In the modern times when it became a political term,
secularism meant basically : freedom from religion. But
then it did not mean a state-enforced freedom from
religion. It was not totalitarianism, the freedom of the
authorities to meddle in people's intimate beliefs or
commitments. Freedom means having the options to take
something or to leave it. The communist effort to weed
out religion has never gone by the name of secularism, it
was called totalitarianism.
So, secularism rather means freedom regarding religion :
the freedom to take it or to leave it (freedom without a
choice between alternatives is hardly freedom). By
guaranteeing this freedom, secularism subjects the
adherence or submission to the tenets of a religion to
individual choice. Secularism recognizes the logical
priority of the individual's choice to follow a religion,
to this religion's actual claim on the individual's
adherence.
By placing the free choice of the individual above the
duties or dogmas imposed by religion, secularism has done
enough to emancipate man from religion. Man can choose a
religious view or commitment rather than having it
imposed on him. In that sense, secularism does not mean
anti-religious activism. It only means subjecting
religion to human choice, which was revolutionary enough
in the European context of Church power trying to impose
itself.
Since the individual's freedom of choice regarding
religion or Weltanschauung was made the norm, the state
authority was bound to neutrality in these matters.
Imposing any view of the ultimate, including atheism, was
precisely what the state was prevented from doing by
secularism. Yet, some Marxists in India have called this
simple concept of state neutrality regarding religion a
non-modern concept of secularism. They think the state
should actively campaign against religion.128
So, secularism as a political term means : neutrality of
the government in religious matters. That is all.
Secularism does not mean that the state promotes one
belief system, it means that the state limits itself to
guaranteeing the individual's freedom to find out about
these matters for himself. That at least is the correct
meaning of the term "secularism" as it has historically
developed in the West, in a period when individual
freedom was considered the topmost value. If one chooses
secularism as a component for a state system, it remains
to be seen how this fundamental concept is worked out in
the details of a secular Constitution, but that state
neutrality and respect for the individual's intellectual
and religious freedom should be the spirit of such a
Constitution, is certain.
About the origin of the term, this much should be known.
The Latin word saeculum, exactly like the Hebrew word
olam ( Arabic alam), means : time cycle, eternity, era,
world. From era, the more common meaning century is
derived. For Sanskrit equivalents, one would think of
kalpa, and of samsara. As a synonym for secular, the
word temporal is sometimes used ; as its antonym,
spiritual or eternal. These terms have entered the
modern languages mostly via Church parlance.
In its acquired political meaning, secularism, being a
doctrine concerning the state, leaves any spirit-oriented
choices to the individual, and limits the state to
pursuing world oriented objectives. Secularism does not
limit the individual who is left free to pursue
religion, with the state guaranteeing this freedom.
Secularism limits the state, and prevents it from
espousing other causes than its worldly functions.
Secularism limits the state's authority over the
individual to the latter's behaviour, and refuses it
access to his mind.130
In a larger context of civilizational philosophy, we may
criticize the essentially individualistic character of
this historically developed, visibly European secularism.
But for the time being, if at all one wants to practice
secularism, I think this is the sane and genuine variety,
as opposed to the existing alternative, the totalitarian
attempts to weed out religion from people's minds and
private lives.
Dictatorship is an unrestricted (as opposed to a
restricted, esp. by democratic feedback) claim on
people's lives. Totalitarianism is stronger, it is a
claim on people's minds. The demand voiced by a section
of the Indian secularists, that the state be used in
order to spread atheism, is the product of a totalitarian
mentality. It is moreover a clear aberration of the
modern concept of secularism as it has historically taken
shape in Europe. So to the extent that there is no
conceptual apparatus outside the modern Europe-
originated thought categories, secularism should be
defended in its genuine European sense, against the
Stalinist perversion of secularism that still has quite
a following in India.
When we say that secularism is in a sense a very
individual-centered doctrine, we must realize that that is
not a very alien thing to Hindu culture. While Hindu
culture historically has its basis in a strong community
structure, with joint family, gotra, jati, varna, as
grades of integration between the individual and society
as a whole, in matters of religion it has always been
individualistic. There is no regular group gathering in
temples prescribed in Hindu tradition. Of course, there
are social rituals surrounding life events like marriage
and cremation, and religious festivals, and for these the
community congregates. But the innermost and actually
religious level of Hindu culture is an individual affair.
And it could not have been otherwise. Action and ritual
may be community affairs, but the basis of real religion
is a culture of consciousness, and consciousness is
individual.
In Islam and Christianity, any concept of consciousness
culture is very marginal. Of course, when saying prayers
with genuine intent, people are in fact practicing a kind
of bhakti yoga. These Pagan elements that treat religion
as a matter of individual mental experience, are
unavoidable and in fact indispensable in any religion,
because they spring from man's intrinsic religious
instinct.
In Christianity these elements of a culture of inner life
have sometimes appeared, but the stray occasions of
Christian mysticism have never developed into a
systematized tradition, because the Church opposed it.
The Church correctly saw in this culture of consciousness
an implicit Pagan doctrine of liberation from ignorance
through meditation, contrary to the Christian doctrine of
salvation from sin through Christ.
Islam too knows of consciousness culture only through the
Pagan infusion of Sufism. Doctors of Islam like Al-
Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyyah correctly rejected mysticism as
unfounded in the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet
: these don't teach any technique of access of the
individual to a spiritual reality, but on the contrary
claim for the Prophet a sole and final intercessory
status between God and man. All that Islam wants its
followers to do, is to perform certain actions (saying
prayers, giving alms, participating in jihad), it does
not at all focus on any culture or exploration of
individual consciousness.
