Secular Vs.Theocratic State
A lot of events have taken place since I
wrote my last blog, almost four weeks to date. My decision to embrace silence, ironically
strange for a voluble writer like me has been a distressing decision , though
an intentional and considered one. Often I have felt the weariness of
writing that has hardly any viewer, leave aside
a reader and yet every time after hitting a new low I am back at my
desk to thump the keys almost in a hurry
as though to make up for the lost time. The
reason is purely selfish as writing has always been therapeutical and enabling
for me as it relieves me from the oppressive pressures of unexpressed thoughts
and feelings and help me experience the
lightness of being, where “lightness’
signifies freedom.
The last few days have witnessed upheavals
in all spheres of Indian polity-government, society and politics. The responses
to the upheavals emanating from the cacophony on our news channels and abusive
messages on the social media, have left many like me dumb and bewildered. The modern squealing that sticks either to
black or white with no scope to fuse the two into grey has left many thinking and
unbiassed apolitical persons confused as to how to adopt both sides of the coin
simultaneously. Sabarimala verdict by the Supreme Court and the virulent defiance
of the same by traditionalists claiming allegiance to faith that can be best
described as supra- logic and supra- rational has polarized the polity right
down the middle. The recent happenings defying the orders of the highest court
and blocking women in their reproductive age from entering the Sabarimala temple
has left me and many others in a state
of limbo with regard to Constitutional obedience to the judicial order threatened by
the dominance of tradition masquerading as blind faith.
India is at the cusp between modernity and
tradition. While tradition is the mainstay of culture in any society, tradition
that has over ages transformed into paternalistic injunctions, reserves wisdom
for itself and rejects all opposition as sacrilege to sacred order. Sabarimala
controversy has brought once more to centre stage the binary conflict between
religious faith and social justice. The defiance of the highest court of the
land has raised two other questions: (1)Is India veering towards a theocratic
society and (2) how modern can tradition change into and how much of tradition
can modernity absorb?
The Court order aimed at gender justice and
parity. Menstrual cycle is a biological happening and there can be no stigma
attached to it. Even men have periods
though they do not bleed, but they have other syndromes during these days when
they get tired, moody, irritable and crave for food. These are normal bodily
functions and have no other significance. No woman is impure just as no man is
during these days. There has been no divine command that restricts women
devotees from entering the temple till they are past their reproductive stage. Where
are such dicta written? Who has codified these ‘do’s and ‘donts’? To say Lord Aiyappa is a bachelor and likely to be
seduced by women is not only absurd to the core, butit is a denigration of the Lord as though he is a
weakling who cannot resist the assault of women on his chastity. No wonder, in our patriarchal society- both
in the East or the West, it is only women who are seducers and poor men are
victims who have no choice but to end as rapists. The Supreme Court had factored in the
physiological changes in women as routine occurrence while giving its verdict
that there shall be no discrimination against women on the basis of such absurd
and unauthorized traditional beliefs masquerading as divine commandments. What were the traditionalists doing when
this issue was filed in the court? They did not assert that the court had no
jurisdiction over their tradition because they must have felt that patriarchal
tradition will be the winner. They also knew that such a discrimination with
no clear authorization as the Holy writ went
against the fundamental principles of
Constitution. Once they had submitted to the Court to pronounce its
judgement, what right did they have to violate the court order? It is here the
Constitution as the supreme Bible for a secular nation comes into force. If
this constitutional pact is torpedoed by traditionalists ( I am a little wary
of calling them fundamentalists), the
danger of sliding back to a theocratic state is not far off.
