HVK Archives: Gujral calls for secularism to move into a less static sphere
Gujral calls for secularism to move into a less static sphere - The Economic Times
Nirmal Mitra
()
7 October 1996
Title : Gujarat calls for secularism to move into a less
static sphere
Author : Nirmal Mitra
Publication : The Economic Times
Date : October 7, 1996
Secularism should be an instrument of change and not
remain in a static condition like it has for the last 50
years of Independence, external affairs minister I K
Gujral said in New York on Saturday night.
Addressing a dinner gathering of leading members of the
Indian community in Manhattan, Mr Gujral said, "I won't
say that India is transforming, but that it is in the
process of transformation. Our difficulty, I think, is
that we had not looked at secularism as an instrument of
change."
Secularism should be a means to the inculcation of a
scientific temper and not as an objective in itself, Mr
Gujral said.
He explained: "We have looked at (secularism) as a static
condition. And a static society has no scope of pro-
gress. If we had embarked in the beginning upon a pro-
gramme of inculcation of scientific temper, Indian socie-
ty would have been different today."
He told the gathering, organised by the Federation of
Secular India, USA, an organisation of Indian profession-
als committed to countering communalism and religious
propaganda in the Indian community: "We need to create an
atmosphere in India which is secular in the right sense
of the word."
"We are not atheist or anti-God but deeply religious, but
not obscurantist. Wherever you can educate people on
these lines, you can contribute to the creation of a
secular society," Mr Gujral said.
Also present at the gathering were India's Ambassador to
the US Naresh Chandra and India's Permanent Representa-
tive to the UN Prakash Shah.
Mr Gujral also praised the Indian community in the US for
its efforts to counter what he called the negative images
of India projected in the Western media and said, "In
this country of lobbies, we can have no better lobby than
one million Indian Americans to provide the true picture
of India."
He said that in a diverse society such as India, "There
is no other method to follow except secularism. In a
way, we are a privileged society. We speak several
languages. We have different ways of life. In these
conditions, to try to run the country as one nation state
cannot be a simple task. Therefore, the only way that
our founding fathers thought of was not based on religion
but on secularism."
Secularism, he said, has different meanings in different
countries. "But our concept of it is this - although we
have several religions and beliefs, the state should not
get involved in matters of religion."
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