In Hindu culture, even in its most unsophisticated
popular forms, this focus on individual consciousness is
always there. No group prayers, one's religious
experience is one's personal affair. Therefore, the
concept of leaving religion to the care of the
individual, with no authority above him empowered to
dictate beliefs or religious practices, which in the West
constituted a cultural revolution called secularism, is
nothing new to Hindu culture.
So, religion is a personal affair. The Hindu state has
no right to forbid or promote any religious doctrine (the
way Ashok, the hero of the Nehruvians, is said to have
promoted Buddhism). And religious organizations have no
say in political decision-making.
Indian Leftist intellectuals (I am not aware of the
existence of leftist proletarians in India) do advocate a
deliberate policy of eradicating religion from the
people's consciousness. You do not hear a lot of this
long-term project, but occasionally yet another Platform
for Secularism (or Action Committee, or People's Rally,
etc., for Secularism) is set up, and then they announce
their demand that religious TV programmes be banned, that
any presence of religious symbols or texts at state
functions be banned, that use of state buildings for any
religious event be banned, that religious education be
banned from schools set up to impart secular education,
etc. Since Marxists dismiss freedom as a bourgeois-
liberalist illusion, they don't feel inhibited in making
bans and suppression their central demands.
Of course, the Marxist programme of using state power to
eradicate religion is, in the countries where it has
been practiced, a memory 133 of horror as well as an
outrageous failure. It is totally objectionable and we
will not waste any more paper on it. However, we do have
to deal with the rationale for this intention, which
gives them a good conscience in advocating an all-out
government campaign against religion.
The Marxists start from Marx' perception that religion is
an anti-rational superstition from the primitive age,
and an opium of the people which prevents men from
living in reality and emancipating themselves.
Let us start with the opium part. It is quite correct
that religion, like drug-taking, is practiced in order to
have a certain mental experience. And it is a fact that
people spend a lot of time and money on arranging for
such mental experiences. A missionary told me that he
has a very hard time to extract from the villagers one
Rupee per month for the upkeep of the village well, but
when someone comes from the city with a video-set and
some films, they can all take out five Rupees to spend a
Sunday watching films. A mental kick is worth a lot
more to people than the necessities of humdrum existence.
That is why people can spend vast sums on a Durga Puja or
some such religious festival, only to throw the Murti
into the river at the end of the festival.
But the difference is that religion, in its best sense,
is not a benumbing drug. Religious consciousness is not
amnesia, forgetfulness.134 It is quite the opposite, it
is an awakening. In its more profound dimension, it is
an awakening to the inner reality. In its more outward
dimension, the festivals and rituals, it is an awakening
to and a celebration of the world's time-cycles and
life-cycles, an explicitation of participation in the
world order (the Vedic concept of Rta). It is a very
successful and time-tested way of giving colour and
meaning to our existence. It breaks through the grey and
prosaic life that the Communists want to impose on us.
But the Marxists think that religion is an evil, because
it is anti-reason ; while reason is a good in itself,
which moreover emancipates man by equipping him with the
intellectual as well as technological means to determine
his own destiny. Now this notion of reason and religion
stems from a specifically European situation, that
conditioned Marx' thought about religion. The fact that
Indian Marxists have simply transposed Marx' limited view
to the Indian situation is just another example of how
dogmatic Marxists generally are. It also shows how
utterly ignorant the Indian Leftist (and generally
secularist) intelligentsia is of India's home-grown
religious culture.
By the time Marx was writing, the dominant religion
taught man something very different from seeking out the
truth for himself. The Protestants (to which Marx'
family formally belonged) as well as the Jews (of whom
Marx' father used to be one, before conversion for
careerist reasons) extracted their doctrines from
Scripture. Reason was to be used in interpreting
Scripture, but it was not radical and autonomous. The
Catholics paid much less attention to Scripture, but
were subject to Church tradition and the doctrinal
authority of the Holy See ; Catholic philosophy was
equally barred from being a radical and autonomous
exploration by Reason.
So, in order to bring man back to the verifiable reality
of this life, and in order to make him fully use and
explore reason, the belief in infallible Church dogma or
in infallible Revealed Scripture had to be abolished.
Since no religion was known to Marx except the anti-
rational belief systems based on Revelation and Dogma,
the struggle for Reason and against belief in Dogma and
Revelation, seemingly became a struggle against religion.
In that context, secularism could be seen as more than a
separation of politics and religion, not as the best way
of letting the two domains flourish on their own terms,
but as an offensive of anti-religious reason against
anti-rational beliefs. The secularization of the state
was then not seen as the full realization of the desired
separation of politics and religion but only as a step in
an ongoing offensive against religion: from a full
control of religion, via a secularized state, to a full
destruction of religion even in the private sphere. If
religion is an evil, why stop at chasing it from the
public domain ? It should be destroyed altogether.
To restore the term secularism to its fundamental
meaning, we have to take it out of this peculiar
perception determined by the European context. And we
hasten to add that while secularism is an established and
unchallenged value in European culture today, the
perception that religion as such is an evil, is limited
to certain ideological groups, and by no means
considered an integral part of secularism. Christians,
among them the dominant Christian-Democratic parties,
have fully accepted secularism as a state doctrine. This
is of course due to the influence which humanism has had
on modern Christianity. Hardly any Christian today
believes he should impose his doctrines on others through
state power.
