Contempt of Culture

ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1948, Lokanath Misra delivered a spirited address to all members present in New Delhi’s Constitution Hall, the venue of the Constituent Assembly Debates: “Sir, it has been repeated to our ears that ours is a secular State. I accepted this secularism in the sense that our State shall remain unconcerned with religion, and I thought that the secular State of partitioned India was the maximum of generosity of a Hindu dominated territory for its non-Hindu popu­lation… Gradually it seems to me that our ‘secular State’ is a slippery phrase, a device to by-pass the ancient culture of the land. The absur­dity of this position is now manifest in articles 19 to 22 of the Draft Constitution. Do we really believe that religion can be divorced from life, or is it our belief that in the midst of many religions we cannot decide which one to accept? If religion is beyond the ken of our State, let us clearly say so and delete all reference to rights relating to religion. If we find it necessary, let us be brave enough and say what it should be. In the present context what can this word ‘propagation’ in article 19 mean? It can only mean paving the way for the complete annihilation of Hindu culture, the Hindu way of life and manners. Islam has declared its hostility to Hindu thought. Christianity has worked out the policy of peaceful penetration by the back-door on the outskirts of our so­cial life. Let us not raise the question of communal minorities anymore. It is a device to swallow the majority in the long run. This is intolerable and unjust.” [Emphases added]

Today, it is not only unthinkable but beyond the realm of fantasy for any MP to speak even a severely diluted version of this. Lokanath Misra was a Congressman. His party was widely condemned by the Muslim League as a “Hindu” party. Lokanath Misra had clearly foreseen what this bogus secularism would do if left unchecked. But even he could not imagine, let alone foresee, the practical manifestations of its nation-wrecking power. Indeed, even Jawaharlal Nehru—the progenitor of this secularism as also its most hardened practi­tioner—could not imagine it.

Lokanath Misra served as the governor of Assam, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. He died in 2009, largely unmourned and forgotten. But his youngest brother’s name might be more familiar: Ranganath Misra, who earned some repute as the head of the one-man Justice Ranganath Misra Commission of Inquiry formed to investigate into the excesses of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. He was elevated to Chief Justice of India (CJI) in 1990.

Lokanath Misra’s speech bobbed up in my recollection when I read the news of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the home of the current CJI, DY Chandrachud on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi puja. What followed was entirely predictable.

Barely minutes after videos and photographs of the puja surfaced, a cacophony erupted on social media and elsewhere. The CJI instantly became persona non grata in the eyes of the usual suspects who had, until the event, viewed him as their saviour and champion. Some social media nuggets condemning the CJI include these:

“Gone, totally gone the last pillar of hope.”
“Retirement benefits guaranteed!”
“And you expect Justice from Justice CJI.”
“What happened to separation of Church and State?”
“He saved the entire party during election, in electoral bond ruling party was red handed caught. He staged a drama and protected them.”

These posts on X were complemented by the familiar slew of Nehruvian intellectuals and columnists who wrote furiously along the same lines but in polished prose and by selectively quoting judicial precedents. Others gave hour-long interviews.

CJI Chandrachud had done the un­forgivable: he had allowed himself to be videographed with the very man who has pushed the Nehruvian ecosystem to the brink of extinction. Moreover, the CJI was publicly seen celebrating a Hindu festival. Had the CJI performed the Ganapati puja with just his family, it would not even have made news. Now, it made him the target of ‘cancel culture’, a euphemism for strangling political incorrectness. The re­cent history of cancel culture—especially in America—shows that it is premised on nihilism and anarchy and respects noth­ing. Not even the Chief Justice of India.

Expectedly, the other side hit back with matching ferocity and equal swift­ness. An avalanche of photographs showing various Congress prime min­isters, past presidents and vice presi­dents as well as chief justices attending Iftar parties and other Muslim festivals descended on social media.

The fundamental operating prin­ciple is the same: the only permitted po­litical religion of India is secularism. This reality was best affirmed when Mani Shankar Aiyar unambiguously ti­tled his book, Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist. The slightest deviation from this creed will not only not be toler­ated but proactively punished. This creed had been enforced as long as secularism was backed by political power. Over the last decade, it may have lost political power but not its capacity for creating a ruckus. By targeting the CJI himself, it has shown that all bets are off.

Over the decades, a voluminous body of literature has grown around the Indian variant of secularism—which can politely be called the pet fancy of Nehru. The body of criticism directed against it is largely accurate. In practice, secularism was Congress’ code for winning the Muslim vote. Or, in Arun Shourie’s memorable line, “Indian secularism means branding the Hindus as communal.”

Yet, some elements in this discourse merit a fresh look.

SECULARISM, WHICH BEGAN as a bloodless method to resolve intra-Christian conflicts, is a wholly European creation. It neither has a civilisational basis nor historical precedent in Bharatavarsha, which is essentially a geographical expression of an all-inclusive spiritual culture.

Even when secularism finally evolved as the most acceptable form of practical politics in the West, it did not entirely kill Christianity. While its practitioners have dwindled to a trickle, it still commands piety and re­spect. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany remains an active force. The European Christian Political Movement founded in 2002 with the explicit aim of promoting Christian values throughout Europe, has members from almost every major European country.

