We keep on hearing about religious sentiments being hurt. The clergy of all religious communities complain of being hurt by utterances or acts that may have been made in public by some political leader, or even by a stand- up comedian, which are interpreted by them as offensive to their respective religious beliefs. The majoritarian Hindu religious community now patronized by the ruling BJP, is most vociferous and active in picking up any utterance as an excuse for damning it as `hurting Hindu sentiments.’ The latest instance is their outburst against the disparaging comments made by a Tamilnadu legislator about Sanatan Dharma. Before coming later to a discussion on the merits or demerits of Sanatan Dharma, let us examine the roots of the controversy.
What are `religious sentiments’ ? Apparently, they are the beliefs enshrined in the respective scriptures of these various religious denominations, along with the practices that they follow . But don’t some of these beliefs and practices violate the principles of human rights guaranteed by modern laws which are shaped by scientific reasoning ? For instance, the practice of child marriage is sanctioned in Hindu religious texts. Although banned under the law, it is carried out with impunity accompanied by the usual religious rituals by Hindu patriarchal families – thus sentencing the child bride to a life imprisonment in a family, without allowing her to grow up and choose her own partner. Or , take the practice of dowry followed by Hindu families during pre-marital negotiations, which prevails despite being illegal. Disputes over the amount given to the bridegroom’s family, frequently end up with revenge-killing of the bride by the in-laws. But in neither of these cases of violation of laws, the administration is seen to be pro-active in preventing child marriage and dowry, and punishing the culprits who violate the laws. The hidden excuse behind its reluctance is that such intervention may `hurt religious sentiments,’ since these practices are claimed by the priests as rooted to the Hindu religious belief. Such official protection of obscurantist religious practices indicates the total lack of any scientific thinking among the administrators.
The latest instance of Hindu superstitious beliefs and practices being sanctioned even by medical practitioners (who are required to adhere to the Hippocratic oath of scientific treatment) is the trend among expectant parents to have their children delivered by Caesarean operation, so that the hour of their birth aligns with the time of the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22. (THE TIMES OF INDIA, January 19, 2024). Many doctors are carrying out the operation that leads to the premature birth of a child, despite the risks that it involves – just to satisfy the `religious sentiments’ of these parents.
Yet another instance of `religious sentiments’ which are in conflict with human rights is the controversy over the criminalization of triple talaq in the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights in Marriage) Act of 2019. It provoked a lot of outbursts from certain sections of the Muslim community (instigated no doubt by the orthodox clerics) who asserted that Muslim marriages were governed by Islamic laws laid down by the Quran and the Hadith – and hence sacrosanct and beyond the jurisdiction of any law enacted by the state. According to their interpretation, while triple talaq is sanctioned by these sacred religious texts, a victim of triple talaq can restore her marital status only by undergoing a ritual called nikah halala . It is a practice where the woman will have to go through a temporary marriage with another person, spend a fixed period of time with him, and then allowed to re-marry her former husband. While claiming to offer relief to the woman, the clergy are actually reducing her to a pawn in the hands of a patriarchal society. Can this obnoxious practice be defended by any scientific reasoning ?
Similarly, if we examine the beliefs and practices followed by many Christians, we find that some of them violate those human rights which are based on scientific reasoning. For instance, certain passages in the Holy Bible express a misogynist bias against women, like the following: “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2: 11-12). Like the clergymen of Hindu and Muslim communities who impose their patriarchal norms by quoting misogynist diktats from their respective scriptures, Christian priests also take advantage of similar diktats from their holy book, to establish their authority that subjugates women. There have been cases of priests raping nuns and female disciples. Prevalence of such authority quite often allows their male followers to indulge in domestic violence against their wives and daughters. Such incidents have been documented by feminist groups in the West.
We can cite numerous cases of similar disjuncture between religious sentiments and scientific reasoning. In fact, rationalists who challenge religious superstitious practices, pay the price for scientific questioning. Remember how Narendra Dahbolkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh were killed by Hindu religious terrorists, who enjoyed patronage by a supremacist religious order ?
