Thiruvananthapuram: Often, Jawaharlal Nehru has been described as someone committed to secularism. Then would you believe it if someone were to tell you that secularism was not a central ideal for Nehru? Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy at University of Columbia, argued that it was not.
He is in town to attend a two-day National Conference on ‘Secularism and its Discontents’, organised by the Political Science Departments of Kerala University and Government College, Nedumangad, in association with Society for Social Science Research (SSSR).
He said that it never seemed to Nehru that India needed a self-conscious adoption of secularism. For secularism, in the Europe, was a corrective measure to counter religious majoritairianism. And India, characterised by pluralism, which Akeel added was not self-conscious, did not need secularism.
He tried to define secularism with two conditions - a commitment to freedom of religion; a commitment to certain fundamental constitutional rights. Should there be “a clash between the deliverances of the commitment to freedom of religion and the basic ideals enshrined in right, then the latter must be placed first,” he said.
As further proof to the argument, he said that when there were political conflicts between Muslims and Hindus, Nehru expressed dismay and called these anomalous events. Nehru believed these could be undermined with a focus on loftier politics.
