To.

The Indian Express –Citizens for Peace Annual Essay Writing

Competition.

Topic: A Secular Rethink.

There has been lot done for sustaining the Secular democratic institutions in our
country, though nothing significant achieved from that. When I think of incidents like
Babri Masjid demolition, Godhra carnage, attack on Akshardham temple, attack on Ram
Mandir in Ayodhya or day-to-day massacre in the valley of Kashmir; I really feel shame
of it.

As a person I perceive secularism is a state of mind, which consciously accept the

reality that the way we don’t have five fingers similar to each other, no two persons are
similar when it comes to thinking. And even though we have five different fingers, they
exist
in perfect harmony, similarly though we have diversity of religion, faith or ideology, we
should live in harmony. And it is us who consciously accept diversity as a compliment
not a coarse!

I look back and think that the dreams of our stalwarts are not fully realized by the
institutions which were establish to make our democracy a truly secular, non religious
society. There are numerous incidences in last fifty seven years where we see that the
secular fabric of our democratic society has been damaged, I am not saying that our
nation is not secular or farce democracy, but infect we are not able to infuse truly secular
values in each and every section of the society, so it is very necessary to preach the
secular ethics to all our fellow citizens through NGOs, rather than just accepting
secularism merely an affair of state policy.

When it comes to building confidence between two societies, sects or the different
sections of the community the NGOs can play crucial role in terms of creating truly
sustainable relations between the different sects and section of the society.

So for this century where India is going to become global player in terms of
regional power as well as the economic superpower in the Asian continent, our internal
harmony and co-ordination between the different sections of the society will have major
impact in achieving the goal of becoming the regional super power and becoming world’s
largest non religious democratic republic in true sense.

We need to have global vision and thinking in terms of human-to-human relations

rather then resolving conflict on the basis of majority or minority for the interest of
regional politics or vote politics!

To achieve this goal very first we will have to solve the problem of language, till
today there are incidence of not accepting Hindi as the national language or the insult of
National Anthem on the basis of language, it is really discouraging that some sections of
our society still not ready to accept our national values, there might be their own reasons
for doing so, because the message of the democratic institutions still not reached there, or
one way or the other they are not satisfied the way the developments have taken place in
and around our country.

The challenges of the future has the starting point in the present, so this is the time
we take up this great responsibility to build confidence in each other to create a truly
secular, democratic India and become the torch barer of the world we live in.

According to me to achieve the goal of reviving our secular democracy and

consolidating India’s role as the global player in the emerging new world order, we need
to go to the core of the problems.

For example we do not have unified structure of education, our educational

institutions are very different from state to state, the curriculum itself is different in
different states, when we talk about north the education gives stress on national language
as well as English, where in south people are not ready to speak Hindi. They give
importance to the regional language and English. In other terms the south Indians are
deliberately been isolated for the local political interests from our nation’s core ideology.

To solve this problem we need to form a committee, which have representatives

from all the states and need to pass a resolution that the Hindi will be taught compulsorily
as the language of the nation, and the regional language will be compulsory as the
language of instruction from pre-primary to H.S.C. education, and English will be the
optional for any student up to H.S.C. After that in the colleges the medium of instruction
will be Hindi or English both so one can choose the medium of education according to
his/her wish and priority.

This will completely eradicate the educational difference of the different section
of the society and state, and every one will be able to understand the thoughts of each
other, which will allow every individual to understand the feelings of his/her fellow
citizens. There must be eradication of different streams of education like C.B.S.E. and
S.B.S.E. to overcome the psychological discrimination between two individuals on the
basis of levels of education. Where we all are equal then why we need different level of
education! This way we will be able to eradicate psychological differences from our
growing population, who is going to represent our nation in the future!

