Essay on the Religious Minorities in a Secular State

In India, Hindustan is the declared religion of the majority of the population, and Muslims, Christian, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis are important religious minorities.

But by no means can it be said that the Hindus, who in terms of religious declaration, constitute the majority of the population are, even in terms of their beliefs and far less in terms of their secular aspects of culture, homogenous. Among the Hindus, even those who worship the same god (s) may do so- according to different modes and this belong to different sects. Further, They may belong to various orders headed by different teachers (gurus) and accordingly can be even more sub-divided.

To complicate matters more, even discrete religious and ethical/moral system like Jainism and Buddhism have been incorporated in the broad framework of Hinduism and a large number of Hindus (and even some Sikhs) believe that Sikhism is not a different religion but-only a sect within Hinduism. This creates a religious cultural complexity which is difficult to disentangle.

Nor is the situation among he Muslims simpler. Apart from the two major Islamic sects – Shias and Sunnis – which are both present in India in significant numbers, there are also sub-groups like Ahmadiyas. Bohras and is mails, and followers of various pirs (holy men) and Sufi fakirs (religious mendicants who established systems of devotion different from Islamic orthodoxy, marked the cultural confluence of Hinduism and Islam and became popular among both Hindus and Muslims).

The Sikhs too have or share of heterodoxy, the most prominent being the Nirankaris who are rejected (and even physically attacked) as non-Sikh by the orthodox but who have significant following among the masses. Although Sikhism has its origins in rejection of the caste system, it has its share of untouchables, known as Majhabis, Kabirpanthis, Ramadasias, etc. whose social and cultural position is so similar to the Hindu daltis that they are even governed by the special legislative provisions meant for Scheduled Caste in spite of not being Hindus.

On the other hand, similarly placed and even worse-off members of the Scheduled Caste who have got themselves converted to Buddhism are often deprived of protective discrimination, leading to Buddhists distancing themselves from Hinduism although the latter claims Buddha to be one of the incarnations of its God.

Among Christians, the broad divisions are of course, between the Catholics and Protestants but they are further sub-divided among different orthodoxies like Roman, Syrian and Greek, on the one side and various Episcopal orders or other groups like Baptists and Adventists on the other. Only the Parsis are relatively free of schism and heterodoxy. But their small numbers make them not only a minority but a miniscular community which is gradually dying out.

And yet, for lack of any other system of broad classification, it may be stated that the distribution of major religious groups is as follows: Hindus 82.63%; Muslims 11.36%; Christians 2.43% and Sikhs 1.96%.

The largest group among the religious minorities is that of Muslims. In spite of the fact that the proportion of Muslims in India has been significantly reduced on account of Partition of the country in 1947, the absolute numbers of Muslims in India is still so large that the Muslim population in India is the third highest in the world, after those of Indonesia and Bangladesh. It is ironical that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan which was carved out as a ‘homeland’ for Indian Muslims.

This historical, and political, irony is at the root of many of the problems of Muslims in India who are spread over almost the whole for the country and are unevenly distributed. Their largest concentrations are in miniscular (extremely small) Lacadive, Minicoy and Amindivi Islands; Jammu and Kashmir; Assam; West Bengal; Kerala; Utter Pradesh; and Bihar.

Thus, in one Union Territory, the Lacadive group of islands, and one state, Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims are not minorities but constitute the majority religious community.

There is little historical evidence of sustained communal hatred operating at the popular level prior to colonial rule. There were, of course, instances of rules of one community or the other imposing discriminatory measures against subjects belonging to faiths other than their own but, as often as not , these could be traced to ‘reasons of state’ rather than those of religion alone.

It is significant that at the popular level, the religious response to prevailing state of affairs, expressed through the Bhakti movement, Sufism etc., was in terms of amalgamation of faiths rather than fueling of mutual hatred.

The picture changed with the coming of the British, though in their case too the casual factors in promotion of a policy which resulted in dividing Hindus and Muslims were geared to reasons of state. Of course, the British design was furthered by short-sighted Indian politicians, the Indian social and economic elite and bigots among both communities.

As British rule neared its end, the communalization of Indian polity which it had indulged in, actively encouraged by self seeking and foolish Hindu and Muslim politicians, led to terrible communal carnages. The people and the country were divided even as British rule came to and end.

After Independence India tried to set up a secular polity, free from religious interference in temporal affairs and promoting ‘fraternity’, with equality under law.

