Author: Pritish Nandy
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: February 8, 2001
Last week I wrote about the inaugural
address by the new American President George W Bush and how he referred
in it, again and again, to God, the Bible and Christian values.
He sounded almost like a scripture
teacher in one of our convent schools. The American media noticed it, even
commented upon it. But no one ever suggested that he sounded like a fundamentalist.
A good Christian, perhaps. But a fundamentalist, heavens no!
Now imagine if someone like Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee were to talk so much about Ram or Hindutva
in his inaugural address, or flaunt his Hindu education and background
the way Bush flaunted his Christian upbringing, can you think of the outrage
it would have provoked?
Everyone, including our media, would
have flayed him for stoking the fires of Hindu fundamentalism. As it is,
the world press keeps referring to the BJP-led NDA as spearheading Hindu
fundamentalism.
In other words, being a good Christian
is politically correct in free America but being a good Hindu is politically
incorrect in secular India. Why? Why is the American President not slandered
as a bigot when he speaks about God, the Bible and Christian values while
the Indian prime minister is called a Hindu zealot when he refers to Ram
or Hindutva?
After all, what are we looking for
in our leaders? Denial of religion? Atheism? Is atheism synonymous with
secularism? Or is secularism the ability to pursue your own faith with
conviction and respect the right of others to do the same?
We are back to semantics here and
this is the real difference between secularism as propagated by Mahatma
Gandhi and secularism as it has been practised by his political heirs led
by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Gandhi saw it as the co-existence
of all religions and urged everyone to follow his own faith with even greater
conviction while Nehru, a self-professed agnostic, saw it as the gradual
erosion of the role of religion in a modern society.
So, while Gandhi pleaded for more
faith, better understanding and a bigger role for religion in creating
a truly secular state, Nehru idolised the blossoming of the scientific
temper, which he believed would eventually diminish if not entirely wipe
out the role of religion in our political culture. It achieved precisely
the opposite.
But, before that, let me return
for a moment to President Bush. On Thursday, I sat with heads of state
and leaders from different parts of the world, as well as many of America's
most influential senators and Congressmen, listening to the new President
explain his vision for a new America at the 49th National Prayer Breakfast
in Washington DC. It was an amazing experience, made doubly impressive
by his touching faith in the power of religion to resolve social and political
conflict.
Bush was not in the least embarrassed
by his faith. In fact, he saw it as his strength. He saw it as the strength
of his nation. So he dropped all pretences, all hypocrisy and spoke out
openly for what he thought was the solution to most of America's problems,
as well as the world's. Faith. Religious faith. In his case, Christianity.
But, for others, whatever their faith is.
His argument was exactly what I
wrote: It is not religion that exacerbates conflict; it is the absence
of religion. When we stop being good Hindus or good Muslims or good Christians,
that is when we pick up weapons against each other to fight wars in the
name of religion.
All conflict is actually secular.
People may raise the banner of faith but they are actually covering up
the real reasons for the conflict which are sometimes political and, more
often, plain criminal.
The conference was a unique experience
and what impressed me most was political America's fierce commitment to
its faith. Of course Christianity was there, centrestage. But it was there
as a symbol of America's faith in all religions and their right to coexist.
There was Benazir Bhutto arguing
for her right to dissent. There was Roshanara Ershad, young son in tow,
demanding that her imprisoned husband be given a free and fair trial. There
were many heads of state. The president of Congo sitting right next to
the president of Rwanda. The president of Macedonia next to me.
On the other side were the prime
ministers of the Slovak Republic, Albania and Greenland. On the next table,
the presidents of Croatia and Serbia and the governor of the Cayman Islands.
My friend, the home minister of the Tibetan government in exile, and his
wife, the Dalai Lama's sister were on the adjoining table. It was a sangam
of all faiths. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists. They were
all there, praying for a better, stronger, more compassionate world.
As Benazir pointed out, there are
nations in South Asia where politicians are either in power or in prison.
As Roshanara Ershad lamented, it is a short distance from being a president's
wife to being a luckless refugee. Luckily we, in India, have a strong judiciary
that refuses to yield ground to over-ambitious political leaders. We have
a democracy that is stubborn, brave, uncompromising.
Maybe it is time to reject cant
and hypocrisy, shed this sham of political correctness. Let us, as a nation,
admit to ourselves that there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of when
we speak of our religion, our faith.
A good Hindu is no less than a good
Christian or a good Muslim and it is time we acknowledged this simple,
inescapable fact in a nation that has been the crucible of faith for centuries.
In this acknowledgement lies our
future. As Hindus, as Indians. As a nation on the move.
There is, there can be nothing endearing
about faithlessness.
