“By Ram Rajya I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ramarajya Divine Raj, Khuda ki Basti or the Kingdom of God on Earth”  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi[1]
 
At the heart of the visceral animosity that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) and all the affiliates have against Gandhi is his deep, reasoned and passionate commitment to a composite Indian nationhood. His writings in Young India and Harijan are well-documented as also is his subsequent clarity on the issue which is unequivocal. [2]

Faced with the growing appeal of communalists across the religious spectrum, in the early-mid 1900s,  Gandhi remained firm in his commitment to equal citizenship based on human rights and dignity…..
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Under Gandhi’s guidance and leadership, communal amity remained central to the constructive programmes of the Congress. Muslim intellectuals and leaders of national stature, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Dr Ansari Hakim Ajmal Khan, Badruddin Tyabjee, Maulana Shaukat Ali and Jauhar Ali were proud part of the Congress fold. While the larger national movement, represented by the Congress and Revolutionaries, was surging ahead with a wider vision and inclusive foundation of Indian nationhood, at play were majoritarian and minority communal forces, in parallel, pushing their narrow, hate-driven, communal agendas.

In 1937, at the open session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Ahmedabad, V.D. Savarkar, in his presidential address asserted: “India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main – the Hindus and the Muslims.”[1] By 1945, Savarkar had gone to the extent of stating, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two–nation theory. We, the Hindus are a nation by ourselves, and it is a historical fact that the Hindus and the Muslims are two nations”. [2]. It was this sentiment of separate and irreconcilable identities of the followers of these religions that led to the communal holocaust and the formation of Pakistan. 

If the Muslim League and Jinnah need to squarely be positioned for their responsibility in articulating a politics that eventually led to a communal bloodbath, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtritya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with their consistently divisive politics, cannot escape their share of the blame.

Arguably, as much as Gandhi’s and the larger, Congress’ commitment to secular and composite Indian nationhood, a deep source of resentment for the proponents of a Hindu Rashtra was the democratic and egalitarian agenda being articulated by the national leadership through the Karachi resolution. The attempts on Gandhi’s life that began in 1934 , were a response to the dominant political articulations on nationhood, caste and economic and other democratic rights that were in direct challenge to a hegemonistic and authoritarian Hindu Rashtra. 1933, the year before the first attempt on Gandhi’s life, he had declared firm support to two Bills, one of whom was against the abhorrent practice of Untouchability.

The run up to Independence and unfortunately, Partition, was the scene or battle ground for fundamentally different notions of nationhood. While over one hundred years of sustained movements and mobilizations to throw off British yoke were wedded in the united battle of all Indians against foreign rule, the early-mid 1900s saw the birth and emergence of sectarian and communal definitions of Indian and Pakistani nationhood. With the birth of the Hindu Mahasabha, the Muslim League and the RSS, these movements were in constant battle with the larger movement, significantly, at different points of time actually acting as collaborators with the British.
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Later, on January 27, 1935, Gandhi addressed some members of the Central Legislature. He told them that “(e)ven if the whole body of Hindu opinion were to be against the removal of untouchability, still he would advise a secular legislature like the Assembly not to tolerate that attitude.”.[1] On January 20, 1942 Gandhi remarked while discussing the Pakistan scheme: “What conflict of interest can there be between Hindus and Muslims in the matter of revenue, sanitation, police, justice, or the use of public conveniences? The difference can only be in religious usage and observance with which a secular state has no concern.” [2] From then until he was shot dead in cold blood on January 30, 1948, his responses and articulation on the disassociation of religion from politics became even clearer and sharper. This meant in effect he was a great threat to past and present day proponents of a Hindu rashtra.

[[As quoted by Nauriya, in the Hindu, 2003, in September 1946, Gandhi told a Christian missionary: “If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern!” Gandhi’ s talk with Rev. Kellas of the Scottish Church College, Calcutta on August 16, 1947, the day after Independence, was reported in Harijan on August 24:

“Gandhiji expressed the opinion that the state should undoubtedly be secular. It could never promote denominational education out of public funds. Everyone living in it should be entitled to profess his religion without let or hindrance, so long as the citizen obeyed the common law of the land. There should be no interference with missionary effort, but no mission could enjoy the patronage of the state as it did during the foreign regime.” This understanding came subsequently to be reflected in Articles 25, 26 and 27 of the Constitution.

