Secular or Sickular what the Modern Society needs?

Secular or Secularism is the term was grossly misunderstood by me. Hah!


The word to which I got familiar with during my early childhood but did not pay much attention to understand it. Initially mistook it for yet another religion as I was Hindu by birth and culture, so believed someone has to belong to one religion or the other.


Saw a few secularists moving here and there and found they got upset being called as Hindu although born in illustrious Hindu families.


I sometimes wondered what they must be doing during Durga Puja when we joyously celebrated from Chandipath (reciting verses from holy books) early in the morning of Mahalaya (New moon day being day before the onset of Navaratri), till the Durga Idol is immersed in river on the 10th Day called Vijaya Dashami or Dusserra. During the intervening days, schedules were, getting up early in the morning, after taking bath and afresh with purity and going with my father to Puja Pandels to offer flowers (Anjali) to the Goddess of Energy and strength, these were great rituals enjoyed to the innermost core. My Father used to recite Chandi Slokas and my three sisters used to sing devotional songs of Maa Durga or Mahisasura Mardini. I used to hover around with no one taking notice of me. But new clothes, new environment, cultural functions in the evening immediately after evening Aarti or offering of light to the Goddess Durga, used to be an absolute heart purifying and divine activity.

Question never cropped up in mind why do we worship female Goddess?


The “Sandhi Puja” or offering light lamps in the wee hours of the morning on the eighth day used to fill my heart with serenity, tranquility and peace.


At times, one of my sister being busy in exams or sick will never go anywhere near the Temple or Deity. But never found anybody compelling her to do anything against her wishes, just because it was our biggest festival of the year. My mother never persuaded her or uttered, “go out there or you will incur sin.” Nevertheless, it used to extraordinarily activate complete surrender of self to the Almighty or the Supreme or The creator of self and the surroundings, to the extent I can perceive, no limit though that I could comprehend! It used to be a complete spiritual contentment now that I realize.


Now coming back to Secular word it caught my imagination during the Lok Sabha (Upper House) Elections of 2014, thereon I found some Twiteratti calling Secular as ‘Sickulars’ and I was not in a position to comprehend the new satire terminology until I started delving into it in great detail.


To my utter dismay I found it not to be yet another religion per se’!


During my research for the word Secular I found that during the evolution of modern civilization, the issue was that the people were not able to comprehend many natural phenomena starting with whether Sun rotates around the earth or vice-versa, therefore to initiate the human understanding of the events in cosmos relevant to their lives: religion came first to offer guidance. This lead to the framing up of various laws governing human behavior based on religion and thereafter science prospered. With the advent of science gradually day by day many happenings around us began to be derived at by scientific and logical conclusions. Not that as on date we have answers to all our inquisitive pursuits but certainly the gap is narrowing down.


In the meanwhile, Religion started to dominate the human lives and with the formation of various groups in various parts of the world and due to difficulty in communication amongst themselves, various religious sects were formed at different places of the World. Society was formed in clusters far away from each other. With the improvement of the communication and mobility of the masses, various religious groups started to live together due to utter necessity of living and offering services of various kinds required to conduct day to day lives and thus at times produced conflicts of culture and ideas due to this congressional action. Religion now started to interfere in governance of a society. Thus it became a requirement to detach religion from governance and control.


Secularism is the word first coined by British writer George Jacob Holyoake in 1851. Who wished to offer alternative to religious governance by introducing this neutral word, which basically sought Administrative activities free from the control of the Church or of the Christian religious heads or clergies. The roles of Priests are although formidable in growth of society as they are the ones who initiated the control the mass behavior and contributed to law & justice domain to begin with! Advocates gown arrives in the professional attire due to this very fact.


Therefore, in an effort to modernize society and making it free from bias and prejudices and allowing it to follow rule of law, a neutral Secular term as offered to the administrators of modern society. Here the state will not have any declared religion of its own and shall be impartial and allow at the same time practice of any religion as a matter of individual choice and shall not prefer one religion over the other.


Now in a social set up, any idea is subject to manipulation and misrepresentation and that is what exactly has happened to our mother India. Now, politicians whose duty was to prevent misuse started to abuse the term Secular for their own benefit and presented it in the manner beneficial to them. The greatest of the miscommunication took place during Independence of India. It went on to the extreme extent that India was partitioned or divided on religious lines. Thus it gave birth to two nations India and Pakistan. Where partition of India was illogical as two separate, geographically disconnected territories were made part of one country, it also unequally divided the Indus valley Civilisation and its heritage into two. Pakistan got further divided and gave rise to Bangladesh in 1971. Bangladesh was formed due to difference in culture and language to such a great extent with the dominant west Pakistani rulers, that mix and match were found difficult. Therefore, the idea of Partition of India has proven it to be flawed with time.


