Imrana’s travails have given yet another opportunity for the pseudo-secularists to display their dishonesty and for the “real” secularists to point it out. Seriously, which word would better describe Mulayam’s and Salman Khurshid’s position than “shameful”? Perhaps “disgusting” would do as well.
I’ve never understood this. Say that you are one of those whom the BJP calls “pseudo-secularist”. Say that you yourself believe that you support secularism. Let’s also assume that unlike Mulayam and Salman, you are not a politician who has to worry about Muslim votes. Obviously, we are now talking of people like Teesta, Shabana etc. Shouldn’t it follow, both from an ethical and a tactical point of view that you should take up the case of Imrana as strongly as you can? Ethically, because rescuing women like Imrana from her troubles should be more important than ensuring that the BJP doesn’t make political capital out of it? And if the latter imperative is in fact more important for you, what better way to undercut the BJP’s points than to raise the issues yourself so that you can point this out the next time someone accuses you of pseudo-secularism? So where are Teesta and Shabana? Only Brinda is there, and she has been behaving creditably.
The more important question is, what should a secular government do about the Imrana case? In the comments to an earlier post, RR makes the strange assertion that if secularism is really practised according to its original sense, the government would respect the ruling of the Mullahs. Why? Because that is what “not interfering in religious matters” should mean.
Excuse me, but secularism means that the government does not interfere in an individual’s religious beliefs and practices, not that it leaves entire groups of people at the mercy of their religious leaders. In a secular country, a Maulana’s pronouncement on the status of a marriage between two people would have no more significance than an individual ranting on his blog. It would certainly not have the force of law – and I don’t think that even in “secular” India, the government is going to send the police to enforce the dictat. If the two people want to continue the marriage, then government should, if necessary, provide police protection against those from their “community” who would try to prevent them from doing so.
The problem here seems to be that the couple itself has accepted the verdict. If both of them really have, what can you do legally, whether your country is secular or not? It should be upto voluntary organizations to see if they can persuade them to change their mind. If, on the other hand, one of them (say, the husband) had decided to “honour” the verdict and another did not, then there would have been a problem. A secular country would have forced him to pay maintenance and child support (but in “secular” India, he can get away with saying “Talaq” three times and returning her Mehr, unless of course she has renounced her right to Mehr, as is the custom)
So, as I was saying the real problem is that both Imrana and her husband are willing to “voluntarily” abide by the verdict given by their religious leader. What can the government do about it?
Update:
Cheater!
Gaurav plagiarises my post and backdates it.
Nothing Ravi. The least it can do is to enact the UCC to at least prevent stuff like this happening the next time around. Effectively, a few mullahs have the power to hold the country’s legal system at ransom.
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Thanks for small mercies you might say though if you had seen her in NDTV, it would have made comic sight. She did not know whom to hit at, not the AIMPLB, not at Deobandis, not at the community, she finally zeroed in on National Minority commission and held responsible for all that happened, why she could not explain, just that she could not touch any Muslim body with the far end of a barge pole and she had to get the central government involved in someway
You are referring to Brinda?
In the comments to an earlier post, RR makes the strange assertion that if secularism is really practised according to its original sense, the government would respect the ruling of the Mullahs.
I’m flabbergasted as to how you so managed to grasp exactly the wrong end of the stick. This is really superlative performance!
Follow me as I lay out my case again.
I distinguish between two things: 1) a policy of state imposing religion on the citizen, and 2) a policy of religion, ie, the church, imposing its governance on the citizen.
You have propounded #1 to be secularism. But secularism as it originated in Europe meant policy #2. It put an end to the practice of pope making laws for the citizen, and inaugurated that of a non-ecclesiastical entity, such as the king or a popular government, making laws that people were to be governed by.
In Imrana’s case, if the government lets the mullas have their way, it can be said to have passed the test of secularism by _your_ definition (unless you want to advance the bizarre line that to let a Muslim follow his religion is to “impose” it on him.) But giving immense credit to your intelligence and surmising that this conclusion is not what you really meant, I wrote, “but something tells you it (ie, the government) is not (secular)”, and went on to state the logic that would address this seeming contradiction:
The government is not secular by the original definition (of secularism) because it let the church’s laws undermine its own. It let the citizen be governed by the church.
Policy #1, in my view, is sectarianism. I gave examples of this policy. The US government employs a Christian priest at the tax-payers’ cost. This is a sectarian policy, because no Hindu priest/temple is similarly maintained. But it is not necessarily an anti-secular policy unless it so transpires that the church forced the US government, against the latter’s will, to employ the priest.
A policy #3 is also theoretically possible, in which people of different creeds will be governed by their respective churches while the government sits idly by or goes fishing. That would definitely not be sectarian, but that wouldn’t be secular either.
I’d like to propound a #4 too, but my tea-break is already spilling over into … into … coffee break. Cheers.
Yes
Ravi,
Excellent post. Your point:
is quite valid. one finds that Indian citizens routinely accept rulings by the pope, the SGPC and the AIMPLB/Syedna/assorted mullahs. In other words, these parallel bodies override national law. A truly sad state of affairs – one that reeks of double standards.
I’m currently having my wine break. 🙂
#1 Secular, Sectarian : Britain, Russia, Greece etc, to various degrees
#2 Secular, non-Sectarian: Canada? Australia?
#3 non-secular, sectarian: Most all Islamic states
#4 non-secular, non-sectarian: Like Flynn’s MISD, if you know what I mean, this is mostly a theoretical curiosity.
Sabnisgate scandal set to rock Indian blogdom? 🙂
Anyway, carrying the point forward, another dilemma I have often faced is on the Roop Kanwar case. I believe suicide should be legalised, because each person has a right to decide when to end his/her life. Most libertarians would agree with this. Roop Kanwar, let us assume for the purpose of this argument, committed sati voluntarily. By voluntarily, I mean no one forced her using threats or anything.
Sp prima facie, I should support voluntary sati.
But then she commited sati because she was brought up brainwashed and believing that sati is the “holy” thing to do. So is that really free will?
Ravikiran,
Coincidentally, I sent Gaurav an email on how he would reconcile sati with the libertarian view he laid out (as you do here). It should also decriminalise and support voluntary suicide. And I think seeking to explain Imrana’s compromise or voluntary sati are the result of conditioning (and hence not real free will) are cop-outs.
In the real world, everyone is conditioned or brainwashed in one way or the other (“Nasha mein kaun nahi hai bata to zara”, Prakash Mehra?, Sharaabi). Many are under duress.
By and large people may make rational decisions, but there are times when they do not. And if the consequences of these are grave enough, then there is room for an agent to help prevent tragic outcomes. That agent can be the family, community or civil society. But as you pointed out in the case of Teesta and Shabana, these agents are not obliged to act in every case. There is, therefore, a case for a agent of last resort. In democracies, I think the government is well placed to play this role.
In case of Roop Kanwar or Imrana, family, community and civil society were either parties to the victimisation, unable to stop it or unwilling to do so. In the event, the government must step in.
Gaurav,
To your question and the dilemma you have posted in your blog questioning whether the positions of Imrana (and Roop Kanwar) can be judged as “free will”, I think the answer is “Yes”.