God
And Faith In The Life Of Indians
By Subhash Gatade
08 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
What
is common between golfer Jyoti Randhawa and actress Khushboo ? In fact,
looking at their distinct fields, it would certainly be difficult to
discern any thread of commonality. But if one would have come across
the latest survey published in a leading newspaper one would already
have got an answer. According to this survey, both of them do not believe
in 'any higher power'. For Jyoti 'the only power I believe in is willpower-
the power within you', for Khushboo 'my power is within me. I live for
people whom I love and who love me'.
Interestingly people like
Jyoti or Khushboo cannot be considered as lone rangers in this society
which is becoming rather more religious with time. (A trend which is
definitely at variance with what is happening in the West) Sixty six
respondents out of a group of thousand plus clearly stated that they
are non-believers.
Of course, the commonality
shared by these two stalwarts of their own fields vis-a-vis their understanding
about 'higher power' , is not the only interesting fact which readily
emerges from the survey done by the Times of India people with TNS,
a leading market research agency to know 'how Indians view God and their
faith'.(10 city TOI-TNS poll ( TOI, 26 th Nov 2006) )
To be very frank , the recent
survey done across ten cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore,
Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patna, Lucknow and Nagpur- with 1,007 respondents,
which was restricted to people falling in socio-economic categories
A,B and C, present a mixed set of conclusions.
According to the survey three
fourths of Indians are strong believers; 72 per cent of those in their
twenties strongly believe in god ; mere 11 per cent of respondents saw
god as explicitly male ; number of people who said they are more religious
today than they used to be was considerably larger than those who felt
they had become less religious; God is perceived as a source of energy
and not someone to be feared; people are not convinced that God is a
micromanager, around 46 % said s/he was an observer, not a controller.
Despite the fact that 87 % of the respondents in the survey were Hindus,
only one third of them said that they sensed the presence of God in
murtis (idols).
The survey also brought to the fore the unwritten divide existing between
the south and the north. While according to the survey 92 % of the respondents
in the north had expressed their belief in God, the figure slipped to
86% in South. The scepticism of the south is also evident in things
like belief in spiritual gurus or on questions less directly connected
to religiosity. As the paper puts it " Whether it is belief in
miracles, astrology or communicating with the dead, Chennai and Bangalore
are consistently the least given to such ideas".As far as the non-believers
were concerned, their attitude towards life was 'whatever has to be
done, we have to do it ourselves' .
The observations tend to
emphasise the growing religiosity of the Indian people, especially its
younger lot, and thus could boost the ratings of social/political formations
whose weltanshauung itself revolves around god. They also demonstrate
the growing 'market of spirituality' in our country where we find ourselves
amidst Jet set gurus or channels beaming out sermons by these self-proclaimed
representatives of god.
One is witness to the way
neither the social life nor polity could remain aloof from the manner
in which people viewed religion. Psephologists are considered to be
the best people to underline this phenomenon who keep prophesising the
voting behaviour of a people from the community to which they belong.A
presumption is also at work here which communicated an understanding
that one's this worldly view has a lot of bearing with one's otherworldly
views.
Interestingly despite this
growing interest in becoming more religious or exhibiting one's religiosity
to the hilt, there are quite a few things which show that people are
smart enough to differentiate between the spiritual and temporal.
Like when the respondents
were specifically asked whether they think religion is a private or
a social affair, a majority of them (43 %) were of the opinion that
it should be a private affair and only 29% were of the opinion that
it should be a social affair. Ofcourse 28 percent of the respondents
underlined that it should be both.Despite the ongoing propaganda against
religious conversion by the Hindutva brigade organisations, 67 percent
of the respondents clearly opined that people should be allowed to convert.
As an aside it might be emphasised here that the constitution gives
right to faith and its propagation and if properly fought by a team
of legal luminaries in the highest courts of the country all those laws
which have been put in place by different states ( mainly the Hindutva
ruled. Ofcourse they are not the only guilty ones. We are told that
M.P. and Orissa have drafted laws to ban 'religious conversions long
before the Hindutva attained legitimacy in the eyes of the people) could
prove ultra vires.
