“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

”JUSTICE”, social, economic and political;

”LIBERTY” of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

”EQUALITY” of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all

”FRATERNITY” assuring the dignity of the individual

and the unity and integrity of the Nation;

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.”

A week ago, India celebrated its 66th Republic Day, marking the day India when, in 1950, she adopted her Constitution and became a democratic, sovereign republic. It seems fitting, therefore, that I begin this post with the preamble of the Indian Constitution. Among the many characteristics attributed to the Indian republic by the Constituent Assembly in 1949 was ‘secular’ and this remains as one of the most stellar achievements of our founding fathers. Religious freedom and equality form the cornerstone of any free society and unfortunately, the unique brand of secularism we see in India may just be communalism in disguise or even worse, communalism in waiting.

Secularism is not a concept unique to the Indian Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, James Madison and others have championed the cause of secularism and are the reason why it is so deeply embedded in the Constitution of the United States. However, this is where an unfortunate divergence begins. Secularism, in the Western sense, means a wall between the state and religion. Hence, in the USA, the Government is not permitted to act in the interests of a particular religion, thereby, ensuring the equality of all religions and producing a conducive environment for religious pluralism. In India, the afore-mentioned wall is a travesty for it is breached so often. The Government of India takes it upon itself to legislate and adjudicate on matters of religious concern, wherever it feels such interference is necessary. While this system may temporarily pacify the various religious leaders, it has the potential to spark off communal conflict of epic proportions.

Historically speaking, the cause for secularism in India suffered an excruciatingly painful blow when India and Pakistan were partitioned on religious lines. Not only did this blunder lead to the largest mass migration in human history, fraught with widespread manslaughter, killings, thefts and rapes, but it also lent credence to the already prevalent idea that Hindus and Muslims have mutually contradictory interests and cannot, thus, coexist in the same State. This event laid the foundation for present day communal unrest between Hindus and Muslims and demands from all religious communities in India, not just Hindu and Islamic, to separate their interests from those who do not share their faith.

The most basic litmus test for a secular State is to check whether all the legal provisions of the State are applicable to each of its citizens. Even on this preliminary test, India comes up woefully short. The absence of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in India perfectly illustrates the permeability of the “wall” that is supposed to exist between state policy and religion. Organizations such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) continues to lobby for Shariah or Islamic law to be enforced in family matters for all Muslims and the supposedly secular Indian government continues to make their opinions a part of public policy, thereby undermining any chance the nation has to be truly secular. The most infamous example of such Government-indulged religious tyranny was the Mohd. Ahmed Khan vs Shah Bano Begum case in 1985 wherein the Supreme Court awarded Shah Bano, a 62-year old Muslim female divorcee, the right to alimony from her ex-husband. Groups representing the Islamic orthodoxy pressured the Indian Government to overturn the verdict as it was in direct conflict with “Islamic principles”. Yielding to religious pressure, the Congress government passed the extremely controversial Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act which made a mockery of the Supreme Court verdict and ensured that even penniless Muslim female divorcees did not stand to receive alimony from their ex-husbands. Later, the Supreme Court upheld its judgement in the Shah Bano case and the Muslim Women Act was declared null and void. However, this regrettable incident did demonstrate how religious bodies could make the Government dance to their tune.

Today, the horror show continues. Muslims in the nation continue to be governed by a separate system of personal law- The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act. The fact that a group of ordinary Indian citizens are governed by a different set of laws is an abomination in itself, but it gets worse. Muslim Personal Law is NOT codified. This means that local mullahs and imams are free to interpret the sections any way they want. This has had disastrous consequences. Take for instance, the procedure for obtaining a divorce within Muslim law. I would advise you to read this post for a complete analysis of the legal provisions for divorce within Muslim personal law. However, I shall be using the relevant quotes from that article.

“A husband may divorce his wife by repudiating the marriage without giving any reason. Pronouncement of such words which signify his intention to disown the wife is sufficient.”

“A wife cannot divorce her husband of her own accord. She can divorce the husband only when the husband has delegated such a right to her or under an agreement.”

“Men are maintainers of women, because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property (on their maintenance and dower) . When the husband exercises his right to pronounce divorce, technically this is known as talaaq. The most remarkable feature of Muslim law of talaaq is that all the schools of the Sunnis and the Shias recognize it differing only in some details. In Muslim world, so widespread has been the talaaq that even the Imams practiced it . The absolute power of a Muslim husband of divorcing his wife unilaterally, without assigning any reason, literally at his whim, even in a jest or in a state of intoxication, and without recourse to the court, and even in the absence of the wife, is recognized in modern India. All that is necessary is that the husband should pronounce talaaq; how he does it, when he does it, or in what he does it is not very essential.”

This should be enough to make you cringe. In India, a Muslim man may irrevocably divorce his wife by simply repeating, orally or in writing, the word “talaaq” three times. This has led to the rise of a shocking phenomenon- e-divorce. There have been documented cases where a Muslim man has divorced his wife by sending her the dreaded “talaaq, talaaq, talaaq” via email or a Facebook message or a tweet or even, a Whatsapp message and such divorces have been recognized as legitimate by competent authorities. The sheer summary nature of the triple talaaq system has led to men divorcing their wives for the most trivial reasons, including an inability to cook or not having a good singing voice. Also, in all other divorce cases, the matter is of a legal nature and is always settled in family courts. However, the triple talaaq system has allowed the proliferation of extrajudicial divorce which has led to another myriad of problems.