However, ‘passion-politics’ was by no means eliminated. Hindu Chauvinism, led by the rastriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS) and its political organ , the Jan Sangha which in its current incarnation is known as the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP), made great strides in the Hindi heartland, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab and lately even in Kerala occasional foolish communalists. The situation changed qualitatively were grist to the mills of Hindu communalists. The situation changed qualitatively for the worse with the aggravation of the Babri Masjid – Ram Janmabhoomi dispute in the mid- 1980s, finally culminating the destruction of the mosque on Dec 6, 1992. It led to a situation of communal rioting and tension that existed during the partition days.

There are economic and other-tensions too in addition to those generated by the Masjid-Mandir dispute. In spite of declaration of secularism, neither the machinery of the state nor the economy at large showed an adequate proportion of employment of Muslims which, with an overall population of 10 to 12%, got a representation of merely 3.6 to 5.3% in the All India Services, 0.2 to 0.9% in other Central Services, and around five per cent in the country’s highest legislature.

In other bodies also the Chambers of Commerce and boards of directions of public and private sector companies, the Muslims have been highly underrepresented. Generally lagging behind Hindus in term of possessing economic assets and being able to take advantage of such educational facilities as exist, it is not likely in the near future that the non-elite Muslims will catch up with the elite belonging to other religious communities (or even the small Muslim elite) in India.

Proportionately, there are more Muslims among petty cultivators, artisans, agricultural and other laborers and the urban lower middle class. And there they suffer double discrimination by virtue of being both Muslim and Poor.

But the one most important way in which Muslims suffer are through communal riots. Regardless of which side starts the riot (this is often impossible to determine objectively), the Muslims are generally relative losers in terms of lives lost and property destroyed. And communal riots have, become a recurrent phenomenon of Indian life, occurring ever soften in different areas an occasioned by different reasons.

A major issue confronting Muslims in India is that of their personal laws. As yet no uniform civil code governing matters like marriage, divorce, adoption, guardianship of children, inheritance an succession, exists for all citizens of India in spite of the injunction to this effect in the Directive Principles of the Constituting (article 44), not has it been possible for legislation to be brought about on this aspect.

This is particularly so because Muslim orthodoxy, which has received encouragement by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in West Asia in recent years, ahs opposed any such measure. (It may be noted here that the legislation of a civil code for Hindus through the enactment of the Hindu code Bill and various other laws in the 1950s was similarly opposed by orthodox Hindus and could be carried only with difficulty).

A major controversy which arose in this regard is the Shah Bano Case, an instance for a Muslim woman considered eligible for receiving alimony under the general civil laws but subjected to discriminatory provisions under Muslim personal laws which were indeed retrogressively amended for this purpose by a purportedly secular government.

Interesting and important legal and moral questions arise out of this instance. Such political pragmatism, aided by legal sophistry, has kept this issue dangling and even the opinion of progressive Muslims demanding reform in the personal laws has been ignored “for reasons of State”.

Compared to the situation of Muslims in India, the issues conforming other religious minorities are of a different order altogether.

The parsees, many of whose small number are part of the Indian capitalist, cultural, scientific and other elite, are most concerned at present not because they face discrimination as a minority community but about the prospect of genetic extinction or socio-cultural absorption into the overwhelmingly large non-Parsee population.

The picture of the Indian Jews is markedly different. This group, which is mainly located on the Western coast of India and specially in Kerala, has dwindled to the point of not being noticed at all. Apart from dwindling numbers, this community too does not suffer from religious or communal discrimination to any noticeable extent.

Among small and distinct communities in India, the case of ‘ethnic’ Chinese is also not dissimilar. Apart from a period following India’s war with China in 1962 which led to restraints being placed on the community at large, the ‘ethnic’ Chinese continue to exist freely in India while maintaining their own customs and traditions. The economic forces, however, are affecting them too, making them change their traditional occupations.

In the case of the Anglo-Indians, not only economic but political factors too are important. Being Eurasian in terms of origin, they received relatively favored treatment during the British rule and the change of regime in 1947 marked a sharp deterioration in their conditions. As a remarkable and unique gesture, however, the Constitution of India contained special provisions for this microscopic group which considers itself as identifiably a racial, religious and linguistic minority.

The community is provided particular safeguards like two reserved, non elective seats in the Lower Hues of Parliament – a benevolently ignored anomaly in a democratic system – and similarly one or two seats on several state Assemblies.

A religious minority which was denied any such privileges comprises the Buddhists and, in particular, the group among them that are known as neo-Buddhists. At the time of Independence, Buddhism is India was generally confined to the relatively remote areas in the sub-Himalayan tribal tracts which were backward and poor. Their situation largely continued unchanged apart from benefiting forms such general developmental (and defence-oriented) efforts as have taken place in their areas.

