularized the word in India, meant it to be a commitment to anti-religiosity shaded with a “progressive” view of historical change, Gandhiji thought of it as the brotherhood of religious communities with a deep commitment to respect truth and to pursue it. The final test of Gandhi’s secularism was truth, and the practice of secularism meant the pursuit of truth. This is what I call enlightened secularism, and which we should accept as the definition of secularism in the Fundamentals for National renaissance.

to be continued..