As of now both Pakistan and Bangladesh are Islamic states and India remains a secular country in its intent to be progressive and not a Hindu state in spite of Hindus being in majority: meaning the Indian state shall not adopt any religion as its own and in order to provide equality to all citizens as enshrined in our constitution vide Article 14, there shall be equal treatment to all the various religious and cultural groups that wish to make India its own motherland.

However, Indians shall be allowed to exercise freely their own religious faith without any obstruction from the state machinery. Further democratic India shall help and allow propagation and conservation by individual groups of their own religious culture, traditions and identity vide Article 25 to 30 of the Constitution of India. This is very fair proposition but the politicians began to present the vastly ignorant populace of the nation in their own way and net result is that the Secularism word started to be perceived as means of giving preference to the religious minorities and even by depriving the majority Hindu community. Mr Lal Krishna Advani the then Dy Prime Minister of India in late nineties coined the word Pseudo Secularism, by which he meant that India is not following the philosophy of Secularism in true sense of the word and spirit.


Fundamentals of Secularism as enshrined in the constitution by our founding fathers as our basic structure is violated quite frequently in India. Chief Minister of West Bengal goes on to provide social security allowances to Imams of Masjid leaving aside saints, seers and priests, archbishops of all other religious communities in despair; provides cycles to poor Muslim girls leaving aside all other poor girls anguished. This is gross violations of Article 14 or equality.


Whereas majority of the Hindu temples are under the control of the Government, but Masjids are under self controlled Wakf Board. Every day early in the morning Supreme Court order on use of Loud speakers of 2005 is violated by breaking silence in the silence zone from 10PM to 6AM and tolerant India don’t protest against it but bear it. This reaffirms the words of Swami Vivekananda uttered in 1893 at Chicago: “I'm Proud to belong to a Religion (Sanathan Dharma) which has taught the world TOLERANCE & Universal Acceptance..!!“


There is subsidy for Haj travel but there is service tax on Amarnath Yatra. There are supposed to be no caste system in Christianity but Scheduled tribes of North East India gets all the benefits applicable for Scheduled caste and Scheduled tribes in spite of being from religious community other than Hindu. In fact the Constitutional purpose was to eradicate untouchability, caste system, downtrodden and discrimination which existed only amongst Hindus, all other religious communities claimed no caste system in their parlance. Refugees from West Pakistan (mostly Hindus and Sikhs) who crossed over to J&K after 1944 but before 1954 were denied Permanent Resident Certificates as of today. They cannot apply for jobs and their children can’t get higher education in the State of J&K. On the other hand Adnan Sami subject of Pakistani origin is given Indian Citizenship for contribution in the field of art and culture. So discrimination and disparity, one of the aggravated forms exist, even now.


Now, finally in the modern era where the society is no longer agriculture based but industrialized, mobility of persons from one corner of the world to the other is inevitable due to various skills sets that fetch the living and wanting exchange of ideas in greater degree: immigration and Globalization is order of the day. The society is gradually drifting from religious basis to skill or knowledge or domain expertise or core competency basis; there is urgent need all over the world to have a uniform order based on scientific temper and modernity. It is now difficult even to keep one family in one continent forget about keeping them confined to one village or one city.


With the advent of internet, modern communication, modern mobility equipment like Aircraft and Supersonic Jets there may be a World Global village and unification of the World order is due. Say for example, in olden days the Childbirth was a matter of chance and God’s will but today it can be controlled, even to the extreme extent of illegally identifying the gender of the foetus and exercising options.


World order is changing in a rapid pace, weather can now be predicted with much more accuracy than ever before, environment thus need to be sustainably protected for healthy survival of all the living beings, and our beautiful world can also be destroyed in less than a second by click of a nuclear button!


Hence, it becomes all the more important to understand the need for peaceful cohabitation or coexistence, secular, multicultural, multilingual society, which shuns religious fundamentalism, terrorism and bring about a vibrant, ever changing, dynamic and modern civil society.


Finally, to make this earth a better place to live what we need is not "Sickular" or Sick by any means but "Healthy" is the order of the day.


#JaiHind