On the other side are the new converts to Buddhism, mainly in Maharashtra and mainly from among the Scheduled Castes. By virtue of having renounced Hinduism however, until recently these neo-Buddhists have been deprived of whatever benefits they might have derived from belonging to Scheduled Castes, though curiously, the protective provisions in this regard are still available to Scheduled Caste converts to Sikhism. Among the religious minorities in India the Buddhists therefore, suffer from both religious and secular handicaps.

The Christians in India are such a heterogeneous group that it would be absurd to call them a community at all, consisting as they do of people as different from each other as Protestant tribals in north-eastern India to Syrian Catholic plantation owners in Karla.

The Christians themselves distinguish among their number between different groups depending on relative antiquity on conversion, e.g. those claiming descent from ancestors supposedly converted by St. Thomas the Apostle and the early Christians, mainly in South India; those converted by the Portuguese, mainly Roman Catholics in Goa; and later converts brought into the fold by missionaries of different Christian orders. Some relatively old Christian communities have the caste system with ‘Brahman’ and other Christians.

On the whole, except for the Christian Nagas, whose social self-identification is more as Nagas rather than as Christians, who for some time resisted integration into India, the Indian Christians are fairly well integrated into the social, economic and cultural structure. There are of course some outstanding issues which are occasionally voiced, the major problem the propagate religious and missionary activates.

One community in which secular and religious issues have got so finely mixed yup that an explosive confrontation has been reached is the Sikhs. To start with, it must be recorded that for many centuries there was no’ Hindu-Sikh’ problem. Indeed there was hardly any clear-cut divide between the two communities and there was free intermingling, even in religion between Hindus and Sikhs.

With the intensification of the national movement in Indian in the twentieth century, the population did begin to get divided politically but the division was more between Muslims on the one side and Hindus and Sikhs together on the other.

Very soon after independence however, some Sikhs started voicing discontent. For many years, the major cause of dissatisfaction was that their demand for a ‘Punjabi Suba’ was not being conceded. Indeed, the politics for the Alkali all virtually centered around this demand.

Such was the simmering discontent among the Sikhs and he level of their contained agitation of this account that in 1966, a fill ten years after most other states were reorganised on linguistic basis, that the government of India was forced to revise its earlier decision and divide Punjab more or less linguistically into Punjab and Haryana. The Sikhs just about became the majority community in Punjab and, for a while, it seemed the problem had been solved.

Such hopes did not seem to e totally unjustified. Altogether, as Punjab became more and more prosperous in both absolute terms and relative to other states of India, it dramatically reached the top of tables of per capita income and many other economic indices.

Politically too, with the eventual acceptance of the demand for a Punjabi speaking state and the coming into power of the most important segment of the Akali Dal, which, in the manner of most Indian Political parries went through the process of splitting, things seemed to be for the best.

However, another irritant was Chandigarh. After Punjab lost its capital city of Lahore to Pakistan at the time of petition, anew capital city, Chandigarh, designed by a French architect, Le Corbusier, was created for it but when Punjab was divided and Haryana came into existence, both states laid claim to its. Finally, in1969, three years after the creation of the reorganised states of Punjab and Haryana, it was announced that Chandigarh would eventually go to Punjab; Haryana would get instead the Hindu-majority, cotton-growing and prosperous districts of Abohar and Fazika and till Haryana built its own capital city, Chandigarh would continue to be the administrative headquarters for both states but would itself be by the Central Government as a union territory. Except in the last respect, on this messy solution to a messy problem was put off to an indefinite date in the future and, instead of solving anything, created another source of agitation.

Punjab also had other grievances relating to distribution of river waters with Haryana and Rajasthan.

In the climate of hatred which grew in Punjab, many facts were neglected and a specter of communal terror was created. It was not much noticed that both communities suffered in the process. At the same time, in the sanctuary of the Golden Temple itself, arms and ammunition were accumulated and ‘extremism became the order for the day.

Finally, on 3 June, 1984, the Indian army attacked the Golden temple and after a bloody battle, the shrine was ‘liberated’ from the ‘extremists’. This action of the Indian state traumatized large sections of the religious Sikh population and they were further divided from the Hindus, In October, 1984, the Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was assassinated and for several days after that Sikhs in different parts of the county were subjected to brutal murder, loot and pillage. No judicial inquiry was ordered for a time and even after it was finally instituted and submitted a report, practically no action was taken against the culprits.

Ina state, with numerous minorities it is the majority which just by its tolerance and understanding foster, a feeling of security among the minorities. Situations such as the post Ajodhya demolition phase, wherein the pan Indian Ram cult is being nurtured among the Hindus, is potentially dangerous to the secular state. This numerical majoritarianism reinforces the insecurities and leads to even more orthodoxy, rigidity and obscurantism among communities which conceive of themselves as minorities.