Enlightened Secularism and Common Heritage continues..

When Martin Luther had defined secularism in Europe, it simply meant that the power of the State would be exercised independently of the directions of the Church. Thus, a secular Government would act to safeguard the nation-State, even if such action was without Church sanction. Later, Marx calling religion the ‘opium of the masses’, defined secularism to completely eschew religion.

In India, Jawarharlal Nehru and his followers subscribed to the later Marxist redefinition of the concept. This orthodoxy induced a reaction in the Indian masses. Nehru failed to define what historical roots ought to be a part of the modern India, and what was to be rejected. In the name of ‘scientific temper’, he rejected most of our past as ‘obscurantism’. His orthodox secularism sought to alienate the Indian from his hoary past. Since more than 80 per cent of Indians are pan-Hindu in beliefs, and Hindu religion from its inception has been without a ‘Church’, ‘Pope’ or ‘Book’ (in contra- distinction to Christianity), therefore neither Martin Luther nor Marx made any sense to the Indian masses. Since there was little political challenge to Nehru after the untimely death of Gandhiji and Patel, the Marxian secularism concept superficially prevailed till his demise in 1964. The masses therefore humoured Nehru without accepting his concept of secularism. A conceptual void however remained to be filled.

But the Congress Party continued thereafter to fail to provide a political concept of secularism by which an Indian citizen could comprehend how he should bond “secularly” with another citizen of a different religion or language, or region and feel equally Indian. The Hindu instinctively could not accept the idea that India was what the British had put together, and that the country was just an area incorporated by the imperialists. Such a ridiculous idea, fostered quixotically by Jawarharlal Nehru University historians, found just no takers amongst the Indian people. The void remained thus, but the yearning in the masses to be Indian grew over the years with the growth of mass media.

to be continued...