(Speaking in Parliament during a discussion to commemorate BR Ambedkar’s birth anniversary in 2015, BJD Lok Sabha MP Tathagata Satpathy made a case for an areligious governance system. His argument offers a counter-view and perhaps a less radical solution to Union MoS Anant Kumar Hegde’s proposal to do away with the idea of ‘secularism’ in the Indian Constitution.)
The inability to do or find something could, at times, be the mother of transcendence. Maybe that kind of situation was the reason for coining a word such as ‘areligious’, which truly did not hold any meaning for me until recently.
The need arose when discussions on the Constitution, held in Parliament on 26-27 November 2015 – to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of the father of that great piece of literature B R Ambedkar – took place. Speaking in the Lok Sabha on that occasion, on behalf of the Biju Janata Dal, I tried to express certain ideas over which I would not lay full moral claim to have authored.
Ideas, some opine, always exist in the environment. Like catching a falling fruit from a tree, it is up to the to-be claimant how tenderly a certain idea is thought, nurtured and distributed for possible consumption. Areligious as an idea started off thus, in my talk, as simply as any complex thing would. A democratising country, India has pledged itself to democracy, to equality and to justice for all, but in all honesty, I feel democracy is still maturing to assert itself in our social affairs. We as a nation refuse to move beyond our faults and vulnerabilities. It is in these tenets of old ideologies, of past crimes against citizens and our flaws and culpabilities that we do not sincerely reflect our democratic values.
We hold memories and glimpses of the long and tumultuous hardships and about the inequalities our ancestors had to face, yet similar struggles haunt our society this day too. Why have we failed to find real solutions could be a question capable of triggering an endless debate.
Political equality alone cannot and will not secure a better future for our people. As a solution, it should be easy to say, we need to walk beyond our societal values of old and stroll into the future with a positive mindset. India is a pluralistic country and we should be happy in our diversity. In such a society, people from different religions, race, ethnicity and opinions have to make constant efforts to form a strong cohesive atmosphere and rejoice in those very differences.