The ridiculous extent of pushing `religious sentiments’.
Defenders of `religious sentiments,’ sometimes descend to a level where they become butts of ridicule. Take for instance, their outburst against a comment made by the NCP MLA Jitendra Awhad of Maharashtra who said that Lord Ram was a non-vegetarian. All hell broke loose with the BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal and other Hindu outfits targeting him. Conceding to their demands, the Mumbai police booked him under Section 295(A) of the IPC for `remarks deemed offensive to religious sentiments’. At the end, he expressed apology, while at the same time stuck to his claim based on the original text of Ramayana, and advised the critics to read it before attacking him. The text that he was referring to was a chapter of the Uttra Kand of Valmiki’s Ramayana, which describes how Rama, after returning to Ayodhya as a king, enjoyed delicious meals of `mangsyam’ (meat), as well as drinking liquor copiously, along with Sita. Curiously enough, Jitendra Awhad’s own party leaders and comrades of the NCP distanced themselves from his comments and refrained from defending him. Is this yet another sign of prioritizing `religious sentiments’ over scientific questioning of mythological narratives – even by political parties who claim to be secular ?
Or, take again the Kerala Catholic Bishop Council’s reaction to a humorous comment made by Saji Cherian, Kerala Minister for Culture. In a sarcastic vein he hit out at the church leaders who attended Narendra Modi’s Christmas party in New Delhi, describing them as a lot having a good time savouring `cake and wine’ there, while their fellow Christians were facing ethnic violence under his party’s government in Manipur. Since cake and wine have religious association in Christian rituals and ceremonies, the Bishop Council claimed that making use of them in a funny style, was an insult to the community’s `religious sentiments.’ Its president Cardinal Mar Baselios Cleemis threatened to shun the state government until the minister relented. Saji Cherian, pressurized by his government, recanted by withdrawing the two words.
The two cases – one from a Right wing controlled state and another from a Left ruled state – illustrate the tendency by the ruling parties to prioritize `religious sentiments’ over scientific thinking. The usual justification trotted out by even secular political parties is that people are religiously inclined, and therefore the political activists have to refrain from raising questions that challenge their `religious sentiments,’ even if such sentiments are opposed to the `scientific temperament’ that is promoted by the Indian Constitution.
The dangerous extent of pushing `religious sentiments’
But while we can laugh off the above cases as ludicrous outbursts of the protectors of `religious sentiments,’ there are other recent demonstrations of their assertion of these sentiments which threaten the right of scientific inquiry that is guaranteed under our Constitution. Take for instance, the offensive launched by the Hindutva outfits against Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya , who in January 2023 quoted some verses from Ramcharitmanas composed by Tulsidas in the 16th century, which justified a varnavadi (casteist) mentality, denigrated lower caste (Shudra) people, and used derogatory language for women.
What is dangerous is that even the administrative machinery is following the model set by the Hindu outfits. It is launching a legal offensive against those who are challenging such discriminatory practices and the use of derogatory language in Ramcharitmanas. In January, 2023, Devendra Pratap who is a medical practitioner and Suresh Singh, a retired army man, came together at a chauk in Lucknow, and burnt a copy of Ramcharitmanas. They were immediately hauled up by the police under the National Security Act. The Allahabad High Court refused to grant them bail.
