Anil Nauriya in The Hindu, 8 May, 2000

The Prime Minister has spoken of his Government subscribing to the concept of equal respect for all religions ... How do we relate to the equal respect concept?

First,it is useful to specify whether what is being discussed is the individual, society or the state. The norms to be expected at the three levels are a set of complementary ideas which cumulatively support one another.

But these do not need to be identical ideas. So if the state is religiously neutral it is not necessary for its sustenance that all individuals should be, say atheists. They could be religious. Individually they may, and many probably will, give priority to their own faith. What is required of them here is no more than a sense of humanism or respect for difference.

Similarly, at the level of society at large it is not necessary, even if it may in one view be desirable, that the religious element be eliminated. It is enough that groups and individuals, or the vast majority of them, are prepared in their social intercourse to meet on a par, without claiming in civic space priority over one another on account of their religion. Equal respect for all religions is primarily a concept of the social domain, though the state may seek to internalise it consistent with other applicable obligations.

At the level of the state, additional norms apply. Yet the religious neutrality of the state and equal respect for all religions are not inconsistent ideas ... but are complementary ones ... The state must make this claim good in its attitude to governance, with the protection of the lives and property of, and provision of opportunities of growth and development to, all sections. Obviously, protection would in the first instance be for. the ones threatened. In focusing on them the state only enforces the equality principle. It does not amount to bestowing a special favour ...

Equal respect for all religions is not a concept which offers any shelter to beliefs or activities that violate the civil rights of others. The Bajrang Dals cannot hide behind the equal respect concept. The concept implies equal respect only for the humanistic tendency in each religion. It is not a passive, static or hold-all concept, as the BJP seems to believe, but an active, dynamic and discerning one. It strives continually to. seek out the humanist underpinnings of society.

While he speaks of equal respect for all religions, he retains as his Home Minister (an) accused in the Babari Masjid case. And is it merely coincidental that the attacks on Christians have become frequent and systematic after Mrs. Sonia Gandhi became the leader of the Congress(1)? Are these attacks not politics by other means and are not the BJP Government's low- key condemnations of them a confirmation of this? ...

A struggle against the Raj conducted for nearly three decades at the mass level did not take on an anti-Christian character. On the contrary, the message of the Sermon on the Mount was popularised by Indian' nationalists in a manner that has never happened in any country not predominantly Christian.

The Hindutva organisations, on the other hand, as their track record after Mrs. Sonia Gandhi came to the fore in the Congress(I) suggests, are incapable of internalising the concept of equal respect.

At the state-level, equal respect for all religions cannot mean a state without humanism. Humanism is the key element in the making of a secular state. That the state in independent India would be religiously neutral was stipulated in the 1931 Karachi resolution to which Gandhi, Azad and Nehru were all party. Neutrality does not mean that the state would stand by while people did what they liked in the name of each religion. It cannot be neutral between humanistic and anti-humanistic religious impulses. It would respect religion; but it would also offer a humanistic critique of it.

Constitutional safeguards for minorities are important. But they too rest upon the existence in society of feelings of equal respect for all religions ... Feelings of mutual respect among the communities are the ultimate safeguard. The moment that respect goes, no Constitution can substitute for it. No safeguards will count if society does not find it within itself to live by them.

That is why Hindutva is so pernicious a phenomenon. If it undermines mutual respect in society, what it does or does not do to the state will only be consequential to the damage it would already have inflicted. That is also why the notion of equal respect ... may be further refined. It may be supplemented. It must never be dismissed ...