The respondents were very
clear about the alleged correspondence between 'being religious' and
'being moral'. Everybody is aware that a social common sense has emerged
down the years ( thanks to the manner in which religion plays a normative
role in modern societies and the concerted campaign undertaken by institutions/individuals
who think that it is their duty to communicate to the wider people the
'ultimate truth') which establishes a direct relationship between religiosity
and morality. The connection between belief and goodness of an individual
was also posed before the participants and the overwhelming opinion
was that it has nothing to do with one's non/beliefs.Sixty five per
cent of the respondents were of the opinion that 'it is not necessary
to be believer to be a good person.'
It cannot be denied that
all such surveys have their own limitations. At times they suffer from
the initial premise provided by the respective organisation, or there
are constraints in reaching any fruitful conclusion if the sample size
chosen is not representative. And looking at the fact that the above
mentioned survey focussed itself on socio-economic categories A,B and
C and left the categories D, E out of its ambit, one can always say
that the conclusions are skewed in favour of the middle or upper middle
class.
Does the present survey carry
any import for all such people who are worried about intrusion of matters
of faith in the running of the state and society?
First of all the survey does
provide resource(s) of hope for all those people/formations who yearn
for secularism to prevail in this country. It is true that the idea
of secularism and its practice has received lot of battering during
last sixty years of independence. One need not mention the genocide
of Muslims a la the Modi brigade in Gujarat or the carnage against Sikhs
with due connivance of the 'secular' Congress regime at the centre or
the killings of lakhs of innocents of different communities at the altar
of vested interests camouflaged under a religious garb.
But despite the high voltage
propaganda by the by religio-centric people, if more than 6 per cent
of people have no qualms in emphasising their (non) belief or if a major
chunk of the target population still considers religion to be a private
matter or have no qualms if people convert according to their own will,
then it should be considered as a silver lining. It gives an impression
that notwithstanding the majoritarian assault, by and large people still
cherish pluralism. Political Hinduism or political Islam may create
conditions conducive for harbouring illusions about 'others' but people
seem to be still keen that the state should remain above any particular
faith or creed.
Perhaps this explains the
silence maintained by the wider populace when the Shankaracharya and
his junior were put behind bars for being 'party to the planned killing
of one Shankar Raman - an employee of their Ashram itself. It also explains
the absence of any big uproar in a city like Mumbai or for that matter
Madurai when illegal religious structures - may it be temples, mazaars
or churches - in their hundreds were pulled down by the municipal authorities
not sometime back. It also explains why it took around 60 years of consistent
work for the Hindutva formation to attain some sort of legitimacy in
the eyes of the people.
This 'silver lining' among
a sense of gloom definitely brings forth the task of defence and rejuvenation
of secularism high on agenda, a task which has been largely neglected
by all those forces/individuals whose credentials vis-a-vis secularism
can never be questioned. One thinks that the gigantic task for promotion
and strengthening of secularism was rather left to the state to deal
with which has culminated in grievous consequences for the fabric of
our society which has still retained its composite heritage despite
heavy odds.
While there seems to be a
fresh need to revisit the whole idea of secularism as it is understood
and practiced in our country, there is also an urgent need to take into
consideration the efforts we - as individuals/ formations/ parties -
need to put in. Is not it high time that one moves forward from the
'Sarva Dharam Samabhav' position to a position of what an intellectual
calls 'militant or uncompromising secularism' where we employ all resources
at our disposal to hold high the banner of secularism.
And looking at the fact that
the purity and pollution based regime of caste as well as gender oppression
practiced by the majority community among the Indians derives sanction
and legitimacy from religion, is it not necessary to integrate 'anti-caste
struggle' and struggle against gender oppression in our fight for secularism.
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