TALES OF TRAVESTY
DR. JITENDRA SINGH
George Bernard Shaw once quipped, the crazier you are the higher you rise and the craziest of all becomes the Admiral. In the topsy turvy milieu of contemporary Indian politics, Shaw’s dictum could be paraphrased to postulate that the greater you learn to admire the other man’s religion more than your own religion, the more is your secular credential likely to be acknowledged.
Willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, it was none other than Jawaharlal Nehru who, after taking over as the first Prime Minister of independent India, switched over to a trademark sartorial get up comprising “Sherwani-Churidaar” and a rose in the button hole. Nirad Choudhary, the inimmitable critic, commentator and author, was quick to point out what he described as Nehru’s vain attempt to acquire a secular dress style and went on to remind the self-righteous Nehru that in the enthusiasm to appear secular he had chosen to slip into “Sherwani-Churidar” which was more of a Muslim attire.
The question facing the nation’s polity ever since then is “Does secularism mean conspicuously distancing oneself from one’s own religion?’’ And in the context of Nehru’s sartorial preferences post-independence and Nirad Choudhary’s pointed rejoinder, the question could rather be rephrased to ask “Does a Hindu have to appear to be appreciative of Islamic ethos in order to prove that he is secular?” Incidentally, it was the same Nehru who had in the early 1950s advised the then President of India, Babu Rajendra Prasad to avoid visiting Somnath temple to offer obeisance as a devout Hindu lest this should send a wrong signal about the newly born “secular” republic of India which had been established in 1950.
If, in more ways than one, Nehru was a trend-setter for India’s individual politician post-1947, Nehru’s Congress party was a trend-setter for the various political parties that emerged on the scene in the years to follow. As a natural consequence, therefore, most of the contemporary Indian politicians belonging to the country’s majority community opt for the easy route of claiming ther secular credentials by denigrating their own religion in a bid to appease the minority community with the hope of being rewarded for this at the Hustings.
On a different plane, rather non-political plane, the point accidentally missed in this superflous race of “More secular than Thou” is that the inherent teaching in every religion….be it Hinduism, Islam or Christianity.. is to hold equal or as much reverance for other religion as one’s own religion and to honestly follow one’s own religion or faith without causing harm or injustice to a fellow being who follows a different religion. In other words, a person who honestly follows the religion or faith of his birth is bound to be essentially secular in his outlook whereas the one who is not secular in outlook is also not faithful to one’s religion of birth. By implication, this would mean that pretending to be secular without being true to one’s own religion is infact abuse of the very concept and philosophy of secularism.
In a country as heterogenous as India which is constrained to thrive through viable co-existence among contrasting faiths and religions, the definition of “secularism” has been unfortunately reduced to a political caricature inspired by political expediency. And, therefore, the question in the final reckoning is ” Is this the kind of secularism which the founding fathers of Indian republic envisaged the common man to practise ? Umapathy cites Allama Iqbal’s verse to assert that more than religion or secularism, it is the clarity of conscience that shall serve the nation and the republic better ‘‘—–Mazhab Na Chahiye Mujhe…..Imaan Chahiye!’’
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