SECULARISM

Secular is a belief system which rejects religion or the belief that religion should not be part of the affairs of the State or part of Public Education. Jews faced discrimination for centuries throughout Europe, in the present state of Israel, Arab minorities, both Christian and Muslim are excluded from social, political and economic benefits available to Jewish citizens. 

1. Inter-religious Domination

Indian Constitution says that every Citizen has a right to live with freedom and dignity in any part of the Country. Yet, reality is far from the ideal things. 

• More than 2,700 Sikh people were massacred in Delhi and many other parts of the country in 1984.
• Several thousands of Kashmir Pandits have been forced to leave Kashmir valley from their homes.
• More than 1000 Muslims were massacred post-Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002.
• Secularism is the first and foremost to oppose all these kinds of inter-religious domination

2. Intra-religious Domination

• Some people believe that religion is merely the ‘opium of the masses’ and that, one day, when basic needs are fulfilled and they lead a happy life, religion will disappear.
• It is unlikely that human beings will ever be able to fully know the world and control it.
• A large part of our sufferings are manmade and hence eliminable, at least some of our sufferings are not man-made.
• Religion, art, and philosophy are responses to such sufferings, secularism too accepts this and therefore is not anti-religious.
• In religions such as Hinduism, some sections faced persistent discrimination, Dalits were not allowed to enter the temple.
• In some parts of the country, women cannot enter the temple.
• When a religion is organized, it is frequently taken over by its conservative faction, which doesn’t tolerate any dissent.
• Religious fundamentalism in parts of the US has become a big problem and endangers both within and outside the Country.
• Many religions fragment into sects which leads to frequent sectarian violence and persecution of dissenting minorities.

3. Secular State

• Preventing religious discrimination is to work together for mutual enlightenment
• Education is one way of helping to change the mindset of the people
• Individual examples of sharing and mutual help can also contribute towards reducing prejudice and suspicion between communities
• The state must not be run by any particular religion.
• If a state is governed directly by priest order is called theocratic.
• If we value peace, religious institutions and State Institutions must be separated.
• Many states which are non-theocratic continue to be in alliance with a particular religion.
• To be truly secular, a state must not only refuse to be theocratic but also have no formal, legal alliance with any religion.
• A secular state must be committed to principles and goals which are at least partly derived from non-religious sources.
• To promote these ends, the State must be separated from organized religion and its institutions for the sake of some of these values.

4. The Western model of secularism

All secular nations have one thing in common: they are neither theocratic nor do they establish a religion.

American model:

Separation of state and religion is a mutual exclusion; the state shall not intervene in the affairs of a religion, and in the same manner, religion should not interfere in state matters. Each state has a separate sphere of its own with independent jurisdiction. No policy of the state can have exclusively religious rationale, no religious classification can be the basis for any policy.

• The state cannot aid any religious institutions
• It cannot give financial to educational institutions run by religious communities
• There is no scope for any community the liberty to follow the practices of its choosing, there is little scope for community and minority ideas
• The common conception interprets freedom and equality in an individualistic manner
• Liberty is the liberty of individuals, equality is between individuals

5. The Indian Model of Secularism

• Indian secularism is fundamentally different from Western secularism
• Indian secularism does not focus only on church-state separation and the idea of inter-religious equality is crucial to the Indian Conception
• In India, there was already a culture of inter-religious tolerance in India
• The advent of Western Modernity brought to the fore hitherto neglected and marginalized notions of equality in Indian thought
• Indian secularism took on a distinct form as a result of an interaction between what already existed in a society that had religious diversity and the ideas that came from the west
• Indian secularism equally opposes the oppression of Dalits and women within Hinduism, the discrimination against women within Indian Islam or Christianity, and the possible threats that a majority community might pose to the rights of the minority religious communities
• Indian secularism not only deals with the religious freedom of individuals
• Religious minorities also have a right to exist and maintain their own culture and educational institutions
• Indian constitution bans Untouchability, India has made several laws to ban child marriage and lift the taboo of inter-caste marriage sanctioned by Hinduism

6. Criticism of Indian secularism

1. Anti-religious: often argues that secularism is anti-religious, some argue that secularism threatens religious identity
2. Western Import: Often Secularism is linked to Christianity, which is Western which is unsuited for Indian Secularism, this is a shallow point. The more important and relevant topic is for a state to be truly secular it must have ends of its own
3. Minoritism: It is to treat them with the same respect and dignity with which all others are being treated, the minority rights need not be nor should be viewed as special privileges
4. Interventionist: Secularism is coercive and that it interferes excessively with the religious freedom of communities. Secularism permits state-supported religious reform, Personal laws can be seen as a manifestation of freedom from Inter-religious domination or intra-religious domination
5. Vote Bank Politics: Secularism encourages the politics of a vote bank. As an empirical claim, this is not entirely false. In a democracy, politicians are bound to seek votes, that is part of their job and that’s what democracy is all about
6. Impossible Project: Secularism cannot work because, it tries to do so much, to find a solution to an intractable problem. People with deep religious differences will not live together in peace