Secularism and Liberal Democracy

#18 Biological evolution cannot be translated this easily into society and its setup. The way the world system is set up today with its rampant militarism and environmental depletion is not ensuring survival but mutual destruction. The father of social darwinism, Herbert Spencer envisioned that militarism would give way to industrial societies as capitalism progressed. This has proved to be quite incorrect looking at the post world war 2 era. Also Social Darwinism has been a tool of bigotry and racism with its proponents claiming that the higher evolved were the european ``white`` races and as a result their policy recommendations have been to restrict and control other races- throughout the early history of the US and even today made popular by the ``Bell Curve`` book by Murray and Herrnstein. Also, religion cannot be neatly classified under a biological label, simply because of the diversity of teachings and functions of various religions, and the prediction of the evolutionists that as rational societies grew religion would wither away has also not borne out.

#16 by asfand on November 28, 2005 2:59pm PT


Where is this “collective sense” coming from? Do people just wake up one morning and decides that thou shalt not kill?


It comes from evolution...People realize that it`s in their interest to live a civilized society where killing is a no-no..This helps them and their loved ones survive and thus propagating their line..

When this order break down, people resort to looting and killing..like gujrat and NOLA..

Religion is another darwinian construct..don`t kill because big man in sky says it`s a no-no is an easier sell than explaining the need for an ordered society..

#16 siddiqui sirjee,
its impossible to pin down hindus using that method..they just dont care enough about their own scriptures. they will do the shrug and say (1) so what (2) that was then (3) some mumbo jumbo about smriti-shruti etc.

bottomline, scriptures as an argument wont get you anywhere.

Dear Bhasker

You are still not trying to answer the basic question: Where does morality comes from when a constitution is framed?

You tried to answer in your article by saying that “When individuals are like this, societies build up a collective sense of right and wrong. Over time, these right-wrong calculations change because of changing environments, technology, etc.”

Where is this “collective sense” coming from? Do people just wake up one morning and decides that thou shalt not kill? And over time “right-wrong calculations change”, so something that is right today might be wrong tomorrow and vice versa perhaps? So in India if it is illegal to marry your own daughter today, could become legal tomorrow because according to you “right-wrong calculations change” over time? Give me a break.

Your comment “If a constitution is explicitly based on religion, then it no longer remains a constitution, but becomes a holy book.”

Constitutions are based on religion. Without religion you have no basis to start a constitution. Even Indian constitution. There is no such thing as purely secular constitution period because MORALITY COMES FROM RELIGION ONLY.

Your comment “I am a Hindu, I have 86 million gods (give or take a few million here or there) to worry about, So I go about asking the statement to change to “In Gods we trust” or to define which one. See the problem? I will be lynched at the worst and publicly tarred and feathered at the best.”

I seriously refer back you to sacred Hindu scriptures. Contrary to general Hindu beliefs that there are more then one gods, there is ONE GOD ONLY.

According to Bhagvad Gita:
``Those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires surrender unto demigods and follow the particular rules and regulations of worship according to their own natures.``
[Bhagavad Gita 7:20]

The Gita states that people who are materialistic worship demigods i.e. ‘gods’ besides the True God.

Similarly in Upanishads

``Ekam evadvitiyam``
``He is One only without a second.``
[Chandogya Upanishad 6:2:1]

``Na casya kascij janita na cadhipah.``
``Of Him there are neither parents nor lord.``
[Svetasvatara Upanishad 6:9]

``Na tasya pratima asti``
``There is no likeness of Him.``
[Svetasvatara Upanishad 4:19]

Asfand Siddiqui
Sacramento CA

Re: # 3
HP, Most of your points are answered by #10 Netizen but you are totally right about Indian Constitution defining who is hindu and who is not. This does not make sense if the consititution is supposed to be secular. It should not be allowed to judge about peoples religion. Indian Constitution will be truly secular if law treates every Indian citizen equally. This will not happen until there is a Uniform Civil Code.
Because the Indian Constitution defines who is hindu it should not be considered truly secular.

