Justice Sunip Ranjan Sen’s judgment delivered before the Meghalaya High Court and reported in the press on 13 September was straightforward. Specifically that India should have been declared a Hindu country on the attainment of Independence. For example, until the 1789 Revolution, France had three houses of the National Assembly, one comprising Abbots and Bishops. To go secular, the country had to abolish this third house. Caesar’s (ruler’s) should be given to him and what is God’s should be His. In other words, the 16th century Reformation, which became the springboard of secularism or the separation of the Church from the State, was, in a way, sanctioned by the Bible. It was therefore not difficult to ease out the clergy from the running of government. On the other hand, in an Islamic State, the sovereignty belongs to Allah and not the people. Whatever sweet secular things Jinnah might have said on 11 August 1947 to the Constituent Assembly, the first Constitution of Pakistan attributes sovereignty to Allah.
If we for a few moments keep aside what Macaulay or English education taught us, and consider what the Hindu thinkers thought of their state. The rajya or state comprised the monarch whose minimal duties were three-fold.
He had to defend the borders of the kingdom’s territory, to protect the lives and property of his subjects and to appoint a competent yuvaraj or successor, not necessarily his son. King Bharat, the forefather of the Kurus, had seven sons but he overlooked all of them for not being sufficiently competent. And he anointed Bhumanyu who justified his choice. If the monarch wished to go beyond these three duties, it was at his discretion.
The Vedic ethos was current at the time and the elite followed the Sanatan dharma or the eternal faith whose cornerstone was karma leading to bhagya which was the factor of cause and effect. There was no concept of religion and its hierarchies as for example in Christianity. When Lord Mahavira projected his philosophy called Jainism, it caused no problem. It so happened that when Emperor Chandragupta Maurya decided to retire, he became a Jain sadhu and spent the rest of his life around Shravanbelagola ~ today’s Karnataka. There was tolerance of this another viewpoint of how to lead life.
Emperor Ashoka’s espousal of Buddhism as his faith and its wherewithal of an organised religion, tensions did begin. Especially so, when he took a lead in preaching Buddhism; for example, he sent his daughter Sanghamitra and his son Mahendra to Sri Lanka. They and their order converted a large section of the people to Buddhism, people who are now known as Sinhalas. Ashoka sent his missions to many a place including Tibet and Asian lands east of India.
A monarch turning a proselytizer was against the Hindu way and evoked resistance. The one great saint who led the opposition was Adi Shankaracharya in the eight century and proselytisation. In European terms this was the first clash between Hinduism or Indic toleration. India of those times could not digest a mix-up of governance and preaching a religion.
When Islam first came to India, it was confined to Sindh where Muhammad-bin-Qasim won some territory, built a few mosques and converted some people. Nevertheless, it seemed like an episode in isolation, especially in those days when communications were scanty. Mahmud of Ghazni, three centuries later, appeared like the adventures of a marauder… brutal, if not also barbaric. He did butcher people, pujaris and destroyed temples, but his thrust appeared to be that of a powerful robber.
An ongoing trauma settled on the Hindus on the morrow of Muhammad Ghori’s conquest of Delhi and his appointment of Qutb-ud-din Aibak to rule from Delhi. With the government authority in the grip of the sultanate, the Hindus, unaccustomed to such brutality, failed to produce an answer. Yes, Maharana Pratap did defend Mewar successfully while Chhatrapati Shivaji demonstrated how Hindus could avenge some of their defeats. As Maharajah Ranjit Singh taught stern lessons to the invaders. But these were three oases in a desert of some 551 years. Even this long desert was interrupted by the East India Company and Robert Clive at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 whereafter Bengal, Bihar and Odisha fell to the British. Hindus had the vicarious satisfaction of the Muslim ruling class tumbling from their thrones and sitting on the same floor. However, it was not a Muslim defeat at Hindu hands.
There was a philosophical block which came in the way of the Hindu being necessarily a ready killer and fighter. He grows up believing that his salvation lies in his self-actualisation through his personal karma. Whereas his Muslim counterpart grows up watching animals’ throats being cut as the kalima is read to make his meat halal or permissible. Moreover, as a man he is made to believe that his salvation lies in his serving his society and ideally through getting killed in a jihad for the sake of his society. A shaheed or such a martyr goes immediately to heaven without waiting years for qayamat or doomsday. The Hindu, on the other hand, is told that all living beings are members of his family. So when he kills, he is participating in a homicide of his relative, however distant.
In his book, Thoughts on Pakistan, published in 1941, Dr. BR Ambedkar endorses M.A. Jinnah’s proposal for Partition of undivided India. His main argument was that it is better to have the enemy outside one’s borders than inside. Without being more explicit it was obvious that the two cultures were not naturally congenial and both would be better of living in separate countries. Jinnah and seven of his leading Muslim League colleagues had wanted an exchange of populations. They desired Muslims to gather in Pakistan by migrating when necessary. Similarly, non-Muslims should vacate the territory of Pakistan.
As distinct from Europe and America, the East has no native concept of the ‘secular’. Whether Arabic, Persian or Urdu, there is no synonym for the word ‘secular’. Islam is an all-embracing prescription for life, whether individual or collective, social or political, religious or otherwise. The question of separating any of them does not arise. In contrast, Christianity provided in the Bible itself that Hinduism has no need of separating anything from the State. It has no concept of the secular. For the simple reason that the Hindu State has never had anything to do with the priest or worship or temple.
One synonym for Hinduism is toleration and another would, in the current context, be secularism. In fact, until Prime Minister Indira Gandhi thrust it in the 1975 Emergency, there was no mention of secularism in our Constitution. The crux of what Justice Sen has asked for is a Hindu, and therefore a tolerant State.
(The writer is an author, thinker and a former Member of Parliament)