On constitution day, TISS student presents paper on secularism in Indian context

She said while religion is one of the most politicised institutions in modern India, it is used not only to serve spiritual interests, but also to serve material interests. “The number of truly secular political institutions in this country is miniscule. What we see are few politico-religious organsations, which give predominance to the interest of a particular community over the general national interests. Even the so-called secular political organisations in the country have its religious under-currents. Any religious institution can be transformed into a political entity in India, and legitimately so. But there is one other way of looking at it. The best way to empower any community is to give them political representation. In case a group of a minority community feels that to represent themselves better, they need to form a political party, it is truly justifiable. This could be a reason behind the flexibility and comparative ease with which political parties are formulated in India,” she said.

Ameena further pointed out that secularism has been one of the essential elements in the basic structure of the Constitution, which lays down that the state has no religion. She argued that there is a mistaken perception, at least among a section of Indian society, that when a portion of the country went on to make an Islamic nation, what remained was a Hindu nation. “Ever since partition, Muslims in the mainland are suspected to have loyalty towards Pakistan. Every time India wins or loses to Pakistan in cricket, the repercussions are felt in Indian streets. It is only in India that a normal sport like cricket is communalised to this extent. What is to be taken note of is that we had dismissed the idea of creating a nation on the basis of any religion. Even in post-independent India after Partition, this mainland had more Muslims than any other Muslim nation in the world,” she said.

Meanwhile, speaking on whether the notion of socialism is relevant and working in the age of globalisation, Amit Pratap Singh, an LLM student, said that we have tried to push “good change” in the disguise of socialism. “Is the good of a billionaire same as the good of the people living in remote areas of Leh or a tribal of Bastar or Dantewada? If we fulfill liberty, equality and fraternity, then we can say we have socialism. But now, in a well-connected world, we have tolerable inequality in place of equality, we have AFSPA in place of liberty; so where is socialism?” he questioned.

mihika.basu@expressindia.com