India Gained Independence on This Day in 1947. Today We Are in Danger of Losing Our Secular Culture

The most celebrated moment in modern Indian history – Independence, which came 78 years ago this week – was also one of its most traumatic. For the first time in history, India, a land where pluralism flourished for millennia, was divided on religious grounds. Partition cast a malevolent shadow over our pluralistic, multicultural society. Today, sadly, many Indians think secularism is a bad word, and the country seems bent on creating a Hindu Rashtra. Before it’s too late, let’s reconsider this position and reclaim our world-renowned heritage of religious tolerance, equality and respect for diverse beliefs.

Imagine what India will lose if secularism here dies.

About 4000 years ago, our Vedic rishis invented the idea that “truth is one, the wise call it by different names.” This simple thought brought our ancestors unparalleled progress and prosperity for thousands of years. It allowed people with all kinds of beliefs – pantheists (Hindus), atheists (Charvakas), materialists (Ajivikas), non-atheists (Buddhists), and spiritualists (Jains) – to live and grow together. At the peak of our prosperity in the 3rd century BC, Emperor Ashoka adopted Buddhism, but pronounced an edict: “One should honour another’s religion…By doing so, one helps one’s own religion to grow and also renders service to the other’s religion.” Buddhism carried this Indian philosophy to nearly all of Asia and eventually every continent on earth. In 1937, Hu Shi, a Chinese politician, lamented, “Rather than sending soldiers, India sent a few missionaries to conquer China culturally.”

Despite the arrival of Muslim rulers through conquest beginning around the 8th century, these pluralistic traditions survived. Some Muslim emperors, like Aurangzeb, were brutally oppressive to other religions, but others, like Akbar, were respectful. Akbar appointed members of different faiths to his cabinet and promoted a syncretic religion (Din-E-Ilahi). 

When the British arrived in the 18th century, India still enjoyed strong feelings of camaraderie between Hindus and Muslims. In 1857 they mutinied against the British together, and united symbolically under the leadership of Bahadur Shah Zafar, India’s last Mughal Emperor. Both Hindu and Muslim rulers, like Rani Lakshmibai and Begum Hazrat Mahal, fought against the British.

India’s secular culture endured during its Freedom Movement. The 1916 pact between Motilal Nehru and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, representing the Congress and the Muslim League respectively, was hailed as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim collaboration. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a Brahmin and Congress leader, called Jinnah “the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.” When Mahatma Gandhi led the freedom movement, he raised religious solidarity to new heights. “My Hinduism is not sectarian,” he said. “It includes all that I know to be best in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism.”

This ancient kinship came under great strain when India gained independence. The turning point had actually come a decade earlier, when Jawaharlal Nehru refused to give any Muslim League leader a place in the provincial governments formed in 1937 by the Congress party. It wasn’t that Nehru was against Muslims; he just didn’t want communal party representatives in government. But this harsh, unilateral decision made Jinnah angry and vengeful, and every effort after that to bring him back to the nationalist cause failed. Jinnah raised the call that “Islam is in danger,” and rallied Muslims for a separate nation called Pakistan.

Partition dealt a blow to the goodwill between the two largest communities in independent India. Hindutva became mainstream in the 1990s and is now India’s dominant political movement. Today, many Hindus are rallying to the cause of Hindutva, which seeks to establish a Hindu hegemony in the form of a Hindu Rashtra. 

The followers of Hindutva feel that the Muslim minority is not committed to India’s welfare. This sentiment is hardening by the day and turning into hatred. And as is natural with feelings of animosity, it is being reciprocated. Today, it is hard not to accept than many of India’s Muslims and Hindus fear and even hate each other. 

If India wants to retain its age-old values of multiculturalism, this downward spiral of hatred based on religion must end. Since Hindutva is now politically dominant, this requires that any form of religious discrimination or oppression be constitutionally banned. I have long argued that India must adopt the strict separation of church and state. 

Many Indian thinkers believe that India’s secularism can survive if governments keep a principled distance from all religions, or promote them equally. But they may be expecting too much from politicians. Recently, the chief minister of Assam (and Hindutva devotee) asked, "How can Himanta Biswa Sarma be secular? I am a hardcore Hindu. Similarly, how can a Muslim person be secular. He is a hardcore Muslim.”

On the other hand, as Farooq Abdullah, Kashmir’s Muslim leader and ex-chief minister, said earlier this week, “India is going through a difficult phase, but no one can finish its secularism.” Today, on Independence Day let us hope Abdullah is right in his optimism.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.