What’s happening To Secular India?
India has recently joined the bandwagon of segregating people based on religion. It took new heights last week with a YouTube video.
If you look around the world and think people’s tolerance has reached rock bottom, you might be right. The world’s second-largest country by population had slid into so much chaos that it’s no longer the peaceful India that many of us knew for years. I had some patience that things will come back to normal, but a straw broke the camel’s back last week. It was a simple YouTube advt for an Indian jewelry company that spiraled into a debate on India’s secularism.
India and Religion:
The Indian subcontinent has been the birthplace for many religions. Religious tolerance is always part of the culture of the region. The rise of far-right elements had affected even India. The recent events in India have raised the question. Is India secular anymore?
Secularism has always been a part of life for people in India for centuries. Buddhism, Jainism originated in a Hindu majority political scenario. Many Indian kings like Ashoka embraced and even converted to other regions and helped spread harmony. When Islam came to India, it came via traders and not by invaders, as many presume. Islam spread across India due to the mentality of embracing different cultures. Apostle Thomas came to India in 52 A.D to spread Christianity, and he, too, was welcomed. The colonial powers brought in missionaries to spread Christianity, and India people never opposed it.
My Life:
Let’s take my life as an example. I was born to Hindu parents. I did my 12 years of schooling in a Catholic school. I read the bible and attended the prayer ceremony every day. Not only me, but 90 percent of the school students were also non-Christians. I have never seen one incident where a parent opposed his kid in performing a Christian prayer. When I was sick, my parents took me to a nearby mosque so that the imam can pray for me. After my schooling, I joined a Muslim college for my engineering degree. Islam was an exciting religion for me. During the Ramadan fasting, I used to serve my friend’s food in the hostel mess. We debated on religious topics late into the night. Of course, no one was offended.
In my hometown, we have a temple for the warrior leader who died for our clan several centuries ago. There is a mosque inside the temple with the tomb of a Muslim warrior who died defending the leader. Our village people worship the tomb with alcohol and cigars, which are usually not allowed inside a Hindu temple. The bond and synergy between Hinduism and Islam are there for centuries.
My dad used to call Muslim elders in his village as uncles. I inquired the reason behind his answer stunned me. To incorporate the Muslim community, a minority community in the village, the Hindu community considered them as relatives and called them by relationship even though they are not related.
What’s Now Happening In India:
Reading through the article, you might think, what’s wrong with India now?
India is now under the wave of far-right elements like many other countries in the world. Mobs lynched fellow humans on suspicion of carrying beef. As the Nazi party in the 1930s, the Indian central government passed a citizenship act which needs every Indian citizen to prove on what basis they became citizens of India. The law would make it easy to segregate people of particular religion like the Nazi’s segregation of Jews.
The right-wing fever took new heights when the factions blew out of proportion, a standard jewelry advertisement. Tanishq is a famous jewelry brand in India. Tanishq released a new advt in which a Muslim mother in law conducts a baby shower for her Hindu daughter in law. The daughter in law asks the mother in law, Is baby shower allowed in Islam? The mother in law replied that the happiness of her daughter in law is vital as per Islam. The far-right group took the advt and proclaimed that it promoted love jihad, where a Muslim boy marries a Hindu girl and converts her to Islam. Far-right groups vandalized Tanishq showrooms, and the company dropped the advt even from YouTube.
It was a beautiful advt that showcased the beauty in the diversity India celebrates. In the past few years, secularism has gone down in India with the rise of factions. Even I’m a victim of these actions when I wrote an article about a Muslim princess’s love with a Hindu god. I received some harsh comments on social media. The world would be a better place with secularism and by showing respect to other religions in society.
