In his 1997 book Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Secularism & Fundamentalism in India, Triloki Nath Madan exposes the hollowness of the secularist premise. In a passage on page 276, he posits that secularism is a political strategy adopted by those minority groups which aim to subvert the culture and religion of the majority. Here’s an excerpt:
“Secularism is the dream of a minority which wants to shape the majority in its own image, which wants to impose its will upon history but lacks the power to do so under a democratically organized polity. In an open society the state will reflect the character of the society. Secularism therefore is a social myth which draws a cover over the failure of this minority to separate politics from religion in the society in which its members live… For the secularist minority to stigmatize the majority as primordiaily oriented and to preach secularism to the latter as the law of human existence is moral arrogance…”
In a secular order, the religious sensibilities of the majority gets suppressed but nothing is done to control the religious fundamentalism and militancy of the minority groups. This enables the minority groups to accumulate an inordinate amount of political power.
3 comments:
Part 1:
What Professor Emeritus Dr. T. N. Madan says:
> "Secularism is the dream of a minority which wants to shape the majority in its own image, which wants to impose its will upon history but lacks the power to do so under a democratically organized polity."
If democracy is taken as an unquestionable fundamental, then, given Professor Madan's country of birth, residence, and reference, this passage can be taken as a scientifically accurate characterization of his milieu and ethos. India has always been deeply mystical, and while mysticism is an issue in epistemology, not in metaphysics, an epistemological flaw still does break all the upper layers, including political philosophy. That is, after it first broken down the middle layer of ethics and morality.
Secularism is an ideal that helps protect individual rights; in particular from the priests (third-class Brahmins, in the Indian context).
> "In an open society the state will reflect the character of the society."
I can see why ANU might have found a more particular excuse to grant him the award of a PhD in a humanities field. The quote amply reverberates with "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite", doesn't it? The sprinkling of such statements gives the thesis an appearance of a scholarly work in the Aristotelian tradition, doesn't it?
> "Secularism therefore is a social myth which draws a cover over the failure of this minority to separate politics from religion in the society in which its members live..."
It wasn't regarded as a myth in the popular culture of the learned classes, either here in India or there in Australia, when ANU awarded him his PhD. But, yes, humanities could easily have been engaged in manufacturing such myths even back then, even in Australia.
As noted previously, secularism is an auxiliary principle for the defence of Individual Rights.
Secularism never prevents an individual from pursuing his non-state-related beliefs, e.g., those related to spirituality or religion. Pity that Madan did not discover this aspect of the principle before he wrote what you read and quote.
> "For the secularist minority to stigmatize the majority as primordiaily oriented and to preach secularism to the latter as the law of human existence is moral arrogance..."
Secularism never needs to be preached; only to be understood. But it's easy to understand. Even school children can get the idea. Majority of them. They understand that at the front wall of the College of Engineering Pune, which one day they aspire to attend, there should not be a "murti" of "gaNapati", or of Mother Mary, but they can always pray to "bappa morayaa" or Jesus Christ. They can pray, not just at home, but even while in the portal of the College, so long as they do it in the best possible realm to pray i.e. in their mind. (Even if Professor Anil Sahasrabudhe didn't "get" this principle, children do.) So, where is the stigma?
As to Madan's characterization of advocacy of secularism as moral "arrogance", I would say that he gets it more than half, but still misses the mark, and hence everything, through using a wrong concept. It's a fact that secularism ought to have the moral high ground, but given the fact that man has free will, secularists also must keep vigilance to keep it.
Part 2:
> "In a secular order, the religious sensibilities of the majority gets suppressed"
LOL! The *specific* premise here is this: the religious "sensibilities" of the majority needs state support. Since man is metaphysically individual, the same premise can also be extended to the most significant social minority i.e. the individual. So, everyone should get state support for uttering his prayers. You are doing great, Atanu, Anoop, et al., aren't you?
But more seriously: *That* is an out and out third-class Brahmin position. I don't know why you or Madan have not yet been elevated via some Pradhaan Mantri third-class Brahmin Elevation Yojanaa. (Someone should translate into Sanskrit the middle phrase.) After all, "peshwaaee" would have been very much happy to oblige, even, for that matter Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's kingdom. (Available records do indicate that Maharaj donated money inter alia to Parshuraam Temple in konkan (probably the one in/near chipluN), but while doing so, he apparently overlooked the fact that in the "parashuraam stotra", it explicitly says that all "kshatriya"s be annihilated (or something very explicit to that effect).
Coming back to the present post: I imagine that Madan should agree with the aforementioned proposal, and might be very eager to translate the middle phrase from English into that Sanskrit which is as close to Hindi as possible. I wouldn't doubt his competence in this regard, but would still check his translation all the same.
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May be my non-willingness to advocate such positions has been the root cause of my jobless-ness for 10+ years --- including in Atanu et al.'s San Francisco Bay Area and Rajesh Jain et al.'s Pune.
Enough.
Get better soon, Anoop, get better.
--Ajit
@Ajit: I am sure that you will agree with me that the secularism that has been imposed on India by Nehru and his leftwing followers has not worked. It has created severe distortions in Indian society.
We need to find out why Nehruvian secularism did not work. We don't have to keep following this secularism merely it sounds good to our modernist ears. If something is not working, then it must be rejected.
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