Do You Know What Secularism Means?

Yes, the timing of this post coincides with Sanjeev’s. I told him that I was about to write on the same topic and he urged me to put forward my views and so here goes my post.

On Sunday I was as usual ranting and during a discussion came out the issue of Secularism and Pseudo secularism.

A general observation states that our country could be on the verge of been divided on religious lines.

I said that in our country people are secular only because they have to be and not because they want to be. Because we have such diversity and we have to live together, that’s why we pretend to be tolerant. Does that make the people of this country pseudo secular?

I was rudely interrupted by a wise old man to look up the meaning of the word ‘secularism’ in the dictionary.

Secularism, according to the dictionary doesn’t mean religious tolerance, it means the lack of religion. We tend to use both words interchangeably but that isn’t the case. It actually means ‘the belief that the state, morals, education etc. be independent of religion’.

In our country neither the state nor the morals, education etc. are independent of religion. Bal Thakeray once said that that politics and religion can’t be independent of each other. Many were offended by his views and many editorials were written. I was of the opinion that they should be independent of each other.

But sadly, religion has been woven in the fabric of politics and they both go hand in hand. They co-exist whereas they should be independent of each other i.e. the separation of church and state. To think that it exists only in this country is wrong. My earlier blog on fundamentalism points this out.

Are we, as the common man, pawns in this game of religion politics often dubbed as a fight of secular vs. communal? We often get swayed by words of certain people, formulate our opinions and spew venom against each other.

Before I deviate from the topic further, lets check out another definition of the same word. I checked up another dictionary and it said secularism is ‘indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations’.

Which brings me to the question - Can we be indifferent to religion? Can it be excluded? It cannot be excluded from our personal lives. So does it mean that we can’t be secular? Or should this definition be taken in some other context? I leave this open to debate.

Originally posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2006 4:32 PM