A Muslim woman, however, has to cite and prove valid reasons, approved by Islamic law, to be granted divorce. They can be found here. Some organizations such as the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) have appealed to the Indian Government to reject the triple-talaaq system of divorce but with little effect. The Supreme Court has decided to review the Muslim personal law code in order to eliminate the obvious misogyny that oozes from each and every page. They have also nudged the central government to take steps towards enforcing a Uniform Civil Code. However, any such measure, if taken up, will be met with swift retaliation from groups such as the AIMPLB who have vowed to oppose any measures that may threaten their clerical authority. If history is to serve as evidence, they shall be successful.

If we move away from the lack of a UCC, we realize that our present BJP government has committed some serious atrocities that, to some, have signaled the birth of neo-fascism in India. The widespread frustration prevalent in the nation after a decade of Congress rule ensured that Narendra Modi and BJP were ushered into the Parliament on a golden chariot in 2014 with an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. Many Muslims and other religious minorities feared this outcome as they looked at incidents such as the Godhra riots in 2002 and thought it to be proof of Modi’s intolerance towards minorities. While I refuse to comment on Modi’s role in the mentioned riots, it can be said that their fears regarding intolerance were justified.

The BJP receives its ideological backing from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing volunteer, Hindu nationalist group that is notorious for being a paramilitary organization and being involved in several communal riots, including the Godhra riots, the religious violence in Orissa and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In 2009, RSS leaders claimed that Western brands such as Pepsi and Coca Cola were defiling Indian culture and began marketing flavored cow urine as a drink that met the standards of “Indian-ness”. They have also stated that rapes in India have increased due to the encroachment of “Western values” in Indian life. Since it nonchalantly created its militant wing, the Bajrang Dal, in 1984, its reputation has been dragged through the mud so many times, it may well be beyond redemption. Yet the BJP government refuses to disown the RSS, putting the final nail in the coffin of secularism.

However, there have been instances where the BJP government has be wrongly accused of promoting a communal agenda. The national prohibition on the consumption of beef is one such example due to its ubiquity in non-Hindu diets. This is a move that is NOT primarily justified on religious grounds, as popular opinion would suggest. The production of beef has catastrophic effects on the environment as beef cattle require as much as 30 times the grazing space required by any other meat group. After grazing, these large swathes of land are usually left barren, leading to significant environmental damage. Also, beef production requires more water than most other food items and the excrement of cows is also crucial to maintaining the fertility of many agricultural fields in India. This ban actually does possess some backing even from the Indian Constitution with Article 48 regarding the Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry-

“The State shall endeavor to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.”

While I do not regard the arguments against the beef ban as illegitimate, it is incorrect to state that religious interest is the sole cause for the prohibition which, in any case, preceded the BJP government of 2014.

Lately, the government has been roundly accused of introducing their Hindu nationalist tendencies into the education system by revealing its plans to introduce the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu religious text, in the Haryana school curriculum. The Bhagavad Gita is one of the first books to come out of the Indian subcontinent (or the world, for that matter) and as such, it possesses tremendous historical and literary significance for Indians. This is the reason why many non-Christian schools in the USA teach the Bible as an introduction to literary critique. This should serve, one would think, as the grounds the BJP used to justify its inclusion in the curriculum. Alas, that was not the case. Haryana’s education minister, Ram Bilas Sharma, issued the following justifications recently:

“”To those objecting to teaching Gita, let me tell you that it is not a religious book.”

“”Gita contains the dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna. We decided to included Gita teaching in curriculum as part of moral education.”

The mentioned quotes are mutually contradictory. The stance taken by Sharma is untenable because the “moral education” imparted by the Gita is a very distinct part of Hindu philosophy and morals and there is no denying that the Gita is a religious book. The only plausible argument that could be made for the introduction of the Gita in state curriculum is the fact that it has served as the basis for most of ancient Indian literature and must thus, be studied academically because it’s an irreplaceable part of the Indian literary tradition, not because it imparts “moral education”.

The mentioned instances and arguments only make my position more salient. The statement, “Before being Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists or Jains, we are Indians” is, not unlike religion itself, just a myth. If being a Muslim can change the laws you must follow, it also changes your duties to the State and thus, the kind of Indian you are. When the government in power shares ideological and organizational framework ties with an organization that seeks to create, as per its own admission, a “Hindu” nation, your identity as an Indian becomes subjective to your religious affiliations. To claim that such a destructive paradigm is secular is to insult the concept itself.

So what is pseudo-secularism, as enforced in India? It is the attempt by the government and its people to include each and every religious interest in the law, instead of keeping religion and law separate. It is the acknowledgement that religious pluralism cannot exist without the Government intervening in matters of faith. It is the prioritization of Bronze Age myths over all the collective achievements of science, technology and secular humanism. It is the policy of appeasement followed by the Government towards minority religions and, as history tells us, that has never ended well. Eventually, some religious party shall cross its bounds and punch above its weight, as they have in the past and continue to do today, and other religious groups will feel that it is their duty to retaliate in a traditionally non-peaceful manner. Then, nobody will be able to deny that this facade of secularism was merely overt communalism in disguise or communalism in waiting.