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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Secularism

Secularism is a concept that is often misunderstood. At one extreme we have people who equate secularism with atheism and at the other extreme we have people who look at secularism as a mechanism by which the society defines a common set of beliefs that everyone accepts. Everyone would agree that the goal of secularism is to have social harmony. But, people have many different opinions on how social harmony can be achieved. Here, I am trying my best to figure out what secularism should be.

The goal and the possible approaches
The goal of secularism is to avoid problems in the society caused by conflicting beliefs of different people. One obvious way to achieve this goal is to make all the beliefs in the society consistent with each other. This approach would require some or all people to change or drop certain beliefs that cause conflict. The biggest challenge in making this happen would be to convince people to change or drop the conflicting beliefs. The only way to really change someone’s belief is by confronting it using facts and logic. The beliefs we are talking about here are spiritual beliefs – they are not based on facts, but faith. It would be impossible to prove or disprove these kinds of beliefs using scientific facts. For example, let us consider that there is someone who believes that there is a power called God beyond the universe. This belief cannot be disproved by science because science just knows that universe is a big expanding ball of matter. Science is yet to figure out what lies beyond the universe. When people are not able to come to common ground based on facts and logic, they are most likely to get into confrontations based on beliefs. As a result, the approach of making all beliefs consistent with each other should be considered flawed because the approach itself creates the problems that it is supposed to avoid.

Another approach often suggested by some people to achieve secularism is to make everyone accept that all others faiths are also correct. I consider this approach to be a simplified form of the above approach of making beliefs to be consistent with each other. There are certain beliefs that can never become consistent with each other. For example, consider that there is a person who believes that there is no God and there is another person who believes that there is God. Now, think what would happen if we ask both of them to believe that the other person is also correct – we will be in effect asking these two individuals to have paradoxical beliefs.

Since changing beliefs of people to achieve the goal of secularism is clearly impractical, we need to see how the goal of secularism can be achieved without getting into the slippery slope of changing the beliefs of people.

Members of a secular society
For a secular society, we need a way by which people can hold on to their beliefs but still live together without fighting among them on beliefs. Let me list down what I think would be the basic characteristics of the members of a secular society.

1. They will have their own beliefs on spirituality. But, they will not expect the beliefs of all others to be consistent with theirs. People will consider it normal for others to have beliefs that might conflict with theirs.
2. They will have a healthy social relationship with others even if they don’t have the same beliefs as them.
3. They will practice/express their beliefs without creating denigration, hatred, violence or other anti-social behavior.

Now, let me go into more details on each of the points taking the Indian context into account.

My first point is related to what is normally called tolerance. One common misconception about religious tolerance is the assumption that religious tolerance requires one to accept that other’s faiths are also correct. Hindus who go by this assumption see the concept of tolerance to be totally consistent with the Hindu concept that God can be reached by multiple ways. They feel that religions like Islam are unsuitable for secularism because those religions require followers to believe that theirs is the only right way to God. Similarly, there are many Muslims who go by the above assumption and think secularism is against Islam. Confusion between the concepts of secular government the concepts of secular society may be a reason for the incorrect assumption. A secular government is supposed to treat all religions as equal, but an individual in a secular society is not at fault if he considers one religion to be truer than another.

In my opinion, the word “tolerance” itself is inappropriate to be used in this context because of the common meaning of the word. One normally understands “tolerance” as capacity to endure pain or hardship. So, when we say we should tolerate other religions, it appears as if other religions cause pain to us and we are supposed to endure the pain. I would prefer to say “respect other religions” instead of saying “tolerate other religions”. We should not feel pained to show respect to other religions. We should rather consider it natural for other religions to exist and have beliefs that may possibly conflict with ours. If we consider tolerance as a hardship, it will naturally lead to accumulation of frustration over time and result in the pent-up frustration manifesting itself in undesirable ways.

My second point (people should have a healthy social relationship with others even if they don’t have the same beliefs as them) is an essential requirement of a secular society. This requires people to not be ghettoized based on religion and have good social relations among them. Religion should not be a major factor in normal social interactions. This will ensure that people don’t look at those belonging to other religions with suspicion. This requires some more open-mindedness than just tolerance as described earlier. People should have basic awareness of other religions. They should try to involve neighbors/friends from other religions in their celebrations.

We should understand that every religion will have some elements that are intolerant toward others. The success of a secular society is in marginalizing the intolerant elements. That cannot happen unless there is a cordial social atmosphere. Having a good social relationship with people from other religions will also ensure that one does not stereotype other religions based on the acts of certain intolerant elements. For example, a Hindu who has a reasonable level of social relationship with Muslims would not stereotype Muslims as supporters of terror.