10.4. Real secularism through real religion
Secularism is fundamentally not a matter of reason versus
belief. Because religion is not intrinsically a matter of
belief. The demand that you believe that Jesus was the
Saviour from original sin, and that He was resurrected,
and that He was God's only-begotten Son, or the demand
that you believe that Mohammed was Allah's final
spokesman and that the Quran is Allah's own word : these
claims on human assent and belief, even though they have
grabbed a major part of the world, and even though they
have become synonymous with religion in the minds of many
millions, are a caricature of religion.
In the vast majority of religions that have existed in
humanity's history, beliefs were never a defining
element. Of course, people had their beliefs. But that
did not put them either inside or outside the community.
Religion was not so much a matter of doctrine (which in
turn should not be reduced to belief), but of practice.
There is on the one hand the exploration of
consciousness, which as such was mostly limited to a
class of adepts. This could involve an unsystematic
seeking of visions, as by taking hallucinogenic drugs, or
it could be developed into a systematic discipline. This
was all a matter for experience, not for dogma. There is
on the other the outward aspect of religion, ritual.
What our modernists decry as empty ritual was not so
empty at all. It was a very effective way to order life,
celebrate the cosmic cycles, and consecrate the
community.
As dr. Schipper, the Dutch sinologist and practicing
Taoist priest, has stressed, ritual is not a symbolic
representation of a specific doctrine.136 Of course,
philosophically-minded practitioners may choose to shape
ritual so as to physically reflect certain cosmological
conceptions. But that is not the point of ritual. By
far the most people in world history who have
participated in rituals, had little idea of any
cosmological or otherwise doctrinal content of the
ritual, and yet it performed its function impeccably. A
new religious movement, back in the old days, meant not a
new doctrine, but a new ritual.
So, treating religion as a hotchpotch of beliefs that
have no place in a reason-oriented society, that should
therefore be thrown out of the public arena, and
ultimately also chased out of the private sphere, is
based on a crude identification of religion with the
crude belief systems of Christianity and Islam. It is
only when we discard these narrow ideas about religion,
when we broaden and deepen this understanding of
religion, to encompass more rational and humanist
religions than those two which happen to have conquered
the world, that we can have a correct understanding of
secularism. It is their utterly superficial notion of
religion that has made the secularists devise such a
crude and despotic kind of secularism.
But are there then no objectively negative and harmful
beliefs which a secular state should actively endeavor
to weed out ? It is a fact that in the lower stretches of
religion, which is a much-encompassing human phenomenon,
you find very base superstitions and practices (like
witchcraft, but I add that this meaning of the term does
injustice to the historical witches, women who had kept a
lot of pre-Christian lore alive, and were consequently
blackened in Christian preaching and writing, and burned
at the stake). Where such things come in conflict with
public morality, health and the law of the land, the
state has to intervene on purely secular grounds. But
when it comes to "weeding out superstitions" from
people's minds, then the secular state has to stand aside
and leave it to educators in the broadest sense of the
term to transform popular consciousness.
Thus, I don't believe the Indian state should wage a
campaign against superstitions like the belief that the
Creator of the universe has spoken through a prophet, or
the belief that a section of humanity has a God-given
right to lord it over the unbelievers, or the belief that
there is merit in attacking the unbelievers that their
religious practices. Even if these beliefs have terrible
consequences in the secular filed, like Partitions and
riots, it is not the duty of the state to campaign
against them.
Such superstitions which are in flagrant conflict with
scientific universalism, should be dealt with by
intellectuals, and the state will have done more than its
share if it does not impede the broadcasting of their
criticism of these superstitions. The state should just
refrain from banning books eventhough they hurt the
feelings of those steeped in the said superstitions. It
should refrain from pressurizing or boycotting or
prosecuting people who perform their legitimate task of
educating people concerning such superstitions. It
should refrain from imposing history-distortions on
schoolbooks, i.e. from concealing the truth about the
evil effects of such superstitions. (That the Indian
state is so far not secular enough to refrain from this
sabotage of the intellectual struggle against
superstition, is shown in ch. 12)
10.5 Secularism and Chaturvarnya
The doctrine that the realm of thought and the realm of
power have to be scrupulously separated, is not an 18th-
century European invention. It is abundantly present in
the Indian tradition. It is implied in a doctrine and an
institution which no-one dares to mention without putting
on a grimace of horror and uttering shrieks of
indignation : Chaturvarnya, usually mistranslated as
the caste system.
I may briefly repeat that there is a radical distinction
between the division of Hindu society (as of some
disappearing tribal societies) in endogamous groups
(castes or jatis), and the idealized division into four
colours (varnas), which historically has come to be
superimposed upon the actual division in castes. Within
the varna ideology one should make the distinction
between its historically acquired hereditary dimension137
and its fundamental categorization of the social function
into four groups, each with its own duties.
So, when I mention varna, please don't start fuming about
Brahmin tyranny and the "wretched condition of the
downtrodden". What I mean is the distinction between
four functions in society : Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya
and Shudra, quite apart from the way in which the
personnel for these functions gets selected or the way
they treat each other.
It is a fact of life that "the apple does not fall far
from the tree", that children have a statistical tendency
to resemble their parents, not only in appearance but
also in aptitudes. This trend is strengthened by the
traditional social setting, in which children would
automatically receive training in their parents'
professional skills, in the family business.
Nevertheless, the relation between parents' and
children's aptitudes is only statistical : there are
plenty of cases where young people have a genuine desire
for a different kind of profession. Therefore, the
Bhagavad Gita says (apparently against a swelling trend
to fix profession on birth) that not birth, but aptitude
or quality (guna) determines one's varna. The Buddha too
said that moral conduct and mental disposition, not
birth, determined who is a Brahmin.138 So, the division
of human society in four varnas is distinct from its
fixation into a hereditary caste system.