Re: # 13

Why do we need religious reference for everything? Can`t there be reasons
based on collective human intelligence and wisdom accumulated so far?
It has been learned over the ages that it is harmful for an adult to marry a minor, so
it has been disapproved. One does not have to have a religious reference to assert that.
IMHO, religious edicts are nothing but nuggets of human intelligence and wisdom
learned over the ages backed by divinity to make them authoritative.

Re #11,

So, how would you draw the line without any religious reference?

Doesn`t this support the argument that you can never truly separate religion from state?

Re: # 10

My guess is state of PunchAap.

Re: # 9

This can be endless. Then somebody will bring up a proposition to allow marriage to a
minor and that will be defeated and Texas will be declared non-secular, somebody will prop
a propostion to allow marriages to animals and that will be defeated and Texas will
be declared non-secular. There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
So one can bring up such thousands of scenarios and claim, Texas (or any state) is
non-secular because this and that is not possible.

Re: # 3

``India does claim to be secular but is that country really secular?``

i don`t think they even know how to defien secularism.

``In India, people are counted in censuses based on their religions and it is an important factor in the Indian politics. .``

age, sex too are other criteria. so indian gov. is sexiest too???

``In fact the whole Indian politics revolves exclusively around religion``

more than religion, it is caste/community.


``The religious symbols are prominently displayed in the Indian government buildings ``

i do agree you will see mandirs in police station, what religious symbol did you observe in gov. buildings?

``India is the only secular country in world that allowed partition of a province based on separate religions.``

which one...

Re #8,
``Gays could not convince majority Texans to vote their
way. Does that make Texas a non-secular state?``

Yes it does! In this one respect it does.

Gays have been denied the right to practice their beliefs (i.e. enter into marriage) based on the religious beliefs of the majority. How is this secular?

Re: # 6

The keyword is secular democracy. A kingdom can be secular, a dictatorship can
be secular.

It is possible that a Gay union is not considered marriage. That is democracy at work.
Like it happened in Texas just a few weeks ago where a proposition to grant Gay union
status of marriage was defeated. Gays could not convince majority Texans to vote their
way. Does that make Texas a non-secular state? I do not think so.

If tomorrow Shankaracharya proclaims, only a Hindu will be Law Minister because India is
a majority Hindu state and it becomes a law, I think India will cease to be secular state
at that point.
Until such laws, favaouring one religion over the other do not exist in Indian constitution, India is a secular country/state IMHO.

The U.S. constitution when it was drafted was anything but humanistic- it represented the world according to wealthy white men (to the exclusion of women and African Americans)- these wealthy white men, slave owners and oppressors, as often as not used religion to further their political gains and abandoned it at will when it was not feasible, to the exclusion of women. The constitution of the U.S. is full of religious terminology and the effects of that de-facto was to religiously institutionalize racism, bigotry and sexism. Taking one recent case of the supreme court and ignoring its entire history of bending and flexing the constitution at will does not do justice to your article. Further, there is no such thing as a ``liberal democracy`` in the U.S., what exists is a two party- rich white man- oligarchy- the elites that rule over the U.S. , its economic, state and military institutions- the BIG THREE- are a particular social type (http://elite.asadi.org), they are predominantly white males, and they are predominantly wealthy.

Justifying the criminal invasion of Iraq and widespread human suffering as a result of that by stating that a ``constitution`` is being framed and then blaming religion for the mixup is not much different to the propaganda we often hear on FOX NEWS.

