Minority report

Author: Jug Suraiya
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 7, 2003
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?msid=169681

The ASI findings have cast new light - or should it be new dark? - on an enigma even more abiding than that of the mandir. Namely, who or what exactly is secularism? A separation of state and religion? Fine. But what else?
 
As a self-professed member of that tribe, I'd always thought that a secularist was one who believed in equality before the law for all, irrespective of creed, caste or other qualifying condition, including gender. For a secularist, it didn't matter a fig what you felt privately about Buddhists, Muslims, Holy Rollers, Dalits, women, transexuals, or any other real or perceived disadvantaged minority, so long as you agreed that they should all be treated equally in the public domain, i.e., under the law - affirmative legislation such as reservations excepted.
 
But just as the parivar was uncorking the bubbly Gangajal at the ASI findings which seemingly vindicated the claim that a mandir of some sort had stood on the contentious site at Ayodhya, several non-parivar - and by definition 'secularist' - historians pointed out that the presence of glazed tiles and the bones of animals killed and eaten there proved the existence of not a Hindu but an Islamic place of worship. Great. So bring on the secular champagne. But before you could say 'cheers' in JNU-ese, yet another historian, also self-professedly anti-parivar and therefore 'secularist', argued that the previous batch of historians were 'communalising' artefacts by identifying glazed tiles and animal bones with one religion alone, namely Islam, when in fact such finds had been made at other religious sites. Now the parivar is standing back smugly, letting the secularists slug it out with each other as to whether glazed tiles and fossilised mutton do piaza are 'communal' or 'secular'.
 
And how about a common civil code? Is that 'communal', or is it 'secular'? The secularist view has been that while a common civil code is desirable, the decision to adopt it must evolve from within the community concerned. Any attempt to steamroller through a common civil code, as the parivar wants to, is tantamount to majoritarianism, which is antithetical to pluralist secularism. Right on. But what price the Shah Bano case, which still causes red faces among secularists, me included? The rights of minorities must be protected. But how about the rights of women, of all communities, who also constitute a minority, in terms of empowerment, if not actual numbers? Shabana Azmi, among others, has forcefully argued for a common civil code in the name of gender justice. So is Shabana a 'pluralist' or a 'parivarist'? Going strictly by the book, of course Shabana and those who agree with her are truly 'secularist', if we go back to the definition of someone who advocates impartiality in the eyes of the law. But by willy-nilly siding with majoritarianism, aren't such secularists doing the right thing for the wrong, or 'communal', reason?
 
The trouble with secularism is that it's like one of those do-it- yourself kits I got as a kid. If I followed the instructions on the box, and put all the pieces together as they said, I'd come up with a model airplane which I could fly. So I cut the little pieces of balsa, and stuck them together with glue, covered the frame with paper as directed. And ended up with something that looked devised not by the Wright but the Wrong brothers. Fly it? I couldn't even chuck it away, what with the glue having leaked and stuck the whole misbegotten mess to my hand. Secularism's a bit like that. It never quite turns out the way you wanted it to. So there's a temptation to get shot of it all. Except you're literally stuck with it. And just as well. For busy cham-pioning the cause of minorities, secularists sometimes forget that most marginalised of minorities that needs defending, not least from its own ranks: secularism itself.
 

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