Another important component of the varna ideology, is the
strict separation between the activities of the varnas.
In the discussion of indigenous Hindu secularism, we
should draw attention to the separation between the two
authority-wielding varnas, the Brahmins and the
Kshatriyas. In the Varna ideology, the Brahmin is the
man of knowledge, whose authority is intellectual and
universal : truth does not change with crossing borders.
The Kshatriya is the man of action, whose authority is
political and subject to limitation in time and space:
his authority lasts a legislature and is limited to a
state.
The idea of separation between these two varnas can
ideally be understood as a separation between the
secular domain of action and politics, and the non-
secular domain of knowledge and spirituality. Like the
separation between the three powers in the modern
democracy (legislative, executive and judicial), this
separation between the domain of power and the domain of
the Word must be welcomed as the best way of letting the
two domains flourish optimally.139 The separation
between the domain of government and the sphere of
thought is not a matter of universal consensus : its
antithesis is Plato's notion of the "philosopher-king".
This notion is contradictory as well as utopian (which is
why the thoroughly realistic social philosophy of
Hinduism rejects it), and the philosopher Karl Popper
correctly saw it as the ideological core of
totalitarianism and as an "enemy of free society".
Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo have sometimes
described social and political developments in varna
terms. Thus, feudalism was Kshatriya Raj, capitalism
Vaishya Raj, and communism Shudra Raj.140 Even in
all
those countries where no jati system exists, varna
categories can be meaningfully applied. For example,
modern problems can be described as a mixing-up of caste
activities or attitudes. Commercial gurus like Rajneesh
are a mix of Brahmin and Vaishya (the profit-oriented
varna), corrupt politicians are a mix of Kshatriya and
Vaishya.
For a poisonous mix of Kshatriya and Brahmin, a classic
example is Jawaharlal Nehru. He acted as a Brahmin where
he should have been a Kshatriya, and he wanted to use
Kshatriya political power to push an ideology and destroy
other ideologies, something he should have left to people
in Brahmin functions.141
When the Chinese invaded Tibet, action was called for, a
Kshatriya approach.142 Instead, Nehru philosophized that
the Chinese felt strategically insecure, and that
therefore their annexation of Tibet was
understandable.143 But understanding is a Brahmin's
business, not the duty of a Kshatriya at the helm of a
state.
In his dealings with Pakistan too, he tried to "see
their viewpoint also", and consequently made concessions
of which millions of Hindus have suffered the
consequences (handing over pieces of territory, stopping
the reconquest of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir when it was
succeeding, refraining from efforts to enforce the
Pakistani part of the Nehru-Liaqat pact). The duty of a
ruler is not to see the other party's viewpoint (in the
political arena all parties are well capable of looking
after their own interests), but to take care of
his own people's interests.
The 1962 Chinese invasion was the final demonstration
that Nehru was singularly unfit to rule the country :
instead of keeping an eye on strategic realities, he was
indulging in his ideological trip of socialism and non-
aligned "peaceful co-existence". This incurable
sleepwalker could have made a fine editor of a
secularist paper, or some such lower-end Brahmin job, but
in Kshatriya functions like ruling a country besieged by
enemies, his qualities were quite misplaced.
So, the Brahmin and Kshatriya functions have to be kept
separate. Rulers should not wage ideological campaigns,
they should govern the country taking ideology-based
realities as they are. On the other hand, in a modern
state, the ruler is constrained by a philosophy embodied
in the Constitution. And his decision are influenced by
a general framework of values and ideas. So there is
also an intimate connection between ideology and polity,
between Brahmin and Kshatriya. More precisely : there is
a subordination of polity to ideology, though only to the
extent that the exigencies of the political reality leave
room for ideological choices.
In a sense, that is the application of the hierarchical
principle inherent in the varna doctrine : while there is
equality in the sense that the actual groupings in
society, the jatis, should have a maximum of internal
autonomy (their own mores, their own judiciary), and that
all people have different duties according to their
varna, and need not be concerned with other people's
duty, there is a hierarchy in the functions of the
varnas. The Shudra (the worker who serves an employer,
the artist who please an audience) is subordinate in the
sense that he is employed by the other varnas. The
Vaishya citizenry is subordinate to the public order
enforced by the Kshatriya. And the Kshatriya rulers are,
in framing their policies, subordinate to the Brahmin
realm of literate culture and ideology. A policy
necessarily stems from a social philosophy, which in turn
is integrated in a larger world-view. it is in this
functional co-operation that the different social
functions (varnas) of thought and government, are co-
ordinated into a larger social order.
10.6. Sarva Dharma Samabhava
The slogan "Sarva dharma samabhava", or "equal respect
for all religions" is not a part of Hindu tradition, it
is a recent creation of Mahatma Gandhi. One may of
course argue that it is in the spirit of Hindu tradition.
But that is precisely the question : does "equal respect
for all religions" really sum up traditional Hindu
secularism?
We need not go into the exact meaning of the word
dharma here. The Mahatma wrote and thought largely in
English, and the original phrase is the English one, so
dharma merely figures as a translation of religion.
What he meant, was in effect: equal respect for
Christianity Islam and Hinduism.
Now, some people take this to mean that all religions are
equally true. It seems the Mahatma himself has on
several occasions put it like that. Latter-day cults
like the Baha'i and the Ramakrishna Mission in its new
non-Hindu colours, declare that all Prophets, as well as
their messages and Scriptures, are "equally true". Of
course, this is rank nonsense.
