Aarti Tikoo Singh - I am a Secular Indian Kashmiri
I am a secular Indian
Kashmiri. Being secular is not particularly fashionable in India nowadays. In
fact, secular is scorned as ‘sickular’, almost with a similar loathing people
used to have for lepers and leprosy till the last century.
Take a look at the
discourse in Indian social media and you would know what I am referring to.
Secularism has become so bad that even those who are secular in their daily
lives do not like to assign the word ‘secular’ to their practice. We, the
people of the Indian republic, are afraid of being called secular. The idea of
secularism that the founding fathers Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and Ambedkar fought
for, is something we have slowly come to purge from our public discourse. In
modern India, secular is the new slur; the secular is the new outcast.
How, as a society, we
have come to this point is a story that began at the founding of the Republic
in 1950 itself. In a parliamentary democracy, electoral numbers determine
public policy and overall, moral standards of politics. A multi-lingual,
multi-religious, and multi-cultural country like India threw up enormous
challenges for its policy makers. The orthodox conservatives of all religions,
who though were not the majority, held sway over electoral politics. They
opposed legislation that tried to secularize the country and till this day,
they continue to challenge the secularization process.
From the Left wing to
the Right wing (of both Hindus and Muslims, the two largest religious
denominations in India), all political parties played identity politics and pandered
to their respective conservative constituencies in India. While the Centre-Left
played to the conservative Muslim galleries, the Right wing stoked passions of
the orthodox Hindus.
India’s grand old
party, the Congress, instead of promoting the liberal Muslim politics, resorted
to appeasement of the Muslim traditionalists in a women’s rights case and participated in massive violence against a religious minority in 1984,
leading to the coinage ‘pseudo-secular’ for their brand of politics. But the
Right wing opposition the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that called the Congress
as farcical secular, ascended to prominence through brazen communal politics
itself. It indulged in violent demolition of a mosque and has been selling
the pipedream of establishing a Hindu nation based on ancient mythological templates of
governance.
The result of such
regressive politics is that Narendra Modi, who happened to preside over Gujarat
communal riots, brought his BJP to power with a full majority for the first
time in Indian history in 2014. It gave such a huge sense of triumph to the
Hindu hardliners that he became the Prime Minister of the country. In the last
two years of the BJP’s rule, the lowest common denominator among the Hindu
religious conservatives has demonstrated that he feels empowered to lynch minority members to death and harass any critic of the ruling party, unrestrainedly.
In such a political environment, I feel that it is important for those who are
opposed to this old style of regressive and communal politics to speak up. It
is crucial that we bring in a new lexicon and news ways of democratic
engagement instead of letting the current hysteria impair ideals like
secularism.
So today, I want to
reaffirm and own my secularism.
Yes, I am secular.
Unreservedly. Unapologetically. Unashamedly.
My secularism is not
determined by how a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh treats me. It is not influenced
by how you treat me. Secularism, for me, is a perpetual inner state of mind and
spirit that remains unaffected by external circumstances. It is a deep sense of
equality and justice for all, which does not change due to the attitudes of
anyone including those who do not stand up for my right to equality and
justice.
Secularism, therefore,
can neither be Ram Rajya nor Sharia. It is actually the opposite; it is
equality in the eyes of the man-made law. So if your secularism is driven by
the politics of the Indian Right, the Left, and the Center, which is
essentially the politics of lower standards, you are not secular. If your
secularism is governed by the politics of the other and by how others behave
with you, you are not secular. For me, secularism is not something that
dissipates in un-secular times, it is not something that falls apart in
un-secular places. Whether you stand by me or not is irrelevant to my secular
self.
The history of my
secularism is not new; I was born secular. While growing up I developed into an
atheist and yet the deeper understanding of secular values was shaped by the
progressive culture of my Kashmiri Pandit family and the community that
nurtured the centuries-old tradition of free inquiry, critical thinking, and
deep meditation initiated by Buddhist monks, Shaiva philosophers, and Muslim
Sufis in Kashmir. The tradition of inclusiveness and pluralism that
Abhinavgupta, Lal Ded, Nund Reshi, Zain-ul-Abidin, and Abdul Ahad Azad scripted
and practiced may have been extirpated from a large section of Kashmiri society
26 years ago. But my grandparents and parents inherited the DNA of pluralism,
nourished it, saved it, and passed it on to me, most of the times without any
conscious effort.
Secularism, for them,
was not something that one wears on one’s sleeve when there is communal harmony
and conveniently removed in a communal attack. Neither my family nor the Pandit
(Hindu) community compromised over this principle even during the extreme
communal circumstances in Kashmir.
In 1990, when
Pakistan-sponsored, armed Islamo-fascists and Kashmiri Muslim separatists
violently targeted religious minorities and those who disagreed with their
separatist agenda in the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir, no one in my family
or the community retaliated. They did not even pick up a communal stone despite
provocations. The entire Kashmiri Pandit community, an ethnic minority of over
300,000 people, was driven out of Kashmir and yet they did not give up on
secularism. We became refugees in our own country and struggled through over a
decade of destitution. Still no one spoke of revengeful communal violence. My
secularism survived.
So those who hurl
innuendos and invectives on secularism do not bother me.
As the fourteenth century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded said,
As the fourteenth century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded said,
They may abuse me
or jeer at me,
They may say what pleases them,
They may with flowers worship me.
What profits them whatever they do?
I am indifferent to praise and blame.
They may say what pleases them,
They may with flowers worship me.
What profits them whatever they do?
I am indifferent to praise and blame.
See also
Kashmir Oral History
Mubashir Mir - Between Sanghi & Separatists: an alternate perspective from Kashmir
Mubashir Mir - Between Sanghi & Separatists: an alternate perspective from Kashmir
