MUMBAI — “Twenty” is somehow a newsworthy round number and it is inevitable that the 20th anniversary of an event that shook India will be observed by the nation with deeper introspection than usual on this Dec. 6. On this date in 1992, a mob of Hindu demonstrators tore down the Babri Masjid, a mosque more than 450 years old that they claimed was built over a Hindu temple. Hundreds of Muslims and Hindus died. Using the anniversary of this tragedy as the peg, my latest column questions India’s constitutional claim and aspiration that it is a secular republic.
Secularism is a noble idea but in practice. The fundamental nature of believers has triumphed over a grand idea and India does not want to concede this reality. It is not a fatal conflict, but a deep fault-line that will long endure, a problem that will never have an easy resolution.
The biologist and writer Richard Dawkins once said, ‘‘We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.’’ The first part of this statement is at the heart of India’s struggle with the idea of the secular republic. Indian intellectuals who espouse the importance of secularism are almost all atheists or agnostics. They are not the core of the nation. They are not the ‘‘temple-goers,” to borrow from the title of the Indian writer Aatish Taseer’s novel.
People infatuated with the idea that India is secular point to some extraordinary people, usually Hindus, who fight dangerous fundamentalists of their own faith to procure justice for Muslims who have faced atrocities. For instance, the daring social activists who have been working for years in the western state of Gujarat to bring to justice powerful politicians accused of engineering the 2002 riots — including Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat. In fact, one of Mr. Modi’s former ministers, Maya Kodnani, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for her role in the riots. Are these activists examples of a secular nation?
No. These heroes and their pursuits would not be required in a truly secular nation, and people who accused of mass murder would not win elections by huge mandates in the first place.