On the next day, August 17, Gandhi elaborated publicly on the same point in his speech at Narkeldanga, which Harijan reported thus: “In the India for whose fashioning he had worked all his life every man enjoyed equality of status, whatever his religion was. The state was bound to be wholly secular. He went so far as to say that no denominational institution in it should enjoy state patronage. All subjects would thus be equal in the eye of the law.” Five days later, Gandhi observed in a speech at Deshbandhu Park in Calcutta on August 22, 1947: “Religion was a personal matter and if we succeeded in confining it to the personal plane, all would be well in our political life… If officers of Government as well as members of the public undertook the responsibility and worked wholeheartedly for the creation of a secular state, we could build a new India that would be the glory of the world.” Speaking on Guru Nanak’s birthday on November 28, 1947, Gandhi opposed any possibility of state funds being spent for the renovation of the Somnath temple. His reasoning was: “After all, we have formed the Government for all. It is a `secular’ government, that is, it is not a theocratic government, rather, it does not belong to any particular religion. Hence it cannot spend money on the basis of communities.” ]]

Excerpted from Beyond Doubt: A Dossier on Gandhi’s Assassination, Teesta Setalvad, Introduction by the author
 

  [5] Gandhi in Young India, September 19, 1929, p. 305.

The post Mahatma Gandhi: ‘My Ramrajya means Khuda ki Basti… but a Secular State’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Secularisation precedes economic development and not the other way around as is commonly believed, said the study, Religious Change Preceded Economic Change In The 20th Century, published in the journal Science Advances. The study used data from the World Values Survey, which mapped people’s changing values and beliefs, to estimate the importance of religion in the 20th (1900-2000) century.
 
India stood 66th among 109 nations ranked by secularisation. China was first, Pakistan 99th, Bangladesh 104th and Ghana last.
 
India’s per capita GDP per annum grew 26 times between 1958 and 2018. “This increase could have been higher if Indians were less rigid in their religious views,” co-author Damian Ruck, a post-doctoral researcher at the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, University of Bristol, told IndiaSpend.
 
What are the dominant religious beliefs that could be holding back India’s growth from reaching its maximum potential? IndiaSpend research found that these relate to the two most vulnerable social groups in India — women and marginalised castes.
 
Both groups are allowed to play a limited role in India’s economy. Consider caste: The proportion of scheduled-caste individuals in the lowest wealth bracket was close to thrice that in other castes — 26.6% as against 9.7% — according to the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4), as IndiaSpend reported in February 2018.
 
Social and cultural factors restrict women from working outside their homes in India, IndiaSpend reported in this nation-wide investigation. At just 27%, India’s female workforce participation is amongst the lowest in South Asia. Between 2004-5 and 2011-12, the year of the last census, 19.6 Indian million women left their jobs, according to an April 2017 World Bank report.
 
India’s secularisation (and its tolerance rank, 69th) would suggest that its per capita GDP per annum should be higher than it actually is. “Our model thinks that India should be around Rs 457,015 ($6500) per person richer than it actually is,” said Ruck. “What this suggests is something else is holding back the Indian economy but that is for Indian specialists to analyse.”
 
But India would still stand to benefit considerably from increased levels of secularisation, estimated the author. “If India were to reach secularisation levels seen in western Europe (like Germany, which was ranked 6th of 109 nations), then it could expect to see a Rs 70,175 ($1,000) increase in per capita GDP over 10 years, Rs 196,490 ($2,800) over 20 years and Rs 350,875 ($5,000) over 30 years,” said Ruck.
 
To put this in perspective, India’s per capita GDP increased 2682% by Rs 133,613 ($1904) over the last 60 years, from Rs 4,982 ($71) in 1958 to Rs 138,595 ($1975) in 2018.
 
China, whose development India aims to emulate, has been ranked first in secularisation. The US, a developed country where hate crimes in the 10 largest cities touched a decadal high in 2017, stood 57th.
 
It needs to be noted that the study, jointly conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK and the University of Tennessee in US, did not establish that an increase in secularisation drives economic activity. It only established that secularisation precedes high growth. It did, however, rule out the belief that religion loses its importance once material development begins to satisfy the needs of a society.
 
Why Indian economists can’t ignore links between economy, religion
 
In India, religion has not lost its place in society though the country has seen economic development: More than 90% respondents rated religion as “very important” or “rather important” in the latest round of the World Values Survey.
 
India and Kyrgyzstan are the only two nations where the percentage of people who considered religion an important part of their lives grew by over 10 points over the decade through to 2014, with India logging 12.1% growth, from 79.2% to 91.3%, according to the survey.
 
A key takeaway of the new study is that policy makers looking to boost economic growth, particularly inclusive economic development—a stated aim of the incumbent central government–need to consider the linkages between religious thought and economy.
 
“Economic theory tells us that a competitive environment–one without different types of stratification, of markets–produces the best possible outcomes for consumers and society,” said Amaresh Dubey, a professor at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “But by precluding a huge section of the population, women and scheduled caste people, from equal access to resources such as capital and know-how, in India, religion majorly impedes economic activity.”
 
Women are, in large part, low-skilled informal workers in India, engaged in work that requires low productivity and offers low pay, as IndiaSpend reported in March 2018. The inequality between what men and women earn in India is far worse than gender skews in pay noticed in South Africa, Brazil and Chile, if we consider the gender gap in median earnings of full-time employees.
 
Caste is another divisive factor in development. Scheduled-caste individuals are among India’s poorest people, as we said. “Caste, kinship or family, either or all these can hamper economic progress if they impose restrictions,” said Andre Beteille, professor emeritus, department of sociology at the University of Delhi.
 