For further information about the supreme court, I recommend this article by Howard Zinn (attached under)

``It`s Not up to the Court
By Howard Zinn
November 2005 Issue

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O`Connor. This has caused a certain consternation among people we affectionately term ``the left.``

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to pieces of Roberts`s confirmation hearings was enough to induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans, these are all members of the same exclusive club. Roberts`s proper ``credentials,`` his ``nice guy`` demeanor, his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not an ``ideologue`` (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an ``ideologue``?) were clearly more important than his views on equality, justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times reported, Roberts ``summed up his philosophy.`` He had been asked, ``Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?`` (Would any candidate admit that he was on the side of ``the big guy``? Presumably serious ``hearings`` bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: ``If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy`s going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy`s going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.``

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice should abide by its provision in Article VI that not only the Constitution itself but ``all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.`` This includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees held in Guantanamo for years without trial were protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and ``the rule of law.`` The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go, claiming that there had been no declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress ignored the First Amendment`s right to free speech by passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war, the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by all those Senators--Democrats and Republicans--who solemnly invoke as their highest concern ``the rule of law.`` The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine right of the king.

The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all, it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was the initiative of brave families in the South--along with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold War, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored people all over the world--that brought a sudden enlightenment to the Court.

The Supreme Court in 1883 had interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment so that nongovernmental institutions hotels, restaurants, etc.-could bar black people. But after the sit-ins and arrests of thousands of black people in the South in the early Sixties, the right to public accommodations was quietly given constitutional sanction in 1964 by the Court. It now interpreted the interstate commerce clause, whose wording had not changed since 1787, to mean that places of public accommodation could be regulated by Congressional action and be prohibited from discriminating.

Soon this would include barbershops, and I suggest it takes an ingenious interpretation to include barbershops in interstate commerce.

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves.

This is not to say that we should ignore the courts or the electoral campaigns. It can be useful to get one person rather than another on the Supreme Court, or in the Presidency, or in Congress. The courts, win or lose, can be used to dramatize issues.

On St. Patrick`s Day, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, four anti-war activists poured their own blood around the vestibule of a military recruiting center near Ithaca, New York, and were arrested. Charged in state court with criminal mischief and trespassing (charges well suited to the American invaders of a certain Mideastern country), the St. Patrick`s Four spoke their hearts to the jury. Peter DeMott, a Vietnam veteran, described the brutality of war. Danny Burns explained why invading Iraq would violate the U.N. Charter, a treaty signed by the United States. Clare Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian. Teresa Grady spoke to the jury as a mother, telling them that women and children were the chief victims of war, and that she cared about the children of Iraq. Nine of the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and the judge declared a hung jury. (When the federal government retried them on felony conspiracy charges, a jury in September acquitted them of those and convicted them on lesser charges.)

Still, knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture--the media, the educational system--tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan`s dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice Roberts or the ones to come on Judge Alito.

That is why the St. Patrick`s Four need to be supported and emulated. That is why the GIs refusing to return to Iraq, the families of soldiers calling for withdrawal from the war, are so important.

That is why the huge peace march in Washington on September 24 bodes well.

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, ``Equal Justice Before the Law,`` have always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence--an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--be fulfilled.

Shishapa #4: `` think one should consider whether a state has formulated any laws that favour or give advantage_to one religion over the other. If a state has not done that, I think it is secular. I think USA, UK, India to name few, all fit that criterion.``

I don`t think this can be used as a criteria...........

The criteria for secularism, is actually, whether the State uses religion to formulate any laws. Secularism is based on the separation of Church and State. Secularism is not, as it is incorrectly interpreted, a mechanism of trying to create balance between citizens practicing different religions. Secularism is not designed to create equality amongst religions. It is supposed to take religion, of any kind, totally out of the State. Secularism, thus, does not purpose multi-religionism (like multi-culturism) at the State level. It, infact, demands athiesm at the State level.

If we use the criteria, you have provided, then where exactly do gays fit in. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism(?), Sikhism, etc. all ban gay marraige. A state could, that consisted of individuals who practiced these religions, conveniently pass a law that gay marriage is illegal. The law would not be giving one religion, ``favor`` over the other, since all the above religions recognize gay marriage as illegal.