The scene drastically changes when we look at America. Most of the outward expressions of its democratic traditions are entirely Christian—from taking the presidential oath on the Bible to swearing “So help me God”. It goes even further. From Eisenhower onwards, every president attends something called the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) meeting, a tradition seeded by a fundamentalist missionary named Abraham Vereide whose vision for America was one where “every Chris­tian [is] a leader, every leader a Chris­tian.” NPB is usually held on the first Thursday each year in Washington DC. Its attendees include representatives of almost all church denominations, business tsars, and foreign politicians. The list has included Benazir Bhutto, among others.

The Christian constituents of NPB regularly send missionaries to India on evangelical operations. And out here, they seek refuge in secularism, the greatest protector enabling their evangelism. But in the imagination of our commentators, intellectuals, et al, America is seen as a secular country.

Against this backdrop, a perfectly valid question arises: Can we even imagine the heads of all Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, and other Sanatana panths sitting with the prime minis­ter and president of India for break­fast once a year?

Forget these traditional institu­tions. Here, we have a lone instance of the CJI and the duly elected prime minister of India jointly celebrating a festival whose roots are thoroughly Hindu. And it evokes outrage.

The inescapable conclusion is clear: Indian secularism, the brain­child of Nehru, was thrust upon un­suspecting Indians. He neither asked nor cared for their consent. The teeming masses of Hindus back then trusted him implicitly to preserve their culture. He gave them secularism. As I wrote in an earlier essay, we have touched a nadir where there seems to be no place in India’s Parliament for discussing Hindu Dharma in the land of its birth. And so, Lokanath Misra’s note on Nehru’s secularism as a device for bypassing Hindu culture was indeed clairvoyant.

In his resignation speech, BR Ambedkar made a stinging re­mark, which was also a prophecy as to where Nehru’s secularism was leading India: “[T]he Chief Whip, whose duty it is to econo­mise Government time has been systematically absent when the Hindu Code has been under consideration in the House. I have never seen a case of a Chief Whip so disloyal to the Prime Minister and a Prime Minister so loyal to a disloyal Whip. Notwithstanding this unconstitutional behaviour, the Chief Whip is really a darling of the Prime Minister… Compare the concern the Government shows over safeguarding the Muslims. The Prime Minister’s whole time and attention is devoted for the protection of the Muslims… But what I want to know is, are the Muslims the only people who need protection?” [Emphases added]

Even as Nehru pushed India deeper into the embrace of his concocted secularism almost immediately after we adopted the Constitution, Pakistan was unequivocal in declaring itself an Islamic republic, whatever that means. Things like secularism had no place in the land of the pure.

And so, ever since this secular template was set, the race to the bottom was also set. As Indira Gandhi solidified her grip on pow­er, the hold of Imam Bukhari of Delhi’s Jama Masjid proportion­ally tightened. By Rajiv Gandhi’s time, it had acquired the status of a veto. To invoke Arun Shourie again: “The [Congress] ‘na­tional’ politicians have sought to woo the Muslims not through the reformist elements among them but Ali Mian, Imam Bukhari, [Syed] Shahabuddin, etc. On every issue— Shah Bano, the infiltration from Ban­gladesh, altering the Waqf Act, whatev­er—they have eventually adopted the line which the ulema, with their ideology of sep­arateness espoused.” [Emphases added]

To give just a random sample of the ugly stage that things had reached due to the persistent thrust of secularism, I am reminded of an old joke that was quite popular in government offices in those days. It was about something as mundane as a routine greeting. Accord­ingly, ‘Salaam’ was secular, ‘Namaste’ was communal; ‘Jai Ram Ji ki’ was com­munal, ‘Salaam Aleikum’ was secular.

Things have moved way beyond these jokes, and today’s secularists no longer pretend that Indian secularism is really about a separation of church and state. There is no act of Islamic terror they do not apologise for and no instance of far-left anarchy they do not condone. For every Burhan Wani, there is a bevy of columnists giving posthumous cover fire. For every Kanhaiya Kumar, there is a swarm of academics feting him as a freedom fighter. The same forces instantly descend to traduce a sitting Chief Justice of India for what they see as straying from this official creed.

Postscript

More than 60 years ago, RC Majumdar wrote something that has an eternal quality to it: “If I have violated the political convention of the day by revealing the very unpleasant but historical truth about the relations between the Hindus and Muslims, I have done so in order to elucidate and explain the course of events in the past, not unmingled with the hope that our leaders would draw some useful lessons for the future… I have done so with good will to both the communities and malice to none, being convinced that the solid structure of mutual amity and understanding cannot be built on the quicksands of false history and political expediency. Real understanding can only be arrived at by a frank recognition of the facts of history and not by suppressing and distorting them. Be it also remembered that such a discussion is indispensable in order to offer a rational explanation of the birth of Pakistan.” [Emphases added]

Among other things, suppression and distortion of facts form the kernel of Nehruvian secularism.

Chief Justice of IndiaDY ChandrachudGanesh pujaLokanath MisraNarendra Modireligion