To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defense against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.
– John Stuart Mill
Liberty has been intrinsically linked to the maturing of human civilizations by incorporating the demands and ideas of a single race, evolved into multicultural identities. The freedom of an individual to think for himself about the world around him and translate them into a language he best conceives has enabled the individual to unwrap the mysteries of nature and use them for his evolution. Democracy was one of the earliest instruments designed to handle the diversity of opinions and opprobrium that arose in a culturally-rooted society with the growth of critical thinking. As the contradictions started to grow when the world which was becoming bigger through ideas evolving into cultural identities reached its limits and started to contact each other, there arose the need for more instruments to create a syncretic culture representing the interests of everyone. Secularism arrived on the stage to spin such a syncretic web between different beliefs, myths, and practices to enable a dignified living for every individual which meant, every person had the right to follow and profess his own way of life. Thus, securing a way of life for every individual became the most important work for human civilization to continue effervescently as ever. But this conception of Secularism from the West faced a huge conflict when its way of life tried to enter the realm of another society following another way of life. The culturally-rooted society which had managed to build an arrangement to hold the divergent opinions within itself was at pains to manage the entry of an entirely different set of ideas that were questioning it from outside. This led to the most intense power struggle of the modern era between the extant beliefs of a society and the ideas which other individuals bring to it through the medium of globalization.
In this paper, I try to locate secularism within the concept of democracy built on individual liberty and it’s contradiction with nationalism springing from culturally rooted identities in countries like India and Turkey where Liberty and Secularism did not Christine originally. The close relationship of colonialism and the emergence of secularism in countries like India and Turkey is important for understanding the emergence of nationalism and its concomitant authoritarianism in these societies. When we tend to define secularism from the lens of nationalism then we identify many cultural beliefs and traditions of the majority religion as the normative. This creates alienation amongst other religious belief people whose culture and tradition are neglected and made to accept the tradition of the majority religion as theirs. This fails to deliver equality to citizens of a multi-diverse nation and robs of their liberty to control their lives. This paper would try to delineate the importance of liberty to secularism, and the need to ward off nationalistic tendencies for a healthy fraternal society.
The British Social reformer, George Jacob Holyoake defined secularism as an approach to “reject received wisdom and authoritarian politics and instead to examine all claims in the light of reason and science and with an eye to human progress”. This was a culmination of the progressive ideas which started to emerge with enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Mill who stressed individual liberty as the prime mover of a commonwealth. Separation of religious institutions from the civil administration and the freedom to convert became emblematic of an industrialized western nation. This enunciation of separation between churches and governments waylaid the assurance of equality of citizenship to people of different beliefs coming into the nation with the onset of colonialization and industrialization. When the European powers started to colonize new lands for raw materials and markets, it became imperative for the mercantile traders and colonial administrators to develop toleration as the principal attribute of the Christian religion. It paved the way for advancing a civil administration that consists of individuals laboring for their own ‘civil interests’. Thus, intermixed with their merchandise objective was a civilizational goal to spread their ideas- that was required to harbor a friendly population for bigger markets and to assert their intellectual superiority. As Thomas Babington Macaulay asserted, “[the] empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws”. The Empire propagated its ideas about individual liberty and freedom of religion as the centerpiece of human dignity. Communities that had not undergone industrialization and its resultant enlightenment still had a closely knitted cultural identity and were intransigent and apprehensive about this exhibition of fervor towards liberty and plurality. From this fear arose a penchant desire amongst nationals of countries like India and Turkey to pitch nationalism rooted in the pre-colonial and pre-industrialization intervention as the natural national identity.
Later leaders of a nascent democracy in Turkey and India, belonging to all shades used nationalism stitched with secularism as a means to consolidate the democracy and their authority over people. Did the secularism coalesced with nationalism represent the aspirations of the independent citizens? Or did this way of dictating secularism narrow down the liberty of individuals and increased the tendencies of authoritarianism?
