The term ‘Secularism’ was first invented and used
by the British writer George Jacob Holyoake in 1851 to describe his views of
promoting a social order separate from
religion, without deliberately criticizing religious beliefs.
The precise meaning of Secularism or
Secularity is “State has NO connection
with religion and having NO religion of its own”. Every Individual of every
religion is having equal rights; they all are treated equally under the roof of
same law, no matter from which religion they belong to. State accepts every
individual’s right to pursue his or her own religion and the right of religion
to shape its own concepts of spirituality.
We Indians are expert in manipulating the
things and we try to imply everything in different ways irrespective of the
meanings. We actually consider ourselves as surgeons we do surgery of
everything. Same has happened with the
word ‘Secularism’, it is the most
misused word in Indian Politics. In Indian context- Secularism means
treating all religions equally and state is neutral to all religious groups,
there is no separation between religion and the state. See how manipulative we
are.
Nowadays
secularism is being used only as the strategy
to achieve political goals. Experts are of the view that public activities
and political decisions should remain untouched by the religious beliefs or practices.
These differences are forcing many scholars to declare that India is not a
secular state, as the word secularism
is widely understood everywhere in the world.
In European countries, secularism is a movement
toward modernization irrespective of traditional religious values. French
concept says there should be absence of
governmental institutions in religion, as well as no existence of religion in
governmental institutions and schools. Whereas we are totally opposite to that,
Indian concept provides financial support to religious schools and accepts
religious law over governmental institutions. Indian govt financially supports,
regulates and administers the Wakf council (Islam), historic Hindu temples,
Buddhist monasteries, and certain Christian religious institutions; this is
quite evident that Indian govt is involved in various religious activities.
In
India, Many Political parties (I would not like to mention the names) often use,
I would rather say ‘misuse’, the term secularism
to counter the opponents and to counter this, opponents use the term “pseudo-secularism” to describe the
policies that involve minority appeasement and it implies that those who claim
to be secular are actually not so, but are anti-majority or pro-minority and
involved in only vote bank politics which is opposite of the definition of secularism. Once the BJP leader LK Advani
had characterized pseudo-secular politicians as those for whom "secularism is
only a euphemism for vote-bank politics". That’s very true!
When it comes to personal law, we forget
that India is a secular state. The applicable personal law differs if an
individual’s religion is Islam, Christianity, or Hindu e.g., the minimum age of
marriage for girls is 18 for Hindu and Christian Indians, while the personal
law according to sharia allows Muslim Indians to marry a girl less than 12
years old. In Western secular countries, age of consent and age of marriage are
derived from secular laws, not religious laws.
We live in a global village;
modernization and development are the needs of the hour. It’s high time to separate religion
from India and bring in the Uniform Civil Code for all its citizens,
political appeasement may work for particular party to run the govt and
particular religion to develop temporarily but it will have a long term negative impact on the political
environment of India. It will be the gross
violation of right to equality. Political pundits will have to understand
this terminology before it’s too late; they will have to stop misusing the word
‘Secularism’ as soon as possible.