The utterances of prophets are just as much statements
on which logical operations are possible, as anyone
else's statements. Of course, where they use metaphors
and other figures of speech, that special type of
language has to be taken into account, just as when non-
prophets use such language. but effectively, even
prophets' statements can be true and untrue, and if that
is too hard to swallow, let us at least agree that two
prophetic statements can be in conflict, or
logically irreconcilable.
When Krishna says that it is always He who is the object
of devotion, no matter what the form of the mental and
physical focus of worship may be (such as gods and
idols), he is in logical conflict with Mohammed who
declares that Allah does not tolerate other gods beside
Himself and wants idols to be destroyed. These two
cannot be true at the same time. Either these many forms
are fit for worship, or they are not.
Now, one might try to be clever and say that at some
higher logical level, a synthesis of two opposites is
possible. Alright : God's unity and God's multiplicity
through many forms are indeed compatible, are two ways of
looking at the same thing. But the point in exclusivist
doctrines is precisely that this synthesis is rejected.
Only one viewpoint takes you to heaven, all the others,
and especially syncretistic attempts to associate
idolatrous viewpoints with the strict monotheist
viewpoint, lead straight to hell.
When two prophets give an opposite opinion on the same
question, one can still say that both were not really
talking about the same thing, because the cultural
circumstances were different. Thus, some founders taught
non-violence and non-killing, including strict
vegetarianism, while others exhorted their followers to
kill and gave the example themselves, and sanctioned
animal sacrifices. But then, what is prophethood if it
is so determined by cultural circumstances ? If the one
and eternal God had one plan for humanity and wanted to
teach it his one religion, why is He sending a Mahavira
teaching absolute non-violence to one place and a
Mohammed teaching war to another place ? It seems there
is something wrong with the notion of prophet as an
agent sent by the one God.
One may distort history and say that the Indians to whom
Mahavira preached were less warlike than the Arabs to
whom Mohammed preached. This does injustice to both
peoples, but mostly to the Pagan Arabs, who were far more
humane in their warfare than the Prophet ; but let us now
suppose it is true. Then what was the point of God
sending prophets, if He just gave the different peoples
what they already had ? He sent the Prophets precisely to
change things. So, if He could, through Mohammed, make
the Arabs give up idolatry, totally alter the position of
women, and other such drastic changes, why didn't He
also order them to become vegetarians as He had done to
the Indians long before via Mahavira ?
The answer is that Mahavira wasn't God's spokesman. His
insight was human, and he never pretended more than
that.144 Anyone can see for himself that getting
killed is an occasion of suffering, so it is something
one should not inflict on other sentient beings : that is
how non-violence can be thought up without needing God's
intervention. And the state of Liberation or
Enlightenment which Upanishadic teachers taught, was
always presented as a state which everyone can achieve,
not as something which God has exclusively given to this
or that chosen prophet.
The truth is universal, and to the extent that religions
hold up this universal truth, they can be said to be
true. But what constitutes the difference between
religions, is mostly the way and degree of putting other
things than the universal truth in the centre. Some
religions take the natural aspiration for truth in their
followers, and then channel it towards peculiar and
exclusivistic doctrines that have little in common with
the universal truth.
Let us drop this pipe-dream that all religions are
equally true. We may say that the spiritual aspirations
in human beings, regardless of the culture they happen to
be born into, are equally true. But the belief systems
that feed on this basic human urge for universal truth,
often by mis-educating and misdirecting man towards non-
universalist beliefs, cannot at all be said to be
equally true.
It should be clear that "Sarva dharma samabhava", if
interpreted as "equal truth of all religions" oversteps
the limits of secularism as a doctrine of the state,
unconcerned with the internal affairs of religion : it is
a far-reaching statement about the nature of religion
itself. It is moreover an untenable statement. It is,
on top of that, at least in most of its formulations, far
from religiously neutral : it rejects the Hindu humanist
conception of religious teachings (as being products of
the universal human consciousness), and espouses the
Islamic prophetic conception of religious teachings (as
being God-given messages). Finally, it discourages
critical thought about religion, and is thus opposed to
the scientific temper. So, this doctrine of the "equal
truth of all religions" is not really helping anyone. We
better discard it.
Both the line taken by the Communists, that all
religions are equally untrue and deserve equal
disrespect, and the line taken by the sentimentalists,
that all religions are equally worthy of respect because
equally true, do injustice to the fundamentally human
character of religious culture. The human intention
behind a given religious practice is worthy of respect.
But the belief systems and concomitant moral codes are
open to criticism, like any human construction, and some
of them may be discarded, even while others may stand the
test of experience and remain sanatana, forever. So,
there is no apriori equality between religions. It is a
different matter that people believing in superstitious
doctrines still deserve equal respect with the people
whose insight is more advanced. In that sense there
should of course be "equal respect for all religions".
To conclude this reflection on the "equality of all
religions", let us mention the view that secularism is
really a synthesis of all religions. Secularist Mahesh
Jethmalani agrees with the BJP view that a common civil
code for members of all religious communities in India is
a legitimate demand of secularism, but he agrees on the
basis of an unusual interpretation of the term: "The
[uniform civil code] is in keeping with the needs of a
modern Republic. It is devoid of Hindu ritualism and is
rational in the extreme. It is religiously neutral, in
that it calls upon the Hindu as much as the Muslim to
eschew traditional ways of life in the interests of a new
'national religion' which synthesizes the best from all
the religions in the land."145
It goes without saying that our secularist's bias is
showing. On top of his explicit exclusives against
Hindu ritualism, there is his stress on synthesis,
which very word is enough to enchant a Hindu, but
incapable of arousing a Muslim's interest.146 This
synthesis of the best of all religions is a make-believe,
which is held up to fool Hindus, but which the members of
a number of religions will scornfully reject, because it
would go against the exclusive claims which constitute
the basic identity of their religions.
