Religious intolerance and the erosion of human values

The preamble of the Constitution of India reads as under:

“We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens:

This is a solemn oath formulated with great vision by the founding fathers of the Constitution which binds each and every citizen of our country. 64 years after the Constitution having come into force, the question we, as citizens of the country, need to ask ourselves is whether we have been able to adhere to and strengthen these Constitutional ideals.

I was born into a Brahmin family and have been indifferent towards religion for the first twenty years of my life. I did what was expected of me while visiting temples or performing pooja with my family. I never questioned traditions and superstitions that are part and parcel of any Brahmin family and accepted them as part of my life. The incident that jolted me out of my indifference took place on the morning of 28th February, 2002 when I read in the newspaper (ironically ‘The Hindu’) about the death of 58 hindu pilgrims who were burnt alive in a train at Godhra station by a mob of Muslims. I could not comprehend why a mob of people belonging to one religion would resort to such a mindless and violent act against a group of individuals belonging to another religion.

This incident and the massacre that followed this incident turned me from being indifferent to religion to questioning whether we, as a people, have reduced religion into an instrument of retribution. Why should people, who have no personal enmity, kill one another merely because they belong to different religions? The people who killed each other brutally in 2002 were citizens of the same country, even belonged to the same state.

A brief look at Indian history since independence shows a sharp increase in frequency of religion based violence in the last three decades when compared to the first three decades after independence – the 1984 Sikh riots (3000 Sikhs killed, 50000 displaced), the 1988 train massacre in Punjab (120 Hindus killed by Muslim mobs), the 1989 Bhagalpur riots (1000 Muslims killed by Hindu mobs), the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 (300 Kashmiri Pandits killed,300000 displaced), the 1992 Bombay riots as a fall out of the Babri Masjid demolition (575 Muslims and 275 Hindus killed), the murder of Graham Staines, a Christian missionary in 1999, the 2000 Gourangtilla and Bagber massacres in Tripura (40 Hindus killed by Christian extremists), the 2002 Godhra riots (1000 Muslims and 250 Hindus killed), the 2008 Marad massacre (8 Hindus killed, 58 injured in a planned attack by a Muslim group), the 2008 Tumudibandh massacre in Orissa (8 Hindus killed by Christian extremists), the 2008 Kandhamal riots (38 Christians killed, 1400 Christian homes and 80 places of worship destroyed, 13000 Christians displaced by Hindu mobs), the 2010 Deganga riots (23 houses ransacked, 250 shops looted, 50 houses burned, 5 temples desecrated by Muslim mobs), the 2012 violence in Assam (77 killed in communal violence between Bodos (belonging to Christian and Hindu faith) and Muslims), the 2013 Muzzafar Nagar riots (49 Muslims killed,50000 displaced by Hindu mobs) and the 2013 Canning riots in West Bengal (200 Hindu homes burnt down by Muslim mobs displacing 2000 Hindus). Does this mean that our human values have been progressively eroding? Were we more tolerant of each other earlier and not any more?

I work in the old city area in Hyderabad which has a substantial Muslim population. Every year, under the pretext of celebrating Hanuman Jayanthi, the main roads in the old city are draped in saffron and a deliberately provocative procession is taken out by motorcyclists carrying saffron flags. To avoid any untoward incidents, the mosques and draghas in the area are covered entirely in white sheets which obscure them from the view of the bigots on the motorcycles wearing their religion on their sleeve and revelling in their pyrrhic victory. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the scion of the most powerful Muslim family in Hyderabad spewing venom and making deliberately provocative statements like 25 crore Muslims taking care of 100 crore Hindus if the police is taken out of the equation for 15 minutes. Is this what the nation’s founding fathers aspired India to be six decades after independence? Is this in consonance with the constitutional ideals of secularism, liberty and fraternity? Have we stooped so low that we have converted religion into a show of one upmanship? Incidents like this have strengthened my belief that religion, when practised without moderation can only lead to an eventual destruction of basic human values. We have allowed ourselves to be taken advantage of by the politicians who have fed on our innate prejudice towards each other to resort to fundamentalist Hindutva and minority vote bank politics.

Of late, there has been a dangerous surge of Hindutva and closet fundamentalism even amongst the supposedly urbane, sophisticated and literate class in our society. This has manifested itself in the results of the recent elections which carried an undeniable saffron tinge. One sincerely hopes that this is not a sign of things to come with people misinterpreting the results of this election as a victory of Hindutva over other communal forces. On the other hand, the mullahs and imams of our society have come to the centre stage of the political theatre by resorting to endorsement of political parties which is way beyond the scope of their job description. The encroachment of religion into our day to day political discourse would lead to a further erosion of basic human values with religious prejudices overpowering and taking over our basic sensibilities.

Our nation is a peculiar kaleidoscope of religions and communities. What binds our nation together is a sense of respect and tolerance for each other’s religions and practices. A convoluted and misplaced belief about the superiority of a particular religion over another poses a serious threat to the democratic ideals on which our nation has been built. We, as a people, ought to refrain from defining ourselves and painting our neighbours by the sins committed by our ancestors. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives”. Our primary identity is as a citizen of our country and our primary duty is to pursue the noble and secular ideals on which the foundation of our country was laid. Every citizen of our country is free to practice his religion. However, religion ought not to be practised in a manner that would undermine the democratic ideals of our nation. This view may, on the surface, appear to be idealistic and impractical. However, unless and until a sincere attempt is made towards pursuing our secular ideals, our nation cannot be rescued from sinking deeper into the swirling vortex of religious fundamentalism and communal hatred.

Our nation owes its freedom to the ideals and principles of our founding fathers who came together in the pursuit of a single goal though they belonged to different religions. Let us not sully their souls and insult their ideals by giving undue importance to the role of religion in our daily lives and by allowing religious prejudice to impair our vision and disable our common sense.