Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and Muslims

Secularism Debate

The recent re-emergence of Charlie Hebdo on the global stage with the killing of a French schoolteacher by a Chechen refugee and the subsequent stabbing to death of three in an ‘Islamic terrorist attack’ in Nice, France, raises some fundamental questions on key liberal values that have shaped Western societies as well as our own Constitution. At the heart of the matter is ‘individual freedoms vs community beliefs.’ Can an individual’s freedom of speech be defended even if it is used to attack the foundational beliefs of a religion and its worshippers? Or should a European/Christian country restrict the rights enjoyed by its citizens so as not to offend the immigrant Muslim population? And can Islamic immigrants living in Europe refuse to integrate into the dominant cultural tradition and seek to impose Sharia laws on their own community?

Would French President Macron have defended Charlie Hebdo’s freedom of expression if it had suggested that Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’ was right? Or would it be considered ‘blasphemy’? But how can there be ‘blasphemy’ in the absence of ‘State Religion’? In most European states, Anti-Semitism is the new blasphemy as per the London Agreement of August 8, 1948. In France, a newspaper editor or journalist could be imprisoned for up to five years and penalised Euro 45,000 under the Gayssot Act of 1990. Isn’t it a restriction on the freedom of speech and expression? Of course, it is. But it is considered ‘just and reasonable by the majority’ Christian community which has witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust (1933 -45).

Is Macron right in considering Muslim immigrants as threatening ‘French civilizational values’? And how does it affect India, another democracy based on liberal values, that has a large Muslim population?

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, set by the Constituent Assembly of 1789, defines: “Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others: Thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.” So, this liberty is not absolute; it should not harm others.

Our Constitution in Article 19 states that ‘all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression….’ The Supreme Court in its 2016 verdict in Kanhaiya Kumar vs State of Delhi stated that this right is co-related to fundamental duties envisaged under Article 51A, which lists 11 normative restraints. Thus, our Constitution provides for this right with clearly prescribed restrictions and would have certainly frowned upon any such misuse as seen in France.

The declaration of support by Prime Minister Modi to President Macron’s views and actions is in line with the known proclivities of our government in the matter. The present dispensation would not only support Macron but also see the complete justification for their own actions in suppressing the rights of Muslim minorities in India. They see this as part of rising Islamic radicalism and militancy that should be put down with full force of the State or else, they say, the majority will be reduced to minority status in their own homeland. They also see the ‘terrorist attacks’ on innocent civilians as confirming their long-held beliefs. This fits in with their oft-expressed syllogism that ‘since all terrorists are Muslims, all Muslims are terrorists’. That’s a simple logical fallacy of mistaken categories.

The events in France further validate the neatly formulated worldview that Hindu Rashtra is meant only for those who regard this land as their ‘pitr-bhoomi’ and also their ‘punya-Bhoomi’. Since Muslims regard Mecca as their punya-bhoomi, they should go there, rather than live here, so goes the argument. This thesis would put about 170 million Muslims in India in the category of aliens or migrants, though a majority of them have ancestry here going back centuries.

It is fair to argue that the French government should have put restrictions on Charlie Hebdo in the interest of maintaining law and order and communal harmony. About the Muslim communities living in Europe, there is no doubt that they should respect local laws and cultural traditions of the host country. If they wish to enjoy full rights of citizenship in a democracy, they have to shed their ‘religious identity’ and take on the ‘political identity’ of a citizen of that democracy. They have to separate their religious practices from their civic roles, a dichotomy that does not exist back home in their Islamic countries, most of which are neither democratic nor liberal.

Secularism is the only guarantor of survival for minorities, and when a democracy offers that promise, they cannot demand Sharia laws for themselves. That’s part of the Social Contract.

As for the response of President Erdogan, Prime Ministers Imran Khan, and Mahathir Mohammed, who are trying to emerge as defenders of the Islamic faith by condemning President Macron, they should speak of President Xi Jinping’s atrocities against the Uighur Muslims first before lecturing the French President.

Secularism is not merely a political project but, at its core, an ethical one. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi inserted the word ‘Secular’ in our preamble in 1976, what exactly did she mean by it? Was it a declaration of fact or a value; a moral imperative necessary for the survival of a diverse and pluralistic society or a goal to be achieved? Perhaps it’s a goal and is getting ever more distant.

Conflicting visions of ensuring a peaceful social organisation of different religious communities is at the heart of the problem faced by Macron, Modi and Xi Jinping. Rightist forces on both sides of the religious and political divide who wish to play ‘identity politics’ offer no solution to this. And the world is becoming more turbulent and polarised, with few saner voices to calm the strife.

(The writer, a former Cabinet Secretariat official, is Visiting Fellow at ORF, New Delhi)