It wasn't handled as well as one would have expected. We have a broader culture of purity. People in power can get away just with anything. They don't feel they have a sense of responsibility to everybody. Sometimes they feel they have more responsibility to their constituencies. People in power should never do that -- that is to forget their responsibilities and their obligations. Obviously, what happened in Gujarat is completely unacceptable. It should not have been allowed but it was allowed to happen. That was completely unacceptable in any civilised society.

Would you say secularism is well and thriving in India?

I wouldn't say everything is robust and healthy. I am saying we have the physical resources, constitutional and legal resources to overcome all these problems.

What we need is the will of politicians and the motivations of the wider intelligentsia to push the politicians into taking and resolving issues rather than magnifying them. I must emphasize secularism is a great achievement of India from which everybody can learn. It does not follow from this it works very well; sometimes it is very weak, sometimes it fails and it saddens us. But it is very satisfying because it finally does work.

Many Western societies are facing these religious issues. These societies have made themselves religiously homogenous in the 16th century either by pushing out people with whom they had religious differences or by getting rid of people from other religions. It is only after that that the concepts of liberalism, democracy and constitutionalism came into being.

They have now to live up to the equality of freedom, justice and democracy and they have cope with the religious diversity in the context of these ideas. This is something that many Western societies have not done so far. India has been doing it for 60 years, if not more. India has had religious diversity for hundreds of years.

With the principals of equality, freedom and justice, of respect for others -- these are in the Constitution -- and we have been trying to cope with religious diversity within these principles much longer. Many Western societies today that are facing problems should learn from the Indian experience -- good or bad. These societies have to learn from Indian secularism. Most of these societies are very individualistic. All the rights are given to individuals.

Image: Students of Jamia Millia University hold placards featuring images of US President George Bush, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray as they shout anti-government slogans during a gathering in New Delhi. They were demanding a judicial inquiry into a shootout in New Delhi on September 23, and the subsequent arrest of two University students.
Photograph: Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: How reservations fracture Hindu society

Back

|

Next