COMMUNALISM AND SECULARISM

In India, “communalism” refers to the belief that Hindus and Muslims form well-defined, unchanging and totally separate communities whose economic, social and political interests are mutually and essentially opposed. This type of division of society is in part a legacy of colonial rule, in which all inhabitants of India who were not Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Parsi or Buddhist were labelled as Hindu. The classification of the population by religious and ethnic categories separated by well-defined boundaries continues today and is used to explain and justify hostility between groups.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some Hindu and Muslim political leaders encouraged the development of mythic histories to mobilise their respective communities against each other as much as against colonial rule. Some, though not all, Muslims argued for separate political representation on ideological grounds as well as on the basis of practical interests. Thus the imposition of Western political and administrative institutions, coupled with economics of scarcity, provided new scope for the expression of communalism.

In the project of Hindutva, or the political assertion of “Hinduness”, India is now referred to as Bharat, the name of the brother of Ram in the Hindu epic poem the Ramayana. The pre- Muslim period of Indian history is held up as a golden age of progress, of high cultural, intellectual and economic achievement that was brought to an end by the Muslim hordes, who introduced an age of barbarity, forced conversion, cultural decay, religious repression and economic collapse. Many now advocate the regeneration of Bharat, with a restoration of Hindu unity and the glories of the pre- Muslim age.

Similar mythic narratives have been created in Sri Lanka by the Sinhala Buddhist majority to assert their right to dominate the state.

Other ethnic and religious groups are seen as tainted by “foreignness” and the interests of the nation are identified with the interest of the majority community.

Such “communalists” or “religious nationalists” argue that democratic governments must give priority to the demands of the religious majority. This has been a constant theme in the propaganda of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the VHP/BJP in India and Sinhala Buddhist organisations in Sri Lanka. But this is a naïve understanding of democracy, which opens the way for the tyranny of the majority.

There is good reason for the insistence that India is and should remain a secular democracy. But the term “secular” may have various meanings. Archbishop Rowan Williams has helpfully distinguished between “procedural secularism” and “programmatic secularism”. Procedural secularism is a public policy that declines to give a legally favoured position to any particular religious community. It does not require any specific religious allegiance from its officials, but acts impartially, seeking to enlist their resources of different communities in discerning and implementing the common good. Such a state is open to critique and correction by all religious traditions. This is the type of secularism espoused in the Indian constitution.

In France, however, the government favours programmatic secularism, which attempts to exclude from public visibility every manifestation of religious allegiance, whether language, symbols or rituals. Such allegiances are seen as threatening a more fundamental civic identity. Expressions of religious convictions are banned from public space and confined to the private realm.

Christians always stand in a position of critical tension in relation to their political identities. They seek to be responsible citizens, refusing to claim special privileges for the church or rights that are not universal. The way Christians defend their religious liberty is by defending the liberty of others. Their ethnic and national loyalties are judged by the priorities of the kingdom of God.

Thus Christians should welcome political pluralism and a procedurally secular state that actively encourages public dialogue among the various faith traditions and also seeks their views on matters of state policy. If open intellectual persuasion is not fostered as a positive virtue in society, then coercion and manipulation result.

The disciplines of the modern state seek to create disciples of the nation-state. The disciplines of the church – the practices of prayer and corporate worship, of Bible reading and bearing one another’s burdens, of gospel proclamation and costly solidarity with the vulnerable and the oppressed – seek to form disciples of Jesus Christ.

They thus make possible a different kind of politics, one that rejects the nationalist politics of exclusion and victimisation and encourages a politics of shared and global responsibility.