Daily Times

The famous Pakistani progressive poet and human rights activist Fahmida Riaz who died recently wrote a poem titled Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle (you too turned out to be just like us).

Fahmida earlier had a high opinion of Indian secularism, but her dreams crashed when she saw what was going on in India after the rise of BJP in 1996, when it emerged as the largest party in the Lok Sabha, and particularly after May 2014, when it gained an absolute majority, inaugurating an era of lynching of Muslims by cow vigilantes, gharwapasi, revival of Ram Mandir agitation, etc. So in this poem she compares the forces of Hindutva with the Islamic fundamentalism of Gen Ziaul Haq, and says India is no different from Pakistan. And she is right.

Although we have a Constitution whose Preamble declares India to be a secular state (unlike the Pakistani Constitution which proclaims Pakistan as an Islamic Republic) and although Article 25 declares freedom of religion as a guaranteed right, this is only on paper. The ground reality is very different.

The truth is that India, like Pakistan, is a highly communal country. In India most Hindus are communal, and so are most Muslims. This I can say from my personal experience. When I am with my Hindu friends and relatives, and they are sure no Muslim is present, they often spout venom on Muslims. When a Muslim is lynched by gorakshaks, most Hindus are indifferent, and many inwardly happy. One terrorist and fanatic less!

The truth is that secularism is a feature of industrial society, not of feudal society. India is still semi-feudal, as is evident from the rampant casteism and communalism prevalent even today in Indian society. So secularism in the Indian Constitution is only a fig leaf.

Secularism is separation of Church and State. Secularism does not mean one cannot practise his/her religion. It means that religion is a private affair, unconnected with the state, which will have no religion.

In feudal society human groupings are small and scattered over rural areas. Most people live in villages, not in cities. In such a society religion has a powerful hold on men’s minds. People of other religions or heretics are often regarded devilish creatures and enemies. For instance, in the Middle Ages in Europe the Christian majority often believed that Jews drank blood of Christian children in their rituals, and this belief often made them kill Jews.

In contrast, in industrial societies, human groupings are large, and are concentrated in urban areas, in factories, offices and educational institutions. There is much more interaction between humans, and when workers and employees are in close proximity to each other and interact they realise that men of other religions are not devils or their enemies, as was presumed earlier, and in fact they all have a common interest in fighting together for higher wages and better conditions of living. Also, in industrial society the advance of science makes the hold of religion on people’s minds weaker.

I can speak from my own personal experience as a former judge of the Supreme Court. In private conversations most of my colleagues — who were mostly Hindus — were solid supporters of Narendra Modi, who was only a Chief Minister then, not the Prime Minister

Before industrial societies were created in Europe there were feudal societies, and in this period there were often religious massacres and religious persecution e.g. the St Bartholomew Day massacre by Catholics of Protestants (known as Huguenots) in France in 1572, or the burning at the stake of heretics in the Spanish Inquisition and by ‘Bloody Mary’ Queen of England, and the Jewish pogroms. It is only after industrial society was created that these stopped.

So it is in vain to expect secularism in India simply by engrafting it into our Constitution even though industrial society has not been created.

Some think that our state institutions will uphold secularism. They forget that an institution is really the human personnel manning that institution. So unless the human personnel have a secular mindset it is futile to expect them to uphold secularism.

For instance, I can speak from my own personal experience as a former judge of the Supreme Court. In private conversations most of my colleagues — who were mostly Hindus — were solid supporters of Narendra Modi, who was only a Chief Minister then, not the Prime Minister. Though of course they would not say so publicly or in court there were some exceptions to this too. CJI Dattu praised Modi publicly, and Justice Anil Dave publicly declared that Gita should be made compulsory in all schools in India.

In the police force very few Muslims are recruited. For instance, while about 18 or 19 percent of the UP population is Muslim, an RTI query revealed that only 2 percent sub inspectors, 3 percent head constables and 4 percent constables in the UP Police were Muslims. Since most Hindus are communal, and since the police personnel are overwhelmingly Hindu, it follows that most of the police force is communal. That is why Muslims are almost invariably at the receiving end in many incidents, e.g. in the Batla House ‘encounter’, Hashimpura incident; a massacre of innocent Muslims, Bhopal fake ‘encounter’ of SIMI members, etc. Who can fight the state?

Some people may ask why communalism has not decreased in India — in fact it has increased — although after 1947, there was a certain degree of industrialisation and many people had shifted to cities. The answer is that the system of parliamentary democracy ensues that it does not decrease. In India, parliamentary democracy runs largely on caste and communal vote banks, and so politicians have to appease and appeal to these feudal forces to win elections. BJP increased its Lok Sabha seats from 2 in 1984, to 182 in 1998, through the Ram Mandir agitation. So as long as parliamentary democracy survives in India communalism will remain entrenched.

So Fahmida Riaz was right. The much flaunted Indian secularism is a hoax Pakistaniyon, hum bhibilkul tum jaise nikle

The writer is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India

Published in Daily Times, December 5^th 2018.