I am Secular

I know, the moment I say that I am secular, i will be judged. Infact a lot more than a nobody like me needs to be, but nonetheless it will happen. A few would think what is the need to state something so trivial about yourself, someone would think here comes another (pseudo)secular, bloody arm chair intellectual as if we didn't have many of them already.Few will be downright hostile and question my allegiance to the 'family' and the 'party', ain't all those secular types suppose to be congress wallahs after all ?


But I do stick my neck out and say that I am only secular when it comes to my beliefs about my own religion and other religion. Isn't this what being secular meant to be in the first place ? I believe that all the religions and people who practice should co-exist peacefully in our society. I also think it is important for our future and the only sustainable strategy for human survival.


To clarify a few things, I was born a Hindu, because of the simple reason that my parents were Hindu. When I grew up and started making sense of things, I learnt all the chants (gayatri mantra, hanuman chaalisa, morning chants or praatah smaran and even meal chants or bhojan mantras). I learnt about my gods partly from my parents and mostly from magazines like Nandan, ChandaMama and Amar Chitra Katha. I had faith in the divine power as well (at least I think so ) till a point of time. Then somewhere along the line, I lost that faith and I stopped being particularly religious. I would like to quote some earth shattering event/ incidence for my loss of faith, but I can't. It was a gradual thing and to be honest with you I really can't pin point the moment when I crossed the line from being a believer to a non-believer. As I grew older, I realized that I am lucky to be born in a religion where there is place for even non-believers like me. My parents never forced me to be religious, all my relatives know that I don't believe in religious practices and apart from the mild and playful scolding, it has not been a major issue. "Aaap jo prasaad samajh ke doge woh main mithaai samajh ke kha loonga" (What you gave me as the Prasadam, I will eat it as sweet). So far it has been a peaceful co-existence and I am grateful for that.


Collective identities (i.e. religion or caste) takes precedence in our mind when there are too many people to know individually. Hence, in any city / town with significant size, these identities become important and most people (or kids) brought up in such places tend to put inordinate amount of emphasis on such identities.In that sense I guess I was fortunate enough to be born in a rather small town.I had muslim neigbhours as well as hindu neighbours. As it happens, I had many friends and used to go to everyone house. When you are a child and live in a neighbhourhood where walls are shared between houses, you don't differentiate people based on their religion. We would play around, fight with each other and will know each other parents. I used to call my neighbourhood friend's mother "Ammy" because that is what he used to call her, and I wasn't alone in doing that. She would scold us and give sweets to us as well. If I fell sick she would come over and give my mother some advice about home medicine.My mother would do the same if my friend got sick. Mind you, all the families were acutely aware of our religious differences, the elderly would hardly come and eat something at each other places.Nevertheless it was just individual choice and people who chose otherwise never got anything other than a mild scolding.I feel that people in those days didn't use to fuss so much about inane things.These things were important to them but not so much that they would create a ruckus or kill people for it. I guess what you see in childhood stays with you. I was no different. Hence for me, relgious identity of people have always been insignificant. Hence I call myself a secular person. This is also one of the very few things I feel very passionately about, because it seems so right to me. It seems to me the only sensible way.


I am one of the billion indians who can believe in anything he wants to. By definition, I chose to believe in the equality of all religions hence I am secular. It is not a show of allegiance to a political outfit, or ignorance / arrogance about my national history. It is simply a personal choice, don't read too much into it.I hate it when people equate being secular with being another kind of communal and term it as pseudo-secularism.No matter now improbable they believe it is, there ARE people in the world who do not take theirs or anyone's religion so seriously. For them religious belief are not much different from the kind of food one like to eat. It is simply not fair to judge anyone based on their preference for chicken curry and rice or their religion.


I can understand why people would not believe the proclaimed secular stance of a political party. The politics of ideals and values is long gone and today every single thing being done/proclaimed by a political party to gain/retain votes. However, people like me have nothing to gain by being secular except that it is part of our belief system. It doesn't cost us anything neither it gives us anything, but we still choose to be secular. So next time if I say I am secular, my only hope is that you would believe me without any apprehensions. You would know that I am a simple citizen of my country trying to live the life I want and believing in the things which I consider important. I have no ulterior agenda, sympathies or allegiance to any political outfit.


I am secular because I don't judge people based on their religion. Period.