Unfortunately, we are not doing very well on socialization in India. We do have business/work relationships without bringing in religious differences. But, there is always an undercurrent of mistrust on other religions. This is not the case with all Indians – only those who do not socialize enough are likely to have this problem. Political parties exploit the feeling of mistrust to their advantage. The feeling of mistrust is probably because historically caste has been a major factor in determining how one socializes with others. Religion has added one more dimension to it.

My third and last point (people should practice/express their beliefs without creating denigration, hatred, violence or other anti-social behavior) is another requirement of a secular society to be sustainable. This is to ensure that individuals or faith groups practice/preach their beliefs without harming others. The support of law should be there in order to achieve this. Governments should act promptly and strongly to any religion based act of violence, terror, etc. Any shortcomings of governments in taking action against religion based anti-social acts will cause erosion of trust on the government. It will lead to further strengthening of divisive forces that will damage the secular nature of the society.

In India, the laxity of governments in responding to violence caused by Islamic terrorists and Hindu fanatics has dented the trust people have on the governments. The inefficiency of the criminal justice system we have is also a problem. We would definitely need a lot of work to restore the trust of people.

Nature of a secular society
The nature of a secular society follows from the nature of its members described above. A secular society should give full freedom for individuals to follow any religion they like. People should not be under compulsion to follow any particular religion. They should be free to change their religion whenever they desire to do so. If an individual chooses to follow a particular religion there should be no compulsion to adhere to every practice/belief of that religion.

A secular society is most likely to be pluralist. A secular society may be homogeneous at some point in time due to natural evolution. But, it will not be making explicit attempts to bring in or to retain homogeneity. Due to the human nature to question things and to innovate, the personal freedom given by a secular society causes the society to become pluralistic.

India is officially secular since it established its constitution, though the word “secular” was added explicitly only much later. But in my opinion, India is a secular society even from the days when Hinduism was the only way of life. Faiths like Buddhism could rise because the society was not rigid – the Hindu concept that God can be reached through multiple ways would have helped. India has been open to even faiths that are not consistent with Hinduism. Christianity and Islam came to India (Kerala) much before any foreign invader came. The trend continues even today – India has the maximum number of followers of Bahá'í faith, one of the newest faiths in the world.

Indian society has evolved from a homogenous Hindu society to the present pluralist form. It has certainly been influenced by Muslim/Christian rulers. But I think even if there had been no external invasion, India would have had the same kind of religious diversity it has today, although with different demographics.

Secular government
The definition of secularism is incomplete without talking about the responsibilities of the government. The role of government is crucial to secularism. Following are the characteristics of a secular government.

1. It will not use religious sentiments or religious morals as the basis of its laws – This means that the law should be common to all and that the law should not be based on the sentiments of any particular faith.
2. It will not be funding or interfering in the religious activities of any religion – In this age of governments shifting away from non-core activities, religious activities would be the first thing the government should get off its plate. If government promotes/subsidizes religious activities it will be a difficult task to give equal attention to all religions and keep all sections happy. It would be more efficient for the faiths to have their own non-profit institutions to manage religious activities with the support of followers.
3. It will have common laws related to social activities that involve multiple individuals, like marriage, property transfers, adoption, etc – This is essential because of complications that are likely to arise due to situations involving individuals from multiple religions. However, having a common law would not prevent people from following the rules of a religion with the consent of all parties involved. For example, let us assume that the common law requires children, spouse and parents to inherit equal share of the property of a deceased person. In a situation where all the parties inheriting (as per the common law) are Muslims they can choose to split the property as per Islamic guidelines. But if any one of the parties objects, the common law should apply.
4. If it has to resolve conflicts between religions, it will do it based on facts, not sentiments – If the government is in a situation where it has to resolve a conflict between two religious communities, it should first try to arrive at a consensus. If that is not possible, it should resolve the conflict using facts as the basis. The government should also try to resolve religious conflicts as soon as possible. Leaving conflicts to continue would make them difficult to resolve and also cause disgust between communities.
5. It will ensure that the spirit of the secular society is upheld – It will be the responsibility of the government to ensure that people get to excise their rights as members of a secular society and to ensure that it responds to anti-social behavior in an appropriate manner, as described earlier.

One point to note here is that the people who run the government also have their rights as members of the secular society. Though the government itself needs to function in a religion-agnostic manner, it does not mean that people involved in the government need to be unreligious.

Finally…
The goal of secularism is to avoid tensions in the society due to religious differences. With some burden out of the shoulder due to secularism, the society and government can devote more attention to overall development in the spheres of economy, education, etc.

Check out the continuation: http://shahuls-world.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-on-secularism.html.

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