Every religion and faith has a dark past and it is absolutely wrong to associate the present-day people with crimes of their so-called historical ancestors. Transferring of guilt across generations is a wrong way to heal wounds. To use the horrors of Inquisition or religious wars of Europe to make the present-day Christians guilty or to attach the brutalities of Islamic invaders to present day Muslims are seriously wrong and becomes majorly responsible for the prevention of their integration into the all-absorbing Sanatana culture. One cannot use history to extract revenges.
But, on the other hand, Indian brand of secularism did weaponize history. It whitewashed the past wrongdoings done in the name of Christianity (the Goa Inquisition for example) and Islam in a tacit acceptance of the idea that the contemporary Christians and Muslims are somehow related to the past brutalities. The falsifying and distorting of history made secularism simply as a tool to appease the minorities. That was wrong as the correct history is bound to come into full public glare especially with the flourishing of social media. The same charity did not apply to Hindus as the social sciences and humanities simply continued with the colonial missionary narratives. A ‘pure’ Vedic religion which degenerated into the present ‘Hinduism’ through a vile patriarchal ‘Brahmanism’ remained the only understanding across centuries from the earliest traveller reports to present day academia both in the west and India.
The consistent understanding of Indian society across centuries is only through the prism of caste, Brahmanism, or Dalit exploitation despite ambiguity, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the explanations arising from the actual social practices. ‘Depressed classes’ was a classification brought by a Royal Decree in the early 20th century which became a political and legal reality of ‘Scheduled Castes’ brought by the Constitution. 65 million people and 1200 jatis with varied practices came under a broad umbrella of Scheduled Castes on the single tenuous criteria of ‘ex- untouchability’ and nothing else. The criteria to distinguish the scheduled castes from others was not deprivation of any kind (educational, economic, and so on) but only an untouchability status in the past.
Untouchability has many nuances with varied practices existing in all groups and against all other groups including Brahmins too. But the contradictory data of these uncomfortable practices went under the carpet as they did not fit the pre-existing explanation of the caste system. However, it was a terrible practice as popularly known and every right-thinking intellectual like Aurobindo, Gandhi, Savarkar, and Dr Ambedkar condemned it.
But it has been 75 years. Untouchability is completely illegal; reservations exist for them; protection exists for them in all spheres where one cannot even talk about the icons without fearing the law. This was a part of the unfortunate institutionalised hierarchy created by the successive governments across decades for mainly political gains. The political constitutional division of society into ‘forward’ castes, ‘backward castes’ (further sub-dividing into A, B, C, D), ‘scheduled castes’, and scheduled tribes has only increased divisions and angers. We could not achieve harmony but live with only enhanced feelings of guilt, anger, or pride both individually and collectively.
There were severe problems with the classic conception of the caste system from the field data. Yet ad hoc adjustments of the primary conception of Indian society explained away all the inconsistencies and contradictions from field or societal actual practices. Today, every single Indian narrative is based upon the caste lens and atrocity literature nationally and internationally. The Hindu simply recoils and withers under the attack of ‘caste atrocity’ stories on a daily basis. Every single achievement of the civilisation surviving against so many onslaughts simply balances by the evil of untouchability and exploitation. If surgery is only paediatric surgery and if paediatric surgery is only appendicitis in all discussions and conferences, it would be a very abnormal reading of surgical sciences. Such is the story with India. India is Hinduism, Hinduism is only caste, caste is only untouchability. The solution for dismantling untouchability is finally dismantling Hinduism. The story of caste is far more complex but any questioning of the present narrative becomes almost a case of Holocaust denial.
Secularism in this sense became an abuse of the majority where it told the Hindus that it will ‘never forget and never forgive.’ It became an appeasement when it told Muslims and Christians that it forgets, forgives, and blanks out its history too. That has been a terrible solution for post independent India because, despite the best intentions, angers have only increased. Caste has ‘spread’ into other religions. Each Indian from the so-called highest to the so-called lowest on the social scale suffers from feelings of pride, anger, frustration, and discrimination. Each feels the ‘other’ as privileged. This is the problem of secularism in India.
Secularism was a solution specifically for Christendom of Europe at a particular time of its history when the multiple denominations were fighting each other on their individual doctrines. Each party knew what God or Christ meant in the background when secularism separated the Church from the state. It was not meant as a solution for non-Western pagan cultures where pluralism was a way of life and where religions did not exist. Secularism in Europe today faces severe problems with the influx of Islam into its society. They are not able to handle the frictions and some countries like France end up with some extreme stances.
Thus, secularism was a poor solution for handling Indian pluralism. We were dealing with our multiculturalism in a far better way but the fascination for the west allowed our thinkers to believe that secularism was the best solution for independent India. Today, everyone is surprised at the intolerance and the rise of the ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ but many serious thinkers, especially from the Comparative Science of Cultures school at Ghent, have shown that it is precisely the Indian brand of secularism which is the problem. Converting Indian traditions into religions as a first step and then applying secularism as a solution is problematic in a major way. As Jakob De Roover (Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism) shows secularism, in fact, breeds intolerance and fundamentalism. It might appear paradoxical with the standard understanding of secularism but for serious scholars studying this it is hardly so. But their voice remains low and muted in the more vociferous narratives emanating from the political, legal, and academic forums.
Indian traditions are not religions and understanding that concept as a first step would go a long way in harnessing solutions. Secularism was specifically for the religion of Christianity at a specific point of its history. Applying it into a non-Christian culture which does not have religions in the definitional sense but only various traditions and whose solutions for co-existence were entirely different is only a recipe for disaster. As a metaphor, the situation is like calling an apple an orange and then getting surprised why apples are not growing with a fertiliser specifically meant for oranges.
We are all one. The all-important social sciences which has suffered from a one-sided ideological leaning for too long needs to do a lot of work to provide fresh narratives of India. We need to reach a state where one feels pride at one’s own identity (individually or collectively) or at least not being ashamed of what one is. At the same time, this pride would allow to look at the ‘other’ with equal respect and dignity. It is a long walk but the optimism stays.
RANDOM MUSINGS 