Asghar Ali Engineer is a rights activist and heads two organisations, the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. He has authored or edited 44 books on such issues as Islam and communal and ethnic problems in India and South Asia in general.

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(Secular Perspective, May 16-31, 1999)

        Secularism has been the lofty ideal of our polity. It has been the very foundational philosophy of our nation. The Indian National Congress which was harbinger of our freedom movement adopted it since its foundation in 1885. The Indian National Congress was quite aware of composite nature of our society and always tried to carry the minorities with it. The first three presidents of the Congress belonged to the minority communities i.e. W.C.Bonnerjee, a Christian, Badruddin Tyebji, a Muslim and Phirozshah Mehta, a Parsi. Secularism, for the founding fathers of our freedom movement meant not associating state with any religion and also protecting the rights of minorities. 

        It was the philosophy of secularism which guided our freedom movement throughout and it was this philosophy which was adopted by the Constitution makers. In independent India persons like Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad were firmly committed to this philosophy and never allowed any compromise at least in principle though in practice there were formidable challenges. Nehru severely criticised obscurantist practices and wrote several letters to the chief ministers of various states not to associate themselves with any religious rituals in their official capacity. Maulana Azad refused to contest election from Rampur in 1952 parliamentary elections as it was Muslim majority constituency saying he was not representing Muslims alone in the Parliament.

        However, this ideal phase lasted only for less than a decade after the Independence. Nehru's death in 1964 delivered a great blow to it. There were two categories of anti-secular trend - one, within the Congress represented by Tondon and others and two, embodied by the Jan Sangh. Nehru often severely criticised anti-secular trend within his own party besides strongly attacking the Jan Sangh as a politically reactionary party. But Nehru as if, got isolated in his own party and the Jabalpur riots of 1961 shook him from within - a shock from which he could not recover until his death. He saw his secular ideal being shattered.

        As Nehru expected, secularism did not grow in a steady manner after the Independence. It had rather a checkered career. Mrs.Indira Gandhi began to emphasise it again when she became Prime Minister. It was her emphasis on secularism and socialism that endeared her to minorities, besides poor masses, during first phase of her prime ministership. However, after emergency, when she was isolated, she abandoned secularism in favour of soft Hindu communalism. It was for the first time in independent India that a prime minister, while swearing by secularism, acted contrary to it. It was, as if, the beginning of demeaning of secularism in India. So far it was the secularism which guided our politics; now on it is the politics which determines the nature of our secularism.

        The decade of eighties was quite catastrophic in this respect. Mrs.Gandhi's soft communalism further demeaned secularism on one hand, and the Hindu communal forces put question mark on the Nehruvian concept of secularism on the other. They described it as 'pseudo-secularism' and came out with a new concept of 'positive secularism'. It was this fundamental shift and a new communal-secular discourse which resulted in great disaster, and the decade of eighties saw several major communal riots. Nehru was shaken by one major riot in Jabalpur in 1961 and our new leaders were not shaken even by several of them throughout eighties. Communal violence, as if, became a way of life during that period.

        The irony of it is that secularism became a sine qua non of Indian politics. Even communal forces  swear by it. Even the BJP maintains that it is a 'secular' party. Not only that all its leaders like A.B.Vajpayee and L.K.Advani maintain that only the Hindus could be truly secular as Hinduism was most liberal religion. India, they said, was secular because of Hindu majority. And what was worse, more they sang the paeans of Hindu liberalism more communal and sectarian violence they provoked. While they said that a Hindu is Hindu whether he believes in God or not, whether he visits temple or not, they intensified Ramjanambhoomi movement and pushed the country to the precipice. While for others secularism and secular philosophy was sine qua non for the nation, for the Hindutva forces construction of Ram temple became sine qua non for the country. 

        While the country was faced with the catastrophe of communalism during the eighties new champions of secularism appeared on the scene like V.P.Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Kanshi Ram and Mayavati, besides several others. The minorities, particularly the Muslims, thought they were political Messiahs and ran after them. Mulayam Singh Yadav, in fact, became their hero. He, together with Kanshi Ram, began to monopolise the Muslim vote in U.P. The harassed minorities could hardly behave otherwise. They had reposed their faith in the Congress as the champion of secularism. But their faith began to be eroded, as pointed out before, when the Congress opted for soft communalism under the leadership of Mrs.Indira Gandhi, and it was completely eroded when Babri masjid was pulled down when the Congress was ruling at the Centre under the Prime Ministership of Narasimha Rao.

        Mr.Mulayam Singh Yadav caught the imagination of Muslims and was thought to be very sincere in protecting the rights of minorities. In one of the rallies in 1990 in U.P. he went to the extent of saying that Muslims should be armed to protect themselves in view of  repeated communal violence. But Mulayam Singh's secularism was not, as Muslims thought, a lofty political ideal as enshrined in our Constitution, or like Nehru's secularism  which  was committed on philosophical basis rather than on reasons of vote bank politics.

