What Can Modi and His Supporters Learn About Secularism Following the India-Pakistan Conflict?

“I want to make it clear that India is a secular country and its army is a beautiful reflection of India's constitutional values.” These words from Indian military spokesperson Colonel Sofiya Qureshi will keep ringing loudly long after the war drums fall silent. They are the most significant words among the countless utterances rained on us during this most recent India-Pakistan conflict.

Soon the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will try to drown them in their aggressive, violent and communal propaganda. But we must not let them go into oblivion.

These words prove that India can establish its superiority over its rival Pakistan only by making one claim: that India is a secular nation.

Now that both sides have stepped back and war has been averted, the question that lingers is: who won and who lost?

The leaders of both countries are trying to tell their people that they were the winners. Since their public had given them unconditional support, they are forced to accept the claims of their leaders. The facts, however, are embarrassing for them.

Leaving aside this worry, we cannot ignore that in this conflict the BJP and its parent organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have suffered a decisive defeat in the field of ideology. Their idea of nationhood stands defeated. India is better than Pakistan not because it has practically turned into a Hindu rashtra but because the constitutional idea of India is that of a secular nation.

There is a war that is fought with weapons, and there is another war that is fought with language – language as an expression of ideas. When two countries fight each other, they also want to turn it into a war of ideas or ideals.

The warring countries claim they are the bearers of an idea that is better than the other country's. Each seeks support from uninvolved countries by claiming that only the victory of its idea will benefit the whole world. When Russia attacked Ukraine, it felt necessary to say that Ukraine was promoting Nazi ideology.

The question asked is which country represents dharma and which is serving adharma. So, in modern times, what is dharma and what is adharma?

In the last ten days, a war of language and ideas was also being fought. During this period, India's military was speaking on its behalf. Its political establishment chose to remain silent.

Foreign secretary Vikram Misri with army officer Colonel Sofiya Qureshi during a press conference on May 10. Photo: PTI/Arun Sharma.

But the language that foreign secretary Vikram Misri and military spokespersons Qureshi and Vyomika Singh used was completely different from and opposite to what the heads of India's political establishment were using before and after April 22.

Speaking to the press on the third day of the clash and responding to the allegation that Indian forces had targeted mosques, Qureshi said that India was a secular country. That answered the allegation of India targeting mosques. What she was trying to say was that India cannot target any religious symbol. It cannot insult any religion.

This one sentence was not just addressed to Pakistan. The prime minister and the rest of the leaders of his party should also listen to it. Why just them – all their supporters who elected them should also pay heed to it because they elected these politicians with the hope that they would change the secular character of India and convert it into a Hindu nation.

Addressing BJP workers after the party’s victory in the 2019 elections, Narendra Modi boasted that the word secularism had been eliminated after 2014. He patted himself on the back for the fact that in the 2019 elections, no political party was able to mislead people by wearing the mask of secularism.

Yogi Adityanath, the second most popular BJP leader after Modi, said in 2017 that the word ‘secular’ is the biggest lie.

In 2023, the words socialism and secularism were removed from copies of the constitution distributed by the government in parliament. Efforts were repeatedly made in the courts to get it removed from the constitution.

Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar has said multiple times that the principle of the basic structure of the constitution is not sacred and can be changed. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that whatever law parliament makes cannot violate this basic structure. Secularism is an essential element of this basic structure. Dhankhar wants to remove it.

The one concept most hated by all the gurus of the BJP's parent organisation is secularism. The BJP and RSS hate Nehru the most because he is considered responsible for making India a secular republic.

You might remember that when Uddhav Thackeray decided to break ties with BJP and join the Congress, BJP leaders taunted him by saying that he had become secular. The then-governor of Maharashtra also quipped sarcastically that Thackeray wanted to become secular. BJP supporters have been using the word secular as an abusive term.

After 2014, BJP supporters started distorting the word secular by calling everyone who believed in it ‘sickular’, implying that all secular people are sick people, or that this concept itself is a disease.

Also read: Can We Please Stop Hounding the Concept of Secularism?

At a time when the word secular was not tainted, BJP people claimed that they were the ‘real’ seculars. L.K. Advani coined the term ‘pseudo-secular’ to attack those who advocated for the rights of minorities.

Time and again, the word and concept of secularism has either been attacked or attempts have been made to distort it. Modi said that because his government schemes benefit everyone, he is secular. This is killing the soul of the word and its concept.

Secularism is actually related to the equality of political rights. People of every religion and sect, irrespective of their numbers, have equal political rights. One meaning of secularism is that all people of every religion can participate in politics on an equal footing.

Political participation does not only mean voting rights for all communities. It becomes meaningful only when people of every religion or community feel confident that they can also be representatives of the country. The BJP's key ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya and M.S. Golwalkar before him wanted an India in which Muslims and Christians would not have political rights.

While campaigning in Gujarat, Modi tried to scare Hindus by saying that if the Congress came to power, Ahmed Patel would become the chief minister. No one, not even the Congress, asked why Patel should not have the right to be chief minister of Gujarat.

Similarly, an attempt was made to frighten Hindus in Assam by telling them that if the BJP did not get a majority, Badruddin Ajmal would become the chief minister. Did he, a Muslim, not have the right to represent Assam?

Modi repeatedly mocks Rahul Gandhi by calling him “shahzada”, just as Mulayam Singh Yadav was mocked by being called “Maulana Mulayam”. We know what it means.

In 2002, when chief election commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh decided to change the dates of elections in Gujarat in the wake of the communal violence, the then-chief minister Modi tried to highlight his Christianity by calling him ‘James Michael Lyngdoh’, using his full name – as if Lyngdoh postponed the elections because he was a Christian.

Sonia Gandhi has also been attacked because of her Christianity.

The word secularism has no meaning without the right of everyone to participate in defining the nation culturally along with their equal participation in politics. The RSS and BJP have never left any room for confusion in this matter. For the last 11 years, there has been an unrelenting campaign to remove or erase everything with a Muslim imprint from school books and curricula. Cities, towns and roads are being Hinduised by changing their names across the country.

An ideological campaign to abandon secularism by terming it a foreign concept has been going on for decades. But today, that same secularism has become an ideological shield for India. Those who consider Modi's language ideal can ask whether today's Indian state has worn the mask of secularism to hide its ugly, disgusting majoritarian face and look presentable to the world?

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.

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