More on Secularism

This is a continuation of my earlier post on Secularism. I am elaborating on some of the points mentioned earlier for better clarity.

Belief Explained
When listing down the three basic characteristics of the members of a secular society, I used the word “belief”. As mentioned earlier, the beliefs we are referring to here are the ones that are impossible to convincingly prove or disprove using scientific facts. I intentionally used the word “belief” instead of the word “religion” because the beliefs of an individual will normally not fit into any particular religion. I also wrote in that post that an individual who chooses to follow a particular religion should not be under compulsion to adhere to every practice/belief of that religion. All this essentially mean that an individual should be free to pick and choose what specific things he wants to believe in. The set of beliefs that an individual has may come from multiple religions and culture.

For example, an Indian Muslim woman may believe in Astrology and Feng shui but not on Vastu. She may also believe that Friday the 13th is unlucky and be of the opinion that Muslim women need not wear hijab. The set of beliefs this person has will not completely fit into Indian tradition or Islam. We cannot call this person anti-Indian because she does not believe in Vastu or because she believes in foreign things like Feng shui and Friday the 13th. Similarly, no one can force her to wear hijab just because she calls herself a Muslim.

I think, the goal of secularism can be achieved by letting each individual to have his/her own set of beliefs without causing any harm to others. There is no need to define any accepted set of beliefs.

What is Secularism?
Secularism is not a term that is owned by anyone. The term will mean different things to different people. The objective of my post was not to explain what secularism is – It was to explore what secularism should be. My approach was to start with goal - to avoid problems in the society caused by conflicting beliefs – and work towards a realistic approach. The idea to arrive at an approach that will work for us – we don’t have to be hung-up on what others call as secularism. We could even give a new name to our approach.

How about Dharma?
The article pointed to by Vishwa (http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma-and-secularism) compares Dharma and Secularism. I think we don’t have to get into that discussion. We should rather think about a workable approach to achieve the overall goal. We can combine ideas from Dharma, Secularism and many other philosophies. The above link does not give the definition of Dharma. But, another article from the same site (http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma) has a good definition:

It is most difficult to define Dharma.
Dharma has been explained to be that which helps the upliftment of living beings.
Therefore, that which ensures the welfare of living beings is surely Dharma.
The learned rishis have declared that which sustains is Dharma
- Shanti Parva - 109-9-11

So, an approach that makes an honest attempt to achieve the goal of avoiding problems in the society caused by conflicting beliefs is in fact Dharmic according to the above definition of Dharma.

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