Question

Secularism: A form of government in which the state has no official religion. State does not discriminate with its
citizens on the basis of religion and citizens have complete freedom to follow any religion.
Find out whether Secularism is followed in India? Give arguments in favour of your answer.

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

Different religious groups have coexisted in harmony in this country. There has been free public and private worship by men and women of faith. Religion-as-faith is what has characterised peaceful coexistence in the past, when traditions were kept alive within communities.This was the time when religious boundaries were blurred, and people saw no contradiction in calling themselves “Hindu–Muslim” or “Hindu–Christian”. There were no religious fundamentalists or fanatics in traditional society.

When the first Prime Minister of India, the late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, stressed the importance of “a scientific temper”, he was somewhat privileging rational values over religious ones, and modern values over traditional ones. In effect, Nehru was saying that religion should be relegated to the private sphere, and should not interfere in an individual’s public life.

For secularists like Nehru, faith in science replaces religious faith. Those individuals who lead a public life devoted to religious faith are outside modernity, as it were. Religious or traditional values, then, become the culture of the non-literate or the superstitious. And yet, these are the values that have proved to be the most humane, tolerant, and accommodative in this country. Today, these old cultural values are consistently depreciated by secularists and modernists alike.

The problem persists when modern secularists keep opposing religion-as-faith and call for secular values like state neutrality and wall of separation between religion and state. Since the state, anyway, has very little moral authority left, it cannot be expected to play well the role of moral arbiter of secular values.