Moreover, our secularist's utter superficiality and non-
comprehension of religion is showing. As Mahatma Gandhi
understood well enough, in spite of his prayer-sessions
with readings from different Scriptures, one religion (in
his case Hinduism) is quite sufficient to guide an an
individual all through life. A "combination of
religions" is as nonsensical as two suns shining in the
sky. What is possible is one broad-minded religion which
can assimilate new forms : one Sanatana Dharma which is
intrinsically pluralist, and can appreciate new accents
(as on brotherhood and social service147)
proposed by
other religions. But a synthesis of the doctrines that
everyone makes his own Liberation through yoga,, that
Jesus has brought Salvation once and for all, and that
you get a ticket to Heaven by affirming that Mohammed is
the final Prophet, is simply nonsense.
Synthesis implies the rejection of the rejection of
synthesis. So it means the rejection of the exclusivist
claims of Islam and Christianity. I agree with our
secularist that synthesis and a "new national religion"
are the solution. That "national religion" is age-old,
it is Sanatana Dharma. But this Dharma is sanat kumar,
eternally young, so it is indeed new, especially to
those who are under the spell of secularism and have
blacked out from their consciousness this age-old
heritage.
The most surprising thing about Mahesh Jethmalani's
secularism, is that it is quite the opposite of a
separation of state and religion : it has the ambition of
creating and promoting a religion through state
arrangements like the common civil code. In my
secularist homeland, we have a uniform civil code, but no
one there is fantastic enough to see it as a stratagem in
a larger project of floating a new religion. In fact,
we think it is none of the state's business to create,
destroy, promote, discourage, or indeed to synthesize a
religion. We think it is none of the state's business to
"call upon [members of the different religions] to
eschew traditional ways of life": those ways that are in
conflict with the law, are simply forbidden, and all
others, traditional or not, are simply left to the
people's own choice. The secular state is not making any
call to eschew any ways of life whatsoever.
A truly secular state is by definition not a despotic
state. It does not choose or devise or synthesize a
religion for you. It is a self-restrained state. That
is why the Nehruvian socialist doctrine of a hungry
state, with state initiative and state guidance, has
naturally combined with a perverted and despotic kind of
secularism.
10.7. Dharma
The official Hindi term for secularism is
dharmanirpekshata, i.e. dharma-neutrality. Critics of
Nehruvian secularism say the correct translation would be
panthanirpekshata or sampradayanirpekshata, i.e. sect-
neutrality.
Of course, sect-neutrality is an indispensable component
of secularism. Perhaps the secularist translators wanted
to add another component by preferring the term dharma-
neutrality.
The word religion, in most European languages, can be
both an uncountable and a countable substantive.148 As
an uncountable, it means "the religious dimension", and
leaves any sect-wise or belief-wise contents to that
religious dimension unspecified. As a countable, it
means "a religion", "a set of religious doctrines and
practices", "a sect united around common doctrines and
practices".
As a translation of both these uses of the term
religion, westernized Indians have employed the word
dharma. As an example of the countable use, the well-
known Gandhian slogan sarva-dharma-samabhava means "equal
respect for all religions". "A dharma" here means "a
religion". By contrast, the expression Dharma Rajya uses
dharma as an uncountable. it is, however, not normally
rendered as "rule of religion" but as "rule of
righteousness". And that opens the discussion of the
exact meaning of the term dharma.
Dharma means : that which sustains.
Every singular or composite entity has its own dharma,
its swadharma. All the composite classes to which an
entity belongs, have again their own dharma. Thus, an
individual his dharma, which is partly specific to
himself, partly in common with the family he belongs to
: kula-dharma. This in turn is partly in common with the
jati to which the family belongs : the jati-dharma. In
the varna-ideology, every jati is categorized under one
of the four varnas, so the jati-dharma will partly be
differentiating from the other classes within the varna,
and partly be the common dharma of the entire varna.
Further, all varnas, and all classifications of any kind,
ultimately share in a universal human dharma, manava-
dharma. And this in turn is part of the over-all cosmic
dharma (the cosmic ordered pattern, for which the
specific Vedic term is Rta).
Let us give another example that has nothing to do with
traditional Hindu society. Every individual cow has her
own dharma. While partly individual, it is largely a
common dharma of the cow species : the biological
characteristics and functions that define the cow's role
in the larger ecosystem. The cow dharma is partly
specific, partly in common with the mammal dharma
(skipping several intermediate classifications), which is
again partly mammal-specific, partly in common with the
all-vertebrates dharma. The vertebrate dharma is partly
the all-animal dharma, which is partly specific and
differentiating from the plant dharma, and partly the
common dharma of all living beings. Thus, self-
regulation and procreation are the dharma of all living
beings, but the animal dharma involves breathing oxygen
while the plant dharma involves breathing carbondioxide.
Materially, one's dharma is the actualization of an inner
programming (primarily, but not exhaustively, the genetic
programming). Formally, it is the playing of a role
within the larger ecosystem, in interaction with all the
other entities with their own allotted dharmas.
