Views
While the pluralist view of Mahatma Gandhi, that all religions are equal, has a strong impact, there are movements like those of the dalits (depressed classes) and the communists who have criticized such a view. Gandhi himself was a devout man and instilled devotion in the Independence Struggle. But still he was killed by a religious fanatic for his adherence to minority appeasement calling it secular principles.
However, there is obvious difference between secularism practised in India and elsewhere. The western model of secularism means that religion and politics are separate from each other (Caesar and God theory). In other words, polity does not enter in religious affairs and religion in political affairs. This also means that political mechanism cannot correct problems inside a religious group. However, Indian society being a mixture of religions, is always prone to dominance and conflicts. Moreover, the issues such as casteism is particularly of religious origin. In order to mitigate the harmful effects of casteism and other source of conflicts and human right violations arising out of religions, it is necessary that polity/government be able to meddle with religious affairs. As a result of several year's efforts to detoxify the religions, Government has been able to reduce the effects of casteism and modernize the Hindu personal laws. However, the country is far from having a common civil code. As far as other religions are concerned, government has only limited success in correcting human right violations such as atrocities against women in Islam.
However, ability of Government to indulge in religious affairs also boomeranged. Religions and castes increased their influence on political parties. As a result, politico-religio-regional chauvinism is becoming more common in contemporary Indian Politics. Thus, practising the Indian Brand of secularism (mutual tolerance instead of mutual respect) in the last 60 years, failed to produce communal harmony and trust. Liberhann Commission which investigated the Babri Masjid Incident, has recommended that religion be delinked from politics and that Politicians must not garner votes preaching religion or caste. The Indian experiment on secularism is here to continue.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sadanand Dhume criticizes Indian "Secularism" as a fraud and a failure, since it isn't really "secularism" as it is understood in the western world (as separation of religion and state) but more along the lines of religious appeasement. He writes that the flawed understanding of secularism among India's left wing intelligentsia has led Indian politicians to pander to religious leaders and preachers including Zakir Naik, and has led India to take a soft stand against Islamic terrorism, religious militancy and communal disharmony in general.
Similar views have also been expressed by noted Indian LGBT rights activist Ashok Row Kavi in the wake of attempts by some ultra-orthodox Hindus to scuttle the gay rights movement in India by intimidation and violence. Kavi writes that extremist groups like Shiv Sena get too much credibility in the mainstream, which "displays the ridiculousness of the Indian concept of secularism". He also cites attempts by Islamist sympathizers to whitewash history books concerning Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent as another example of India's "secularism".
In India, blaming Kashmiri Pundits for their own ethnic cleansing from ancestral lands since time immemorial is passed off as secularism. So is blaming pilgrims, like in Godhra massacre, for their own massacre.
Others, particularly historian Ronald Inden, have also observed that the Indian government is not really "secular", but one that selectively discriminates against Hindu communities while superficially appeasing Muslim leaders (without actually providing any community or theological benefits to regular Muslims in India). He writes that poorly educated Indian so-called "intelligentsia" identify Indian "secularism" with anti-Hinduism and even a tacit Islamophobia. He also cites that often, leftist governments in India (such as in the Indian state of West Bengal) covertly support madrassa curricula for Muslims, helping traditional Islamic scholarship and teaching fundamentalism in "Islamic" disguise. He writes
| “ | Nehru's India was supposed to be committed to 'secularism'. The idea here in its weaker publicly reiterated form was that the government would not interfere in 'personal' religious matters and would create circumstances in which people of all religions could live in harmony. The idea in its stronger, unofficially stated form was that in order to modernize, India would have to set aside centuries of traditional religious ignorance and superstition and eventually eliminate Hinduism and Islam from people's lives altogether. After Independence, governments implemented secularism mostly by refusing to recognize the religious pasts of Indian nationalism, whether Hindu or Muslim, and at the same time (inconsistently) by retaining Muslim 'personal law'. | ” |
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