Secularism unbound

SECULARISM

India at a Crossroads

Madhav Godbole

Rupa

441 pages; Rs 995

Madhav Godbole was a civil servant of standing who held several responsible official positions, including that of the Union home secretary. I approached this voluminous compendium on secularism with interest because a person of his reputation and experience had attempted to address the many contestations as well as assaults on secularism in India today. 

This extensive tract is a carefully researched compilation of many important debates and pronouncements on several aspects of secularism as it is both conceptualised and practised in India today. It takes within its scope debates about the meaning of secularism and minorities, the mixing of religion and politics by governments and political parties, communal riots, the condition of minorities, cow slaughter, religious conversions, religious personal law, minority institutions and much else. The writer attempts to realise the prodigious ambition of his study by extensive references to debates in the Constituent Assembly, Parliament and the legislatures, court rulings, legal commentaries and scholarly discussions.

However, the strength of the book – its extensive research and considerable range – also becomes its greatest limitation. Almost every page of the volume is populated by long quotes, sometimes of more than a page. The litany of innumerable quotations soon becomes both frustrating and confusing, first because these are rarely from the original source. Instead, Mr Godbole typically quotes from commentaries that quote the author and then comments on them often with other quotations. Much of the book reads like a diligent post-graduate student’s review of literature. It is hard to understand where Mr Godbole himself stands on many of these contested issues. It is only in the last chapter of the book, titled “The Way Ahead” that the reader finally gets a clear picture of what the author believes. But even here, the author is often simply prescriptive rather than attempting to build a carefully reasoned argument to explain his position about a string of highly debatable issues and conclusions.

The book would have packed twice the power had it been better organised around each of the themes, with the author’s arguments clearly stated each time at the core of each debate, and these positions could have been reasoned and developed in part with the help of discussions by political leaders, jurists and scholars. I also found the set of prescriptions of the author at the end of the compendium piecemeal and scattered. There are interesting and occasionally provocative suggestions, but they don’t add up to a comprehensive alternative imagination of the political and social practice of secularism in this diverse, complex, unequal and ancient land.

Mr Godbole suggests that both secularism and minority be defined by the Constitution, without suggesting what these definitions should be. He also calls for the creation of a Secularism Commission, but it is difficult to understand what it would contribute beyond what the National Human Rights Commission and the National Commission of Minorities have accomplished or, more pertinently, have not accomplished. On the other hand, he makes a powerful case for the outlawing of parties that mix religion and politics, by amending the The Representation of the People Act, and is forthright in his criticism of the politics of parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party, Akali Dal, Shiv Sena and the Muslim League, which he is convinced have no place in a secular polity.

With his undoubted commitment to secular values, he still often ranges his views against the pluralism that secularism entails in India, suggesting even a law that bans names and dress that reflect and reveal a person’s religious identity. He is convinced that the Constituent Assembly was wrong in including the right to propagate one’s religion in the Constitution, and feels that this right, the right to evangelise for conversion, as well as maintaining minority educational institutions, should be erased as constitutional rights. He believes that religious sensitivities cannot be allowed to come in the way of publicly honouring the national flag, anthem and national song Vande Mataram. On the other hand, he is stoutly opposed to a ban on cow slaughter, and rightly critical of successive Congress governments after Nehru for supporting such a ban.

He combines incontrovertible proposals such as for police reforms and for welfare of minorities with outlier reform ideas such as making voting compulsory and allowing only parties with more than 50 per cent of the vote share assume office. The problem is that the author does not elaborate why and how these could be accomplished, and why these are crucial for the achievement of a secular polity and society.

The author brings to the subject his understanding of the inner workings of government. He observed from the inside recent historical moments when secularism was most savaged by ruling governments, including the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage, the capitulation of the Rajiv Gandhi government in the Shah Bano controversy, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Bombay communal carnage and bomb blasts that followed. He is also sturdily opposed to communal politics. 

However, the absence of a coherent overarching analytical framework – philosophical and political – limits the value of the book. In the climate of engineered fear and hatred against religious minorities today, there is little that is more urgent than a critical understanding of what secularism means in India and how it could be better defended and realised. The book raises important questions and compiles numerous views and contestations. But it falls short of making a decisive new contribution to our collective understanding of secularism in the difficult times in which we live.