This inner programming which determines one's dharma, is
called guna, quality, characteristics, or more uniquely
swabhava, own nature. In lower species, this programming
is exclusively biological, i.e. mostly genetical and
partly environmental. In man, one section of the
environmental factors, called learning or education,
gains immensely in importance. So, an individual's guna
is partly uniquely individual, partly in common with his
family, tribe, etc. through genetics as well as through a
common environment (common experiences), and it is partly
a matter of learning (a directed programme of
experiences), and to that extent it is in common with
those who go through the same learning.
The integration into the larger system is an automatical
affair in the lower species. In man, it is in large
measure a matter of conscious assent to what is
consciously perceived as one's role in the larger whole.
In lower life forms, as in machine, dharma is the actual
functioning of a norm, the fact that processes do not
take place at random, but conform to and preserve a given
order, e.g. the thermoregulation processes which preserve
a constant body temperature in mammals, or the
maintenance of the optimum population level of a given
species within a given ecosystem. In human society, it
is partly that, because man participates in the general
biological laws ; but partly, the human dharma is a
conscious participation in the actualization and the
upholding of a system of norms. To that extent, the
manava-dharma is not merely the actual functioning of an
in-built norm, but the conscious acceptance and
fulfilling of one's duty.
So, for the individual human being, dharma primarily
means duty. Dharma means the acceptance and fulfillment
of one's duty, i.e. the behaviour and occupation
corresponding to one's place within the system. For
society as a whole, it means the integrative system
comprising all individual and group duties. it is the
social order which is upheld by the conscious
participation of all members.
Now what does this have to do with religion ? Hindu
social philosophy recognizes four goals (purusharthas) in
human life: Kama (pleasure), Artha (gain), Dharma (duty)
and Moksha (liberation). It is clear that religion in
its strictest and highest sense, as the individual's
spiritual life, belongs to the fourth aim, liberation.
The inner spiritual process, the freeing oneself of
bondage through purification of the mind, is directed
towards moksha. Then where did dharma get to be
associated with religion ?
The dharma is the norm system which ideally regulates all
human activity. Man's life is ordered by the social as
well as by the larger cosmic order. Now, there is a
specific category of activities, which have no other use
or function, except to explicitate man's integration in
a social or cosmic order. For instance, one ordering of
human society is the division in age groups. Every
primitive society has rituals explicating this
ordering dimension : the rites of passage from one age
group to the next. For another instance, one dimension
of the cosmic order, is the division of the year cycle in
seasons. The starting-points of the seasons may be
defined astronomically (solstice, equinox, full or empty
moon), or through atmospherical or terrestrial events
(end of the harvest, first rain), but at any rate, they
divide the year into different stages, each with its own
characteristics and concomitant human activities (its own
dharma), which altogether form a cycle or recurring
totality. The celebrations at each of these fixed points
of the year cycle, have no other function but to
explicitate this aspect (of unity through a
differentiation into different phases each with its own
dharma) of the cosmic order.
Celebrations and rituals are an essential aspect of
dharma. One can be born, become a man, start living with
a woman, exchange this life for the next, all without any
pomp or ritual. It can be done : animals do it. but it
is not done. Precisely because man is a conscious being,
he wants to give conscious expression to the different
phases that make up a cycle, and to the different
functions that make up a society. That is one of the
reasons why people wear job-specific uniforms. That is
the reason why children are baptized, why diplomas are
handed out in a big ceremony, why couples are wedded in
great gathering of friends and relatives, with a specific
ritual, why another ritual is gone through to say
farewell to someone who has died, etc.
So, in that sense, rituals and celebrations are the most
human component of our participation in the social and
cosmic order, of our dharma. Take for instance, the Holi
festival. Holi is first of all a spring celebration.
The exuberant ritual of throwing paint at eachother and
not sparing eachother at all, is a variety of the
standard elements of spring rituals the world over. In
some places in Europe, on the first real spring day, i.e.
when the sun is out and it unmistakably feels like
spring, youngsters from upper-storey windows pour buckets
of water on unsuspecting passers-by. The logic is that
on the first day of spring, people need to wake up from
their winter slumber. So, spring rituals like Holi are
shocking and unrespectful.
On top of that, it seems that Holi also has a varna
connotation : it is the day of the Shudra varna, when the
class of people who habitually get their hands dirty, are
free to draw the other varnas into a celebration of
their own part in society. Similarly, Raksha Bandhan
("bond of protection", the day of the thread) is the
celebration of the Brahmin varna, Vijayadashami (victory
day) of the Kshatriya varna, and Deepawali (apart from
being a typical autumn festival, with candles to get
through the dark months) celebrates the Vaishya varna.
So, every function in society gets explicit expression on
a specially reserved day. This is how dharma, the
system of duties, gives rise to rituals and celebrations,
the things that we often categorize under the heading
religion.
So, dharma, or duty, in its broader sense implies also
the activities that explicitate the world order, the
useless rituals and celebrations, which from the outer
or public part of religion.
Modernist bores, of course, are against all this waste
of money and especially of time. Under their pressure,
some religious people have tried to de-emphasize the role
of rituals and celebrations, and stressed the religious
dimension of useful work: "Work is worship". But the
modernists can't be appeased with this defensive excuse,
so in a recent seminar in Delhi, they countered it with
an extended slogan : "Work is worship, but worship is not
work". So, it is time to explain to these people that
the value of these rituals and celebrations resides in
the very fact that they are not work, that they are
meant not to be useful. They are a popular way of
directly tuning in to the larger order, of explicating
the order of which our activities are implicitly a part,
of strengthening the awareness that makes the daily
treadmill of useful work meaningful. This expression
of awareness of the world order constitutes the
difference between animals, who simply obey and fulfill
this order, and human being, who consciously participate
in it.