However, such a ruling, against gay marriage, would not be secular. It would not be separating Church from State. It would be incorporating all religions, equally, into the State. It would be a religious ruling acceptable to all straight folks in a society. But unacceptable to all homosexuals.............The State would have, in a completely non-secular manner, used multiple religions, to violate the secular rights of gays.............

People, incorrectly, try to present secularism, liberalism and democracy as synonomous concepts. They tend to include humanism in there as well. Anyone who studies these concepts, philosophically, as opposed to ideologically, can easily ascertain that they are all mutually exclusive, i.e. a govt. can be secular, but illiberal, non-democratic and inhumane. At the same time, it can be secular, liberal, democratic and inhumane. Or secular, illiberal, non-democratic but humane. And any other permutation of the above four.......

Secularism is nothing more than separating the Church from the State. That is it. An evil killer can form a secular govt., which is completely inhumane. On the other hand, a secular govt. can be the most humane also. Unfortunately, when people start equating humanism, exclusively with secularism or with religion, they become ideological, and thus are unable to take into account the views of anyone, different from themeselves. The, otherwise, grey world, becomes black and white to them.

There is, infact, no purely secular govt. in the world. All govts. exists within the grey areas between religion and no religion, in the state. The same person who will argue for Ahmadi rights, under secularism, will become religious and oppose gay marriage. When, in fact, the number of gays in any society is far higher than the number of Ahmadis.

This is where societies, specifically Western societies, sit today, i.e. trying to figure out, if they are going to completely separate Church from State or not. Canada has allowed gay marraige - the deciding issue in Western secularism, today (much like the Ahmadi issue in Pakistan). Europe is allowing it, as well. However, the USA is vehemently agaisnt it. Any US candidate pushing it, cannot get elected as President.

Under secularism, the State should have absolutely no say in who can get married to whom. Yet marriage - the cornerstone of any society - is still heavily legislated on the basis of religion. Marraige - a completely religious concept - should, in fact, have nothing legislated around it, in any secular society.

Marraige, and other similar issues, are now forcing the Western societies to decide on the real issue, which is at the core of the debate, at a philosophical level, i.e. is there a God or not. Should society function, assuming there is a God, or should it function as if there isn`t one. Secularism is really an in-between, ``convenient`` state, which tries to satisfy both groups. But in the long run, it can satisfy neither.

To say that there is a God, and He got His rules correct in the personal sphere, but screwed up in the public sphere, doesn`t make sense. What kind of God is He, if He could only get things right 50% of the time. This is what will drive the social outlook of people in Western societies. Either they will tilt more towards God or tilt completely away, towards athiesm, or towards a religionless concept of a Creator (or a creational force, like nature etc.).

We are already seeing the changes. Europe is becoming more and more athiest, and thus moving towards pure secularism. Church attendance and a general belief in religion is decreasing exponentially. There is a concept of a Creator, but nothing more. USA is going in the other direction. The only secular institution left in the USA is the judiciary. The legislative and the executive are no longer secular. In addition, nearly half the population, of the USA wants religion in politics, i.e. openly opposes secularism.

Overtime, it will become more and more difficult for the USA Supreme and State Courts to make decisions against Ten Commandments as well as in favor of benchmark secular issues like gay marraige. Specifically because the types of judges being promoted to the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, it will become quite commonplace and very easy for European courts to make the above decision, as the European society moves more and more, at a social level, towards a non-religious or athiest society.

The real debate, thus, is not Church being in or out of State. The real debate, philosophically speaking, is whether there should even be a Church or not. Is there a God or isn`t there One? As long as there is a Church in personal life, it will continue to show up in the State, through backdoors (like elections, pressure groups, personal beliefs of judges etc.)..............

I think one should consider whether a state has formulated any laws that favour or give
advantage_to one religion over the other. If a state has not done that, I think it is secular.
I think USA, UK, India to name few, all fit that criterion.