The second equally important issues which needs to be addressed is the issue of
religious differences. When we are lawfully and institutionally nonreligious democratic
nation than why should we abstain ourselves from practicing that values in our day-to-
day life! Why we are turning our back to the grim consequence, which we are going to
witness if we refrain our self from practicing the nonreligious values. This is the issue,
which directly relates to each and every individual of our nation. To eradicate religious
discrimination in the different parts of our nation, or favoring certain faith of the selected
section of our society, or creation or solving issues on the basis of minority or majority,
we will have to fight the evil of opportunist ideology, which has been infested in all of us
as a human being, which always place personal interest first and moral responsibility at
last. There is no relevance in it due to our nonreligious constitution, which strictly
denounces the discrimination on the basis of religion or minority or majority, we all are
equal in terms of our national constitution. To achieve this goal first we will have to be
united as the society as a whole and stop certain leaders to gain power in our state as well
as the national politics who are preaching or favoring certain religious values or favoring
certain section of the society on the basis of religion. By this way we can stop misuse of
power and government mercenaries to entertain certain section of the society to gain
power.

Once this objective is achieved I assure you that we will definitely be able to
sustain our nonreligious democratic society in the future, which directly favor our aim to
be global player in the new emerging world order, and to become all time great example
of truly secular democratic nation.

There are other issues which attracts my attention to be addressed here, which can
harm our international respect are; social security for the women and senior citizens and
reservations in the job on the basis of casts and tribes. According to me to establish a
healthy and free society, we really need to address the burning issue of women rights. We
need to rise against the political interests of certain political parties and need to catalyze
national debate on this issue, and need to create a judicial structure in which women of
our nation treated equally in terms of her civil rights and social security. In certain
sections of our society still today women are not accepted as the equal human being
among men, but merely a thing of possession, there are day-to-day instances of dowry
and selling of woman for the sake of money. It is really shameful.

According to me we need to have a judicial structure for the women, where a

women have right to choose the unified civil code for her married life or the law of her
own society/sect or belief system during her marriage, and she would be treated
according the chosen law for the rest of her life.

Then there is issue of social security for the senior citizens, to create a healthy and
progressive society; any nation has to address this important issue of looking after the
senior citizens of the society. Day by day the joint family system is getting weaker, due to
this our senior citizens are really vulnerable to live rest of their life. There are EPF And
PPF for public sector ant private sector employees but it is not sufficient. Only a very
small section of our society is secure under such schemes and when you look at it
seriously there is also great divide in the pension scheme holder, normally a government
or semi government employee gets enough pension to live respectful life after retirement,
where as the salary of private sector is merely fifty percent or less than it compare to the
government or semi government’s salary for the similar responsibility, this great divide
directly affects on the amount of pension, and also private sector does not offer lifetime
secure job like government job . So the percentage of the benefiting is very law!
 And when it comes to job reservations we need to financially help the students
from underprivileged casts and tribes during education to get better education instead of
providing job purely on the basis of certain castes or tribes.

Certainly these issues have not any direct relevance to the prevailing issue of
secularism but when we talk about reviving secular democratic values the empowerment
of women, security of senior citizens and equal opportunity for every individual plays
greater role as the moral buster. Look at the west, they positively addressed these issues
and today they are yielding their great benefits.

As an individual I believe that equal opportunity and social security without any
discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or religion itself refrain any individual to
interfere in any one else’s personal affairs or indulge in harming any individual’s feeling,
which ultimately creates free society,

The root of any problem, unrest, or hostility lies in three basic human desires;
namely attraction, wealth and popularity. Every one is hungry of these three basic desires
in more or less pattern and imbalance of any one in the society creates all these unrest.
Whether it is sectarian violence, misuse of power, lake of confidence between the two
societies etc. One may feel that how an individual problem can become the problem of an
entire society? But when you look at the chain of crackers you will realize this fact, once
you ignite a cracker; the entire chain of the crackers get ignited and starts blasting on by
one the same way, the unrest starts from an individual and it spreads in entire society. For
example a person stand in a square and scream against a certain religion the similar king
of him will be gathered in front him and to react to these mob another mob of criticized
religion’s follower will be activate to counter their opponents.

So each and every one of us as the citizens of this great nation called India should
learn respect other one’s religion, sect or belief on the humanitarian ground, should learn
from the nature around us that there is no other religion of trees excerpt sheltering their
refugee and no lions of Africa have different religion from their Indian counter part, they
all speak one language, eat similar type of meal and breathe the same air which equally
available every where in this beautiful world!

There is only one religion called humanity, which teach us tolerance to others,
which I think is the single preach which can lead our nation to the unshakable position of
global power in terms of individual freedom which itself reflect secularism.

Essay by Bakul V. Valambhiya