Let us contrast this with a similar act of burning of a religious holy book by a dissenter. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, on December 25, 1927 in a public gathering at Mahad in coastal Maharashtra, set fire to a copy of Manusmriti (held in reverence by the upper caste Hindus) – in a demonstration of protest against the “institutionalized caste system” that was enshrined in that text. Dr Ambedkar never faced any prosecution from the then administration – which happened to be run by a colonial power. Even after Independence, during the first decades, dissenters who challenged Hindu scriptures enjoyed immunity to a large extent. E.V. Ramasami, who came to be known as Periyar, on August 1, 1956 called upon his followers to burn pictures of Ram on the Madras marina. He rejected Ram as a hypocritical representative of upper-caste Hinduism, and the act of burning was meant to reassert the separate Dravidian identity of the people of south India. Periyar was arrested by the police when he stepped out from his house to head towards the marina. Undaunted by the arrest of their leader, his followers gathered at marina beach and burnt pictures of Ram. Two and a half hours later Periyar was released, and he asked his followers to stop the burning ceremony as he felt that he had succeeded in making his point, and the event had more than fulfilled its purpose (Re: Indian Express. August 2, 1956)
Today, under Modi’s India, dissenters are being put behind bars under newly enacted laws which are more draconian than the colonial-era laws. The space of dissent for those who challenge superstitious beliefs and practices from a scientific point of thinking is growing narrower day by day.
Historical background of the invention of `religious sentiments’
If we look back at the past, we find that the concept of `religious sentiments’ (religious faith entangled with emotional feelings of the devotees) was created by the clergy of all religious denominations to seduce the people to convert to their respective faiths by appealing to their emotional and material desires – promising them a happy family life and a prosperous career in their professions. Thus, religion was brought down from the spiritual level (as advocated by the original founders of the various religious orders) to that of emotional and material level by a clergy in collaboration with the ruling state. Religion became of tool of in their hands to blackmail the common people. They appealed to their emotions and threatened them that if they did not obey the `sentiments’ (in other words `orders’) of the elite, they would be ex-communicated. Thus the term `religious sentiments’ is an euphemism for the term `religious order.’ It is used as an armour in the guise of a sentimental face, put up by the ruling powers to protect their privileges and rights to exploit the lower orders to serve their interests. By codifying certain rules and regulations of behaviour in religious texts (whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian) and imposing them on the populace, the clergy (in alliance with the ruling powers) have institutionalized class and gender discrimination that serve their interests.
Popular tradition of humour at the expense of religious icons
Yet, contrary to the current claim by the Sangh Parivar that any sign of disrespect towards Hindu divinities hurts the `religious sentiments’ of the Hindus, there had been a long popular tradition of jokes coined by the very Hindu populace in different parts of India which target the icons of these adherents of so-called `religious sentiments.’ From their gut level experience of being exploited by the upper castes, the lower orders could make out that these `sentiments’ were imposed upon them as religious diktats by these privileged upper class gentry. They therefore spun jokes about their icons. In Bengal for instance, they chose Ram as their butt of ridicule. Here are a few examples, which became wide-spread enough to be recognized as proverbs in Bengali literature. One lampoons Ram for his fondness for monkeys after losing Sita – “Sita-hara hoye Ram-er Bandorey Ador.” Another again ridicules Ram for his dependence on monkeys – “Kala khelo jato Bandor, Rajya peolo Ramchandar” (The monkeys ate bananas and in exchange gave the kingdom to Ram). Another proverb, of a more recent origin perhaps, attacks those devotees of Ram who kill people – “Ram nam mukhey, chhuri rekhey bukey” (They chant the name of Ram, while waving the dagger from their chests). Incidentally, all the above popular jokes were collected by an eminent Bengali historian Sushil Kumar Dey and brought together in his book Bangla Prabad (Bengali proverbs) way back in 1945.
When we turn to south India, we come across this funny story about Sita’s birth as narrated in a Kannada folklore. Turning upside- down the upper caste dominated narrative (as described in Valmiki’s Ramayana), this story tells us how she was fathered by Ravana (known as Ravula in Kannada) who became pregnant by eating a fruit that was meant for his wife Mandodari. At the end of his nine-month period of pregnancy, Ravana sneezed and out came Sita from his nose ! In Kannada, the word sita means – “he sneezed.” So she was named Sitamma. (Re: A.K. Ramanujan – Three Hundred Ramayanas in Many Ramayanas. Ed. Paula Richman. OUP. 2013).
Coming to modern times, let us recall the film Hare Krishna Hare Ram made in the early 1970s, where a pair of lovers smoke ganja and pay tribute to Ram by singing `Dum maro, dum/Chhut gaiye gham/ Hare Krishna Hare Ram.’ If re-released today, the film is surely to be banned.