But sociologists see a problem: Initiatives to get India’s women and scheduled castes better access to resources could boost overall economic activity and promote individual well-being, but they are unlikely to change their social status, according to Dubey. Casteism is so deeply entrenched in India that even scheduled caste converts to Islam and Christianity continue to carry their dalit status, he said.
 
“As religions go, Islam and Christianity do not practice caste segregation but we see dalit converts call themselves dalit Christians and scheduled caste Muslims,” he said.
 
Development will be ‘short-term’ in times of communal strife
 
India’s per capita GDP has trended upwards since 2014, according to the United Nations’ World Happiness Index 2018, IndiaSpend reported in May 2018.
 
India also saw rising intolerance in this period, available data show. The year 2017 recorded the highest death toll (11 deaths) and the most number of incidents of hate violence (37 incidents) related to cows and religion since 2010, according to an IndiaSpend database that records cow-related hate crime.
 
Does this simultaneous increase in the annual per capita GDP and the decline in secular values defy the findings of the new study?
 
Apparently not. “What we measured are the slow changes in public opinion on secularisation and tolerance that occur over many decades as new generations replace older ones,” explained Ruck.
 
Nations can see a rapid increase in intolerance over the short-term but it can be associated with different forces influencing public opinion, he said. The scholar described these as “period effects”.
 
“In the current political climate, prominent identity qualifiers such as caste, religion and gender are being stoked for short-term gains, creating negative emotions of distrust, hate, prejudices and so on against the ‘other’,” IndiaSpend reported in May 2018.
 
But “rapid changes are not linked to sustained economic development and tend to be temporary and average out over time”, said Ruck.
 
(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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Several countries queried India on the plight of human rights, especially recent attacks on civil society through the mis-use of provisions of the FCR Act by the Modi government. There was no mention by the spate of lynchings of the minorities and Dalits by ‘Gau Rakshaks’ however. Ghana in its questions and comments made no reference, even obliquely, to the brute attack on African nationals in Delhi recently (this had caused a diplomatic crisis at the time) and the remarks of Israel and Iran –countries on two sides of the ideological and political spectrum—were virtually identical. Haiti however did bring up racism against African nationals in its comments.

Pakistan in its intervention spoke extensively and exclusively of the plight of Kashmiris and the violations by India in the region. Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy, the Holy See (Vatican) and Canada and the United States asked the most searching questions to the Indian government on aspects of human rights violations especially in the past three years. The last UPR that India faced was in 2012.

Speaking at the 27th session of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group at the UNHCR here, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said that the Indian Constitution enshrines various provisions for the protection of the rights and interest of the minorities. Moreoever, he also said the right to free speech and expression occupies its rightful place in the core of the Indian Constitution. “As the world’s largest multi-layered democracy, we fully recognise the importance of free speech and expression. Our people are conscious of their political freedoms and exercise their choices at every opportunity,” Rohatgi told the member states.On the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Rohatgi said the Act is applied only to disturbed areas and these areas are very few and in proximity to some international borders.“Whether this Act should be repealed or not is a matter of on-going vibrant political debate in my country,” he said.

On transgenders, he said India has been at the forefront of recognising their equal rights. The Supreme Court gave a landmark judgement in 2014 directing the government to declare trans-genders a “third gender” and included them as an “Other Backward Class” entitled to affirmative action benefits.Rohatgi also mentioned the Supreme Court judgement that reinforced that trans-genders should have all rights under law, including marriage, adoption, divorce, succession and inheritance, Rohatgi added. He said India has made significant progress in addressing the special needs of persons with disabilities through its Accessible India Campaign, and by overhauling its legislative framework on the rights of persons with disabilities and the rights of persons with mental health issues. On global warming, he said India remains alert to the problem and as part of the thrust towards fulfilling its people’s right to a clean environment; it has launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan-Clean India Campaign nationwide.

Ironically, Rohatgi, who as attorney general has led the Modi government’s charge in what has been observed to be an assault on the independence of the Indian judiciary, applauded India’s higher judiciary for its ‘independence from the executive.”

The Ministry for External Affairs Statement on the eve of the 3rd UPR may be read here.

Related Stories:

1. 112 Countries Will Question India on Its Human Rights Record: May 4, 2017

The post At the UN, It’s No to Hindu Rashtra, We are a Secular Country, the Land of Gandhi & Buddha: India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The government order dated April 1, 2016 states that the decision is in response to an appeal from the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF) and the Save Temples campaign which have their headquarters in the USA.

The order reads: “Government have carefully examined the matter and observed that it is fact that Lord Sri Krishna was a cowherd had worshipped the cow regularly. The cow is the most sacred animal on earth because of its saatvic nature. In view of the above government conclude that it is quite appropriate to declare Sri Krishna Janmastami as Gopuja Dinotsavam and encourage people to worship the cow and protect the cow (sic).”


 
 

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