Historically speaking these became essential in a developing country without material and institutional structures to effect a stable and consistent social change modeled on the developed western nations. As Kothari argues, “the non- western societies have taken over the ideological urges and social aspirations of western societies without either the time the latter had to deal with primary issues of legitimacy or the economic and intellectual resources built”. So, this dilemma of incorporating a long tradition and historical culture to the western idea of plurality generated an idea of secularism on authority.
Ismet Inonu, the First Prime Minister of Ataturk’s democratic Turkey and his successor speaking in 1925 said, “We are openly Nationalist. Nationalism is the only cause that keeps us together… We shall, at any price, turkicize those who live in our country”. Turkey under Kemal Ataturk abolished the Caliphate and publicly announced secularism (laicite) as one of the building blocks of its nation-state. “We must constantly remind ourselves that whatever our religion or creed, we are all one people… Citizenship consists in the service of the country,” the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru while addressing his citizens. The common strand connecting the words of these two leaders was that it was made after their respective nations were created and both linked secularism to nationalism. Though in the case of Turkey, authoritarianism was pervasive yet both the countries used unity of the country as the architect of the secular structure. This created a new concept of secularism in both the countries where the state was not separated from the religious institution but had the power to regulate their affairs. According to Locke another, “all the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing,” but now these states decided to regulate expression of this inwardly persuasion like beliefs, festivals, and personal laws. All the while pledging for separating religion from the state on a plank of nationalism, the state was entwined with the religious beliefs of the society. As Sumantra Bose argues, “the actual Kemalist paradigm of secularism did not separate religion from the state, but rather entangled the state deeply and irretrievably with religion as a regulating and controlling authority…[it] is very similar to the paradigm of the Indian secular state”.
This created a state that dictated to a large extent what was to be a secular, transgressing the liberty of an individual and creating a movement with strong antipathy towards this kind of secularism. Individuals who were generally tolerant towards other religious beliefs started to buy the supremacist version of their religion of a secular state appeasing minorities and trampling on their cultural identity. No wonder, both Turkey and India are currently undergoing a phase where religious identities are coming to the forefront with a strong appeal to rigidity and stereotype surrounding its belief. The secular establishment in these countries squandered the opportunity in their early stages of the republic to build a truly secular state assimilating the multi-diverse beliefs through the liberty of an individual. Instead by dictating an idea of secularism built on national unity has led to the formation of a radical form of nationalism which has been on the rise since the 2000s in both these countries that is introducing religion into political life. This has curtailed the religious freedom of the minorities and has created a cult of the state which relies on authoritarian policies to press its point.
The implementation of the Hindu Code Bill by the Indian state in the 1950s is a vivid example of how state-sponsored secularism ultimately leads to a deep suspicion towards secular principles and foments a rising expectation of safeguarding one’s religious identity. The compulsory unification of thought and culture through state-sponsored secularism bound to nationalism impelled a counter-revolution that systematically asserted religious identities in social and political spaces. Nationalism coupled with secularism over the years has marginalized the individual liberties and the political involvement of religious minorities.
It is this legacy of deeply embedded secularism based on coercion that the new Islamic ruling elite in Turkey and the Hindu Supremacist group in India of the 21st century have taken over and molded to its preference. Thus, both these countries’ dilemma with secularism and its travails in the present times are deeply rooted in its foundation and close relation with the western ideas. Turkey and India were never a truly secular state nor will they be till they repudiate the brand of secularism straitjacketed to nationalism that curtails the liberty of individuals. There needs to be a reinvention of what secularism is in those countries which did not undergo changes as the western societies did, “drawing on a Hindu perspective of religion as an individual matter, as Gandhi said:”
“I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair … The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency, and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern.”
Bibliography
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- Kothari, Rajni. 2012. Politics in India. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.
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- Mill, John Stuart., and Jean Bethke. Elshtain. 2003. On Liberty. Rethinking On Liberty / with Essays by Jean Bethke Elshtain … New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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