Licence or Right?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his address to a group of Muslim girls in New Delhi on the occasion of the celebration of Milad-e-Sherif (birth anniversary of the Prophet of Islam) said that no one had the licence to ‘criticise or run down’ other religions. On the face of it, Dr. Singh’s words convey a secular and democratic principle that no one should badmouth any religion. Fair enough. In a decent civilised society, one is not expected to malign anything, let alone religion. But I feel rather disturbed by his statement that one should not ‘criticise’ other religions. Does that mean that one has the right to criticise one’s own religion?

Perhaps the Prime Minister’s good-intentioned sermon can be construed as meaning that criticism of a religion should come from within itself. If this logic is applied, a person belonging to Islam has no right to criticise practice of caste system in the name of Hinduism. The caste system, however, is constitutionally outlawed in India. But there are retrograde practices practised in the name of religions, such as polygamy allowed in Islam. Can women’s rights activists belonging to other religions criticise the practice of polygamy in Islam? If the answer is ‘no’, then all of us, Hindus, Muslim, Christians and those from other religions are heading towards a sanitised zone where everybody will strictly adhere to an unwritten code of self-censoring. If a religion demands that it be insulated against public scrutiny, it is all likely to have a set of beliefs and irrational practices that cannot stand the test of such a scrutiny. However innocuous Dr. Singh’s words may sound, they represent the voice of religious orthodoxy which is engaged in an all out battle against liberal secular democratic values that have surpassed retrograde value systems integral to different religions.

Dr. Singh’s advice also represents the scourge of cultural relativism that is often presented as intellectually fashionable in liberal democracies because it is defended in the name of multi-culturalism and based on philosophical postmodernism. Shorn of all its intellectual trappings, cultural relativism is nothing but revival of identity-based tribalism often repackaged as post-colonial and anti-imperialist quest of disparate marginalised social groups for authenticity. The idea of ‘universal humankind’, proponents of relativism argue, is just a concept of assimilation of the marginalised identities by the dominant identity. As author Irshad Manji, a critic of cultural relativism, says: "The entire world is steeped in politics of identity which compels talented individuals to conform to group thinking, to the religious, cultural and ideological correctness of their tribes.". This politics of identity highlights "different identities at the expense of different ideas", she argues in her conversation with Salman Rushdie who agrees with her. Rushdie debunks cultural relativism: "There is a sense in which multi-culturalism is an obvious fact. We live in multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith world...That is not going to unhappen...But when it [multi-culturalism] decays into cultural relativism, that is, if you like, the end of moral sense...If it is your culture to impose cliterectomy on women, it is fine..."

Treating all cultures as equal goes against the Enlightment values that are universal. If a religious doctrine or prescription, which is against the values applicable to the entire humankind such as gender equality, human rights, equality before law, is still being practised by a section of the population, that doctrine or prescription is subject of scrutiny and criticism in a democratic society. If we choose to adhere to the Prime Minister's opinion, we have to keep mum even when, for example, a prominent Muslim leader (as happened in Kerala) openly defends polygamy citing reasons that are equally outrageous to men and women. In a liberal democratic society, every one has the right to hold such views provided he or she accepts the right of others to criticise them. No one can blame you if you believe privately that your religion isthe best religion, that your Holy Book contains all knowledge and answers to all problems. You cannot expect these beliefs to be protected from criticism if they are announced in public.

The authority of the Church that held absolute control over Europe from fourth to the 13 th century would not have eroded if its dogmatism and intolerance had not come under repeated intellectual attacks from freethinkers and scientific inquirers. The Enlightenment and its system of universal values would not have come into existence if the Church had been given the privilege of being outside the purview of critical scrutiny. The Church was the primary target of the Enlightenment as it inaugurated a departure from the religious authority. A major weapon used by Enlightenment thinkers was freedom of expression, though the Church fought back with blasphemy laws. The defeat of the Church in that battle was decisive in shaping modern emancipatory value systems that have defined our modern concept of democracy. If somebody asks us to forgo what the humankind has won through centuries of struggles, not for us to give that up as if it is a worthless gift that does not have any utility today.