A parallel tradition of Indian social reformers who challenged `religious sentiments’
Parallel to this comic tradition of debunking religious icons in popular folklore, all through the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, in different parts of India there emerged a generation of social reformers who were inspired by rationality (or what we describe today as `scientific temper’) and fought against obscurantist `religious sentiments’ and superstitious practices that prevailed among the people under the diktats of the orthodox religious clergy. In 19th century Bengal, Rammohan Roy fought against the practice of sati (spelt as suttee by the English administrators) whereby Hindu widows were burnt alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands). He compelled the government to ban it. He campaigned against the practice of polygamy among the Hindu Brahmin aristocracy. He was succeeded by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar who opposed the Hindu orthodoxy’s ban on widow remarriage, and rescued several Hindu widows from the bondage of austere rituals that they were compelled to follow, by arranging their marriage with men who were willing to accept them as their life partners.
While Rammohan and Vidyasagar brought about reforms in Hindu society, some years later at the turn of the 20th century, there emerged from the Bengali Muslim society a brave woman who challenged Islamic orthodoxy and introduced reforms that emancipated Muslim women from feudal bondage. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain came from an aristocratic family of landlords and was married to a bureaucrat. After her husband’s death, she established the Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School in Calcutta in 1911 and encouraged Muslim families to send their daughters there for education in modern science and literature. In 1916 she set up a women’s organization called Anjaman Khaoateene Islam, through which she campaigned against the patriarchal system of polygamy and triple talaq, and the customs that confined Muslim women behind the purdah. It was no smooth sailing for her, as the religious heads of her community accused her of violating the Islamic law of Sharia.
Similarly, in Maharashtra in the mid- 19th century, Jyotirao Phule led a movement opposing the Hindu caste system, and demanding rights for labourers and artisans. He established a school for girls, in a bid to bring them out from the patriarchal confines of their homes. A few years later, Mahadev Govind Ranade started a campaign against child marriage and caste system, and in defence of widow remarriage and women’s education. In the 20th century, it was Babasaheb Ambedkar who lifted this social reform movement to new heights by directly challenging the Brahminical Hindu socio-religious order and calling upon the Dalits to reject it.
At around the same time, in Tamilnadu in south India, E.V. Ramasami (known to be Periyar) played an instrumental role in bringing about social reforms like curbing the dominance of the Brahminical order over the depressed castes. Inspired by him, a new generation of social activists entered the political arena by forming the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazagham) which brought about changes in the lives of these castes and lifted them from the status of poor and socially discriminated communities to that of self-assertive and self-employed people.
In other parts of India also, there were similar attempts by social reformers to purge Hindu society of so-called `religious sentiments’ that violated the fundamental rights of citizens and stood in the way of scientific thinking. All these social reformers who challenged past religious beliefs and practices based their arguments on scientific reasoning – which can be described in the present day terms of our Constitution as “…the spirit of inquiry and reform.” (Section 51 A).
Fate of social reforms in post-Independence India
In post-Independence India, one major attempt at bringing about a social reform was the introduction of the Hindu Code Bill which sought to change Hindu personal laws in order to give more rights to Hindu women on property among other things. It was framed and introduced by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1949. It immediately provoked the orthodox Hindu religious groups, sadhus and politicians to come out in public demonstrations, often violent, who complained that it was an attack on `Hindu Religion and Culture’ – a rhetoric that was to be framed later in the present term `hurting of religious sentiments.’ The RSS organized a public meeting at the Ramlila grounds in Delhi on December 11, 1949 condemning the bill as an `atom bomb on Hindu society,’ burnt effigies of Dr. Ambedkar, and even tried to storm his house in Delhi. Their political spokesman, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee (founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the predecessor of today’s BJP) declared that the bill would `shatter the magnificent structure of Hindu culture.’ Conservative Hindu sections within the ruling Congress party also opposed the bill. As prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, facing such opposition, continued to prevaricate over taking a decision on the bill, Ambedkar in protest, resigned from Nehru’s cabinet.