Our
academic intellectuals and scholars have to address the second key issue of how
far we can go modern and how far we can remain within tradition. What is
tradition? Do we need it or do we dispense with the inherited tradition in our
eternal search for originality? Take language. We write in a language that has
evolved over many millennia. Though language that we use today is different
from what it was earlier, these changes have to be seen in the backdrop of its
origin and source. The idea of tradition
is central to art and culture that get reflected in all our artistic,
aesthetic, religious and even our daily
activities. But the change is equally perceptible as all human activities
change with the advancement of ideas, knowledge and intermingling of cultures
of different societies. We have to re-contextualize the concept of tradition to
be in sync with changed times. But it will be foolish in our enthusiasm for
something new, that we fail to acknowledge the anterior influences that have
shaped modernity. What is important is to delineate those aspects of tradition
that have contributed to the evolution of human society and development and
reject those that have been detrimental to human progress and are not in line
with modern democratic concepts of equality, freedom and justice.
Seen
in this light the Sabarimala verdict is a reaffirmation of gender equality and
not a denigration of the deity. It does not pooh- pooh traditional offering of
prayers to Lord Aiyappa, but it builds on that tradition to make the rituals
inclusive for all worshippers. The real denigration lies in the outcry of the
traditionalists who fear the Lord may be seduced by the entry of women. Those
who oppose the Supreme Court verdict continue to believe in the patriarchal form
of social organization where males hand down rules that they erroneously claim
to be sanctioned by Hindu religious scriptures but lack authenticity to back
them. The reversal of the Supreme Court order that put a ban on the ‘traditional’ Jallikattu in Tamilnadu ignores not only the risk to human life and to the animals, the victims of human
madness, but it also shows the government’s surrender to irrationalists who
cited ‘tradition’ as something that cannot be tampered by judicial authorities.
We have umpteen cases of honour killing that has no rational justification
except the traditional belief in caste and religious distinctions.
All human conflicts stem from irrationality that is presented as
divine injunctions and therefore transcend all logical and rational scrutiny. But
Tradition is tradition. Modernity is modernity. There is no clash between them
except our patriarchs’ refusal to
recognize how one evolves out of the other. Tradition is as essential to human
progress as it contains the seeds of modernity. Tradition is too vast an entity
that it can accommodate any amount of changes without the least fear of
vanishing without a trace. Without the seeds there can be no plants. So is the
case with tradition. Without tradition, there can be no modernity. Just as
seeds are inside the fruits and are needed for further propagation, tradition
is inside modernity and has a perennial presence in all civilizations and
cultures. As the plant grows and sheds
the seeds, the good ones develop into newer plants while the others mingle with
the soil to enrich the land and make it fertile for the future plants.
Sabarimala should not be converted into a
conflict between secular and theocratic society. India is not a theocratic
state where the government is either ruled by a deity or by officials who claim
for themselves the status of being divinely appointed. We are a secular
democratic state which is not bound by any single religious order. It is
unfortunate that political parties spearheaded the recent Sabarimala agitation
and dragged the judiciary into religious matters whereas judiciary, being an
arm of the secular government had to make a secular intervention to ensure men and women
enjoy the same privileges as enshrined in the Constitution. Democracy is
privileged upon equal rights and personal freedom that does not infringe upon
the freedom of fellow citizens. Theocracy is a state ruled by religious
authority and subject to (authentic) religious dicta. Democracy is a state
ruled by people through their elected representatives and deals with temporal issues and steers clear of
spiritual matters. Each has its area of jurisdiction and the two do not
trespass into each other’s territory. Only when the aberrations take place-like
withholding of personal rights and freedom in the name of unproven tradition,
the legal wing of the government is constitutionally justified to pronounce its
verdict. The unfortunate thing that had marred the divine aura of Sabarimala
deity , Lord Aiyappa, was the descent of democracy and theocracy into
mobocracy. One shudders a similar mob
frenzy with reference to the temple to be built for the Maryada purusha Lord Ram that threatens to wreck our democracy and
its judiciary. Are we in danger of veering towards a mobocratic state,
abdicating state control oflaw and order to the people?
Let
politicians wake up to the danger when
the fire of mob fury takes over, their
own position and functioning will become untenable. Let us work to preserve the
constitutionally sanctioned democracy and not barter it for temporal electoral
gains.
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