Anyway, we have established that dharma basically means
duty and "participation in the social order". In the
broader sense, it means all the customs and rituals that
give expression to this social order, to its values and
norms. In a broad sense, we could call this culture.
The purely non-functional, expressive and ritual part of
it, can be called religion, as long as we don't forget
that there is a deeper, inner dimension to religion which
is not concerned with the world order, but on the
contrary with moksha (i.e. unconcern with the world).
From the basic meaning, we may derive the meaning : the
virtue of being conscious of and faithful to one's duty.
And since duty is defined relative to the world order,
this can be re-worded as : the virtue of respecting and
upholding the world order. The common translation of
this derived meaning is righteousness. Thus, Dharma
Rajya is "rule of righteousness". That is what Ram
Rajya, Ram's rule, is supposed to epitomize and
symbolize.
The same meaning, we find in Dharma Yuddha, the "war of
righteousness". Some people, very ignorant or inspired
by anti-Hindu motives, translate this as religious war.
And then they conclude : see, you Hindus, you also have
this concept of crusade or jihad. In reality, the
"war of righteousness" is not a jihad at all. Dharma
Yuddha means firstly a chivalrous war, a war in which a
number of rules are observed, a war in which the world
order is respected, as opposed to the all-out war in
which anything goes as long as it results in victory.
Secondly, it can be stretched to mean (but this is non-
classical) a war in defense of the world order, against
those violate and threaten this order. Dharma is
concerned with people's conduct (achaar), not with their
belief or opinion (vichaar). Therefore, a Dharma Yuddha
is by definition never directed against unbelievers or
"heterodox believers", but exclusively against people who
through their actions break the rules and arrangements
that constitute the world order.
In this connection, the Mahabharata, and especially its
episode known as the Bhagavad Gita, is sometimes
mentioned as containing the Hindu doctrine of "Religious
War". In reality, the Gita is explicitly not about a war
between Believers and Unbelievers, between Chosen ones
and Doomed ones. For instance, Dronacharya is equally
attached to the Pandavas as to the kauravas, both have
been his pupils, but because of his specific secular
status, he is duty-bound to fight on the Kaurava side.
It is purely worldly events that had pitted the two camps
against eachother, not a theology. The Kauravas had
violated the order by breaking an agreement with the
Pandavas and remaining irreconcilable in their
unrighteous position. They had not refused to accept
some belief system, they had merely violated a secular
agreement. After that, honour and the secular interest
of their family force the Pandavas to take up arms. This
is now their duty, as Krishna reminds the wavering
Arjuna. The religious element in the Gita pre-battle
discussion is, that the capacity for doing one's secular
duty is grounded in an insight into the true nature of
the Self, who is a foreigner incarnated in this world,
and not affected by the worldly situations in which he
finds it his duty to operate.
So, the concepts of "dharma" and "religion" overlap only
partly. The term dharmanirpekshata becomes a bit absurd
or even sinister when it turns out to say "duty-
neutrality" or "righteousness-neutrality" (though it
applies accurately to the utter corruption in which
Nehru's secular socialism has plunged the Indian state).
The absurdity really comes out when we translate it as
"value-system-neutrality". You just cannot have a polity
without a value-system that sustains the unity and
integrity of the whole. Even secularism implies
something of a value-system.
So, if we start from the uncountable use of the word
dharma (righteousness etc.), we have to reject
dharmanirpekshata as the translation for the Western
concept of "secularism".
Let us consider the countable use : one dharma, two
dharmas, etc. As we have seen, this use of the word
exists. There is the soldier's dharma, the sweeper's
dharma, the schoolboy's dharma, etc. There is the
individual dharma, the occupational dharma, the family
dharma, the tribal dharma, and of course the state
dharma. So there are indeed many dharmas. Every entity
has its own duty or value system, based on its
definition, its characteristics, its place in the larger
whole. The state too has its own dharma. The state's
dharma is not at all neutral, it is very specific. It is
different from the school dharma, from the prison
dharma, from the village dharma. To illustrate its
distinct dharma, the state, like every entity, has its
own dharma-typical celebrations. In a Saint Thomas
school, they celebrate Saint Thomas feast. In a family
(at least in the West), they celebrate every member's
birthday. In a village, they have a celebration upon
completion of the harvest. And the Indian Republic
celebrates Independence Day and Republic Day.
So, in a world of many dharmas, the secular state too has
its own dharma. There is no room for any dharma-
neutrality. Let us use the words in their proper
meaning. Secularism is sect-neutrality,
sampradayanirpekshata. This term at once expresses the
opposition to sampradayikta, sectarianism (or
communalism).
This precise and unambiguous translation also clinches
the issue regarding yet another term proposed as the
equivalent of secularism : Lokayat. This term means
worldliness. It was the name of an ancient school of
thought, mostly known as the materialists. One could
say they were atheist and even anti-religious (the two
are not synonymous, cfr. Buddha's atheist religion), but
they were just as much a sampradaya, a sect. And
materialism and atheism are just as much belief systems
as theism, monotheism, pantheism and the rest. By
contrast, secularism is not a belief system. It is
merely a political arrangement that separates the state
from sects and belief systems. So, regarding the
Lokayat-sect, both ancient and modern (the Leftist
sampradaya), and regarding the atheist belief system, the
secular state has to kept strict non-commitment and
neutrality.
[