The Cycle of Secularism and Religious Radicalism
Peter Nasuti Monday, 5 December 2005
In the past century, a debate has arisen over the nature of secularism. Most people, aware of the dangers of theocracy, support a form of separation between religion and the state. However, this leaves unclear the issue of whether a secular nation should merely refuse to impose any one religious tradition, or whether it should go further and ban all religious expression from the public sphere. One of the arguments defendants of the latter position often make is that a fully secular society will prevent the rise of religious radicalism. Looking at the history of India in the past half-century, the Indian scholar Ashis Nandy comes to the opposite conclusion. Not only does ‘hard' secularism fail to stop the spread of extremism, but it can alienate believers and thereby lead them to embrace fanaticism in reaction.
For Nandy, the introduction of secularism is connected to the modernization process. The creation of a nation-state, the decline of village life and correlated growth of cities, and the change in elite leadership presents challenges that established beliefs are unable to answer. The promotion of a secular ideology which grounds society in purely humanistic values puts forward an identity not rooted in tradition and folk culture. At least on paper, it provides equal opportunities to all members of the new community. In India, such principles were introduced during British rule and found its apogee in the figure of Jawaharal Nehru. His practice of secular socialism was designed to create an India undivided by religion or ethnicity that could become a respected member of the international community.
This idea of secularism, however, presents a contradiction. One the one hand, it tends to be more accessible to elites than the masses. The model for leaders becomes identified with people who, through education and experience, have risen above the perceived ignorance of tradition and its attendant ethnic and caste groupings. Members of the urban upper class are more likely to be able to attain these ideals. At the same time, secularism insists on the equality of mankind. For this reason, it supports institutions such as democracy that provide more opportunities for non-elites to represent themselves politically. These sectors of the population may feel that the secular elites do not understand or respect their concerns. Their self-interest therefore becomes connected with the promotion of alternate identities.
As a result, leaders of mass movements can obtain more power through exaggerating the very traits the secularists oppose. The religious zealot represents a dramatic contrast to the secular order. For ordinary people who feel alienated by the elitism of the secularists, the resistance of the extremists provides an appeal that it might not otherwise possess. In this situation, the secularists often respond by pushing for their own identity more strongly, cracking down on public religious expression as a whole. This inadvertently invites an even stronger counter-attack. Such a process can easily spiral out of control.
This sequence of events indeed took place in India. Even as leaders such as Nehru and Indira Gandhi promoted a secular Indian identity, they failed to address the identity issues arising from the trauma of partition and the attendant religious polarization. These discontents grew after Nehru's death, as his successors passed measures designed to protect their hold on power while modernization put pressure on traditional Indian culture. Hindu extremist groups such as the RSS, which had only emerged in the twentieth century, attempted to fill the ideological void, and their radical form of Hinduism grew in popularity. This contributed to numerous riots in the 1980s and 1990s, in which Hindu nationalists targeted minority religious groups.
In 1998, the BJP, an associated political party promoting Hindu nationalist ideals, managed to come to power. Its platform included measures designed to satisfy expressly Hindu sentiments, such as a ban on cow slaughter, a prohibition on Christian and Muslim conversions of Hindus, and the termination of the autonomous status for the predominantly Muslim province of Kashmir. Although the BJP lost power in the last national Indian election in 2004, the party remains a major factor in Indian politics. In this way, the refusal of strongly secular leaders to take religious issues into account helped to fuel a cycle of alienation that resulted in an even stronger threat to the secularist ideal.
Although strict secularism did not cause the fall of the post-Nehru politicians, to a large degree it influenced the nature of the opposition. It allowed BJP leaders to argue that the substitution of Western political ideology over authentic Hindu beliefs had led to the moral corruption of the ruling classes. This mixture of nationalist and radical religious rhetoric resonated with large sectors of the population. It also led the BJP and associated movements to exaggerate their Hindu characteristics in order to differentiate themselves. As a result, the Hindu nationalists ended up practicing a form of the faith that did not correspond to any former practice.
Nandy states that this situation occurred because, in its practice, strict secularism itself had taken on the characteristics of a faith. Because of its theory that the eradication of religious divisions would contribute to a stronger Indian government, it felt legitimate in demanding that Indian citizens marginalize their religious beliefs for the unity of the state. It did not anticipate that this would provoke a strongly antagonistic reaction to those unwilling to forego their religious worldview. For this reason, the secular state acted in the unquestioning and self-assured manner that religious groups have often been accused of practicing.
As a contrast to both the incompleteness of a purely rationalist society and the reactionary tendencies of religious radicalism, Nandy calls for a ‘softer' form of secularism, one that fosters inter-religious understanding through providing a space for different beliefs to interact with each other. It therefore prevents the government from favoring any one religious tradition, while also granting all faiths the right to freely practice in both the public and private spheres. This alternative recognizes that no one belief system is completely self-evident, and it therefore allows each equal treatment in advocating for its vision for society.
Nandy points out that the greatest practitioners of this form of secularism were themselves motivated by religious concerns. The view of human dignity present in both the Buddhist faith of the ancient Indian emperor Ashoka and the Islamic practice of the Mughal ruler Akbar led them to pass measures designed to protect minority beliefs. Perhaps the most prominent advocate of this approach, however, was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi warned against the partition of India on religious lines due to the possibility of increased religious extremism, and he considered the possibility of a state run by Hindu or Muslim radicals a disaster. At the same time, he saw faith and politics as intimately connected. For him, the political sphere existed in order to create a just society which would foster instead of obstruct the individual's path to God. His opposition to authoritarianism did not come from a pluralist understanding of the relativity of values, but rather his worry that the uninhibited use of power would tempt leaders to blind themselves to their own failings and ignore the criticisms of others.
Nandy's thesis is relevant for the struggle against religious radicalism in the present day. For example, France has reacted to the rise of Islamic immigration by asserting its secular heritage even more strongly. Through measures such as the outlawing of conspicuous religious attire in schools, directed at Muslim headscarves, it hopes to prevent the spread of extremist attitudes. In accordance with the framework presented above, however, such actions may have the paradoxical effect of causing a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. In a situation where racism and poverty creates a Muslim underclass, the banning by elites of traditional forms of religious practice may result in the adoption of extremist attitudes among minorities as a form of protest. This in turn can keep religious prejudices alive, until eventually the underclass destructively expresses its desperation in a form such as the recent French riots.
Instead of the promotion of ‘hard' secular ideals, the state should instead take the ‘soft' secular approach of protecting and enforcing the equal rights of all belief traditions. As long as public order is not directly threatened, immigrants and minority faiths should be able to voice their concerns and practice their religion without government censorship. In addition, the fight against unjust discrimination from the majority group should become a strong priority. At the same time, the state should ensure that critics of these beliefs can also present their position without having to fear for their safety or well-being. This ‘soft' secular approach is found in the American constitution, under the protection of which once-minority religions such as Catholicism and Judaism have gradually become accepted as part of the American mainstream. In such a way, it emphasizes the importance of having different groups move towards an equilibrium more reflective of a deeper truth.