        The 'champions of secularism' now were more interested in obtaining minority votes than really upholding secularism in philosophical sense like Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad etc. For these new champions secularism is good as far as it delivers votes of minorities and is something to be shunned if it does not. In democracy politicians need votes to come to power and it is quite understandable that they should care for this. But if power becomes the sole purpose and every thing else secondary, serious problems begin and the very foundation of our polity is shaken.

        This is the problem with these neo-secularists like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Kanshi Ram and others. They have linked secularism to vote bank politics and have no commitment whatsoever to secularism as a political philosophy. We witnessed this when the motion of confidence in the BJP-led Government was being discussed in the Parliament on 16-17 April and subsequently when opposition parties led by the Congress were making an attempt to form an alternative government at the Centre.

        The Dravidian parties like the DMK and the AIDMK had accepted secularism as a philosophy and they have championed it for long. But first Jaylalitha of the AIADMK made an alliance with the BJP during the last parliamentary elections and then, to the shock of all of us, the DMK, which was thought to be real inheritor of the Dravidian philosophy, voted along with the BJP in favour of the motion of confidence to save the Vajpayee Government. For both the Dravidian parties secularism could be adhered to or dispensed with depending on the political situation or the stand of the rival faction. If the AIADMK is on the side of the BJP, DMK becomes the champion of secularism and if the AIADMK is on the side of the Congress and the left, it finds itself in the camp of the Hindutva. 

        It was no different with the Telugu Desam Party of Andhra Pradesh. N.T.Rama Rao had championed the cause of secularism and allied himself with the secular parties like the Janata Dal, CPI and CPM. But Chandrababu Naidu allied himself with the BJP-led government at the Centre as he did not want the Congress-led government to assume reigns of power, it being his main rival in Andhra Pradesh. Though he maintained he is not allying with the BJP but only giving issue-based support, it did reinforce the position of Sangh Parivar and enabled it to assume reigns of power at the Centre.

        Many other champions of 'secularism' like George Fernandes, R.K.Hegde and Ram Vilas Paswan proved to be no different. All of them had sharply attacked Hindu communalism and had endeared themselves to the minorities. But all of them now find themselves in the BJP camp to fulfill their aspirations for positions of power. Mr.George Fernandes not only allied himself with the BJP-led Government but also became its most zealous spokesperson and defender and it is he who time and again saved the BJP-led Government in crisis situation and ensured its survival. R.K.Hegde is pleading for a BJP-led front in the next elections and is wooing J.H.Patel, the Chief Minister of Karnataka, to join the BJP-led front in the next Lok Sabha elections. Mr.J.H.Patel seems quite inclined.

        Mr.Ram Vilas Paswan, a dalit leader  who has also set up a dalit sena in Bihar, also has emerged  as a champion of alliance with the BJP. He always used to attack the BJP very sharply. But when he clashed with Laloo Prasad Yadav, his priorities changed. Not surprisingly, he voted with the BJP in support of the confidence motion and is now ready for ties with the BJP and the Samata Party in Bihar. In fact he has appealed to all political parties  in Bihar to fight unitedly  the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD). According to him, "there is no issue of secularism or communalism in the state",  and "corruption and jungle raj in the state should be the main plank", and he also declared that he was ready for electoral alliance with the BJP, the Samata Party, the Congress or the Left parties.

                But it was Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, the neo-champion of secularism in U.P. who took the cake by refusing to support the Congress-led government at the Centre, and there are reasons to believe that he did so at the instance of George Fernandes. Thus by refusing to support the Congress-led government at this juncture he supported the BJP position. He supposedly did this to save his Muslim vote-bank from going over to the Congress but ironically enough he succeeded only in alienating Muslims from him. There are enough indications that Muslims will not vote for his Samajwadi Party. Muslims are quite unhappy that he refused to support the Congress-led government at the Centre. 

        Another interesting example is that of the National Conference of Jammu & Kashmir. Mr.Farouq Abdullah who is the son and successor of Shiekh Abdullah who, along with Nehru, was a great champion of secularism, decided to throw his lot with the BJP-led alliance. Mr.Farouq Abdullah's policies have been quite compromising. Among the National Conference members only Saifuddin Soz proved to be a saving grace and stood firmly for the cause of secularism. Farouq Abdullah also may have to pay the price for his unprincipled compromises, though still there is no alternative to him in the Valley.

        Thus it will be seen that the secularism has lost its philosophical appeal and the new so called secular leaders who have emerged on the scene during and after the Babri Masjid episode, are more concerned about their vote-banks rather than the secularism of a lofty political philosophy. Their commitment is neither to secularism, much less to minorities. They only use secularism and champion the cause of minorities to seek their votes. No wonder  the quality of our democratic polity is at stake.