Are attempts being made to communalise India’s historically secular ethos?
India is one of the most secular countries in the world but you wouldn’t know it by the propaganda spouted out by its detractors. Just because the word ‘secular’ was inserted into the 1976 Constitution by Indira Gandhi doesn’t necessarily make it so, especially since Hindus and Hinduism by its very fabric and nature is just, respectful and innately secular — unlike some religions.
Of the world’s major religions, Hinduism is the only one without a ‘founder’ or a prophet, unlike Christ, Mohammad, Abraham, Confucius, Buddha, Guru Nanak, Zoroaster and Mahavira.
Hinduism evolved organically through centuries. Many people think the oldest text is Judaism’s Torah, but The Vedas actually predate that by several hundred years. Hinduism, or Sanatana Dharma, is the world’s oldest organised religious philosophy and it is then followed by Judaism, Zoroastrianism and (in order) Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity. Note that Islam isn’t in this immediate list because it’s just as young as Sikhism. Every one of the major religions is of Asian origin despite genuine cultural appropriation, such as perpetuating the myth that Jesus is a Caucasian with European features and fair hair, when he was a Semitic Jew born in Bethlehem with Middle Eastern ancestry and a decidedly brown-skinned and dark-haired aesthetic.
Proof that India-and Hinduism by natural association-is innately and very deliberately secular is proved the fact that it’s been a haven for many religions, even spawning their birth entirely. For example, the first Jews arrived in India on the Malabar coast in 542 BC and form one of the world’s oldest and most peaceful Jewish communities and benefitted from no anti-Semitic persecution, unlike in Europe. The first Christians came to India, again in Kerala, in 52 AD, Zoroastrians fled Islamic persecution in Persia (today’s Iran) and found refuge in Gujarat in 720 AD, becoming one of India’s most successful communities (Parsis).
What was Islam doing at this time? It was wielding the sword and conquering Europe, reaching Vienna before defeat in 1529. It still had not had its fill of plunder and conquest, rapidly turning its eyes to India. The Mughals didn’t come to seek refuge like the Jews, Parsis and Christians-they came to conquer for they were after all Turkish warlords.
Then of course, there is the British, an invader of not just conquest but tremendous smarts and manipulation. They were acutely aware of the secular nature of Hinduism and India and the importance of religion; so while setting about with its monetary objectives and expanding empire through trade backed by violence, it rarely sought to convert Indians during its almost 200 year occupation of the subcontinent because it knew that conversions would complicate commerce.
The British had lost their American empire in 1776 just as they were building a new one in India. Without India, there would have been no British Empire. Most of the Christians in India aren’t actually as a result of British conversion but by the Portuguese, Irish and Spanish Jesuits who preceded and followed the British into India, installing Catholic conversions instead in areas like Goa.
They failed. While the cannier British did not aggressively proselytise, the Portugese, Irish and Spanish (all Catholic nations) ceaselessly did. But the conversions of Dalits and other disenfranchised Hindus to Christianity over several centuries led to just 1.5 per cent of India’s population being converted to Catholicism. The number converting to Protestantism was even lower: 0.7 per cent.
Islam had a different method of indoctrination. The Mughals converted Hindus in three ways: one, by cleverly inducing them — with the temptation of the lustre of finding a place in the hierarchy of the Mughal court; two, to avoid paying the jizya tax imposed on Hindus; and three, to escape from the caste system to fit into a more egalitarian if harsh, didactic Islam.
Why is this history important? Well it puts into perspective the criticism levelled at India that it’s not safe for Muslims and Christians. This is a fraudulent debate. Sure, there are right wingers like in any society who make provocative statements and are itching for a fight but trying to demonise a country in which nearly 210 million Muslims and Christians live is a fallacy.
There is no communal crisis in India but its detractors (particularly Narendra Modi’s in fact) want to create an atmosphere of communal crisis. Most Muslims and Christians who live in India aren’t discriminated against, and this predominately Hindu country is much more liberal and tolerant of other religions than a majority Muslim country such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Jews and Parsis have lived trouble free and have become prosperous and industrious for centuries. Who is stirring the communal pot? It’s not Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, it’s not the RSS, it’s not even the Sangh Parivar, it’s myopic NGOs, left leaning websites with an agenda and the mullahs and self-styled South Indian evangelists who want to create paranoia at the behest of Rahul Gandhi’s failing Congress party.
In terms of the usual spears directed against India about discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or region, well that’s part of everyday life in India unfortunately and that is something the country has to work on. But this does not translate into the canard that is trotted out that Hindu mobs are running around the country beating up anyone who looks sideways at a cow.
The attempts that are made to communalise India’s historically secular ethos ironically hurt the minorities the most. The media overkill damages the country’s secular fabric, breeds anti-minority paranoia and widens religious chasms.
Instead of bullying India and Narendra Modi, the critics should turn their eyes to the geopolitical reality around this secular democracy. In Pakistan, minorities (Hindus, Christians and others) have been virtually exterminated. In the Middle East, minorities (including Hindus) don’t even have basic civil rights. In Europe, minorities (Muslims) live under strictures (no hijabs in public places in France and Belgium, no new minarets on mosques in Switzerland). In the US, cartoons of the Prophet are drawn in defiance of Islam’s tenets and copies of the Koran burnt.
India, meanwhile, remains for all communities the secular haven it has been for centuries.