It took almost a decade for Ambedkar’s dream to be fulfilled. After long debates on the floors of the legislature as well as outside, four laws were enacted in the mid-1950s: (i) Hindu Marriage Act ; (ii) Hindu Succession Act; (iii) Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act; and (iv) Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act. These constitute what is known as the Hindu Code which empowers Hindu women to a large extent to assert their rights. But large sections of women in .the Indian countryside, and even in urban areas are unaware of these laws, or even when they do, they do not have access to legal remedies, as a result of which they continue to suffer from patriarchal oppression and discrimination.
A dichotomy embedded in our Constitution – Right to Freedom of Religion and Duty to develop Scientific temper
The roots of the clash between defenders of `religious sentiments’ and their opponents who challenge their obscurantist practices, lie in our Constitution which has tried to reconcile the two views through two separate sections – Part III which ensures citizens of their Fundamental Rights, and Part IVA under which citizens are obliged to carry out Fundamental Duties. Among the Fundamental Rights are: “…free profession, practice and propagation of religion,” and among Fundamental Duties there is the provision that requires citizens to “develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.”
The fundamental right relating to religious practice (under Section 25) and health is “subject to public order, morality…” As evident from recent history, the supremacist Hindu Sangh Parivar took advantage of this right to put into practice its Ratha Jatra, which left a trail of killings of Muslims all through its journey in the 1990s. It finally led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid by the Sangh Parivar kar-sevaks, who claimed their right to possess this site merely on the basis of mythological stories, ignoring the long-standing historical evidence of it being a mosque for years. Here is yet another instance of how `religious sentiments’ overpower scientific reasoning t.hat challenges religious myths. The assault on Babri Masjid was not a spontaneous popular outburst of `religious sentiments’. The sentiments were manipulated in a particular direction by the BJP leaders who initiated the Ratha Jatra and instigated their followers to demolish the mosque. While asserting their constitutional right to “free profession, practice and propagation of religion,” these leaders did not pay any heed to the other part of that same constitutional Article 25 that requires that their practice must be “subject to public order, morality and health…” Even when accused of such violation of constitutional norms, the BJP leaders and their goons were let
off by the judiciary because of the patronage and privileges that they enjoyed, on the plea of protecting their `religious sentiments.’
Judicial acquiescence in religious obscurantism
The campaign of `hurt religious sentiments’ is carried out by the proponents of religious supremacy to the steps of the judiciary. The `hurt’ members of one particular religious community approach courts and always manage to get verdicts in their favour, even when their practices violate the traditional right of another religious community to the occupancy of a building and its site. The most atrocious example of such judicial religious bias was the 2019 Supreme Court verdict that allowed the majoritarian Hindu religious forces to build a Ram temple on a site which traditionally hosted a Muslim mosque that was destroyed by these very same forces. In a strange self-contradictory verdict, while acknowledging that the demolition was in “violation of law,” the judges ordered that the site should be handed over to a trust to be created by the government to build Ram Janmabhumi. Quite predictably, the trust was filled by th.e BJP government with the same people who acted in “violation of law.”
Judicial bias in favour of Hindu religious symbols (like the cow) often descends to the level of encouraging superstitious beliefs. Take for instance the statement made by Justice Mahesh Chandra Sharma on the eve of his retirement from Rajasthan High Court on May 31, 2007, when he stated that the cow was the only animal that “inhaled and exhaled oxygen and had miraculous properties of destroying germs and premature ageing.” Given this unscientific belief of his, one can well shudder at the type of judgments that he might have passed during his tenure.
The moot question therefore is: are our honourable judges carrying out the constitutional fundamental duty to “ develop the scientific temper…” ? Instead, they appease the obscurantist majority Hindu clergy by conceding to their unscientific demands on the plea of protecting their fundamental right to propagate and practice religion. They are subverting the historical tradition of social reforms launched by pioneers of scientific thinking.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
