India Antisocial

I am an atheist. So if I were extol the virtues of religion that I was born into, as being liberal enough

to allow me to disown it (and disown the very concept of religion and god), it would be blasphemy of sorts - how can I praise religion, when I don’t acknowledge it? Religion to me is purely man-made. And there’s no two ways about it (my conviction). And if any of you readers wants to disagree with me, I won’t give you the pleasure of engaging me into that debate. I will just agree to disagree.

The word ‘secular’ (meaning: irreligious), to that extent should be something that I believe in or at least identify with. Sadly not. I abhor it. And while I believe that, as a non-English speaking nation, India has done exceedingly well in equipping itself with the language, it has got the meaning of the word secular absolutely wrong. This, in spite of giving the word a sacred place in the preamble of its constitution. Or maybe, because of it.     

For if India were to be truly secular, it should never engage with or involve any religion, in the matters of state policy. But because one of the biggest banes of Indian polity is oft-encouraged and unabashedly practiced encroachment of vote bank-politics into constitutionally-defined democratic process, sadly that is not the case. Politicians and state (by the virtue of being the sanctioned executive tool in the hands of elected politicians) have proactively involved themselves in the matters of religion. And when that happens, the biggest causality is the concept of fairness. In the garb of being righteous, we have steadfastly undermined one religion more than others. The reason? The practitioners of that religion happen to be in the majority. By practicing this congress (and probably the left front) brand of secularism, as a nation we have steadily moved away from the concept of secularism in its true sense to that of ‘minority-appeasement’ and/or ‘anything-majoritarian-bashing’.

While the society and its institutions are not bound by any such constitutional mandate, and are free to practice and show their allegiance to any religion of their choice, this twisted notion of secularism has become so pervasive that the whole ideology now seems to be lost on us. To our credit, as a society we do practice secularism, but it is our collective failure when we choose to do so only selectively.  

Coming to the point (a long-winding and predominantly-academic-in-its-tone argument is never an ideal way to do that), last week a popular pub in Mumbai (Goregaon Social) and its owners came

under  attack over the use of Christianity-related motifs in its interiors. In what seemed like a highly-warranted and unprecedented collective damage-control, not only were the interiors swiftly removed, but the owners were made to apologise and criminal offence case was initiated against them. Surprisingly, not an iota of opposition was raised by the sentinels of secularism. No intolerance banners came up, no prime-time discussions happened, no placards were waved, no black armbands tied and no awards were returned. Why was the secular society too eager to apologise? What if the matter pertained to the majority religion?  

I don’t know what the offending material was, and frankly I don’t care. Because, for a country so obsessed with religion, there can be as many definitions of blasphemy as there are number of people residing in it – to each his own thing that offends! But I am absolutely clear on one thing – secularism in this country is a sham, and I refuse to be one of its proponents. I am far better off displaying my unmistakable preference when it comes to religion. And I choose atheism.