A perverted doctrine

Sir, - Genuine secularism, as distinguished from secular humanism, signifies piety and cosmopolitanism. This would seem to be the essence of Mr. V. Sundaram's article, ``A fine blend of religion and culture (TheHindu, Open Page, Jan. 18)''. It is indeed a wonderful sermon on uncompromising realism which has come not a day too soon. But a skewed variety as inflicted on the masses by Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi is full of aridity and disenchantment. At any rate, it is merely anti-Hindu in practice. Mr. Sundaram has fearlessly excoriated it.

It is worth recollecting the pronouncements of the late Chief Justice of India, Koka Subba Rao: ``Briefly stated, the Indian Constitution seeks to rationalise religion, accepts the doctrine of tolerance and confers the right of freedom of religion on every citizen, personal and corporate, subject to the laws of social control. The state is not separated from religion, but is made the main social instrument for creating conditions for the sprouting of universal religious spirit in our country. The constitutional aim is spiritualism, and not atheism, tolerance and not fanaticism.

``Unfortunately, after independence... secularism has come to mean atheism instead of spiritual renaissance. Instead of religion deluging the land with spiritual ideas and unifying the nation and strengthening the moral fibre, it has helped to divide the country. The political attempt to implant the quixotic tree of perverted doctrine of secularism of foreign extraction in the religious soil of India has not only failed but in the process has, by weakening religion, deflated the Indian character (Nijalingappa Endowment Lecture 1970-71, Bangalore University)''.

In fine, let not tendentious politicians through their insidious, invidious, demagogic and disruptive innovations erode the bedrock of liberalism and pluralism. Let us switch over to the usage of the positive term ``cosmopolitanism'' from the negatively-charged ``secularism''.

P. R. Krishna Narayanan,

Kochi

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