Essentiality of Secularism

by SUMAN CHOWDHURY


Another observation in my life - " The communist only studies leftist literature and the religious fundamentalist only studies his/her religious literature. Both of them have radical views to build a nation. One fights for religion, another fights for 'so called humanity'. The significant similarities between them are that they bombard each other and come to the power through bloodshed". So it is very difficult to find a versatile character among both the radical groups.

If we look at many countries including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Srilanka, China, few South American and African countries, we come to know that the major religious people have a fundamental group and against them thre is a communist or naxal group. In China, the communist party is in power. But they do not allow any freedom of speech to the masses. They are like another autocratic government of medieval era. In Pakistan, the total system has a hole where all the developments and achievements of the government become vain due to the strong influences of religious fundamentalist. As for example, They are pouring water in a cultivable land, where there is a narrow hole at the isle of the land. In India, Hindu fundamentalist tries to come to the power which will destroy the moto of India. The main moto of India is 'unity in diversity'. But if the fundamentalists come to the power, the country will face big threats by international terrorist group. Hence their development will be hindered. In Bangladesh, Jamaat e Islami and other rightist group tries to come to the power. They already influenced and changed the constitution [by H.M. Ershad] as 'Islam - the country religion'. Okay my question is that if I asked my mother what is your religion? She will obviously tell me 'Hinduism'. Now if I asked her ' what is your religion by county ' she has to answer "Islam". Now a person can not be confined to two different religion if religion does mean certain order of beliefs. That's why, we see lots of problem in the countries which are dominated by religious groups like Nepal, Iran, SriLanka, Tailand and etc.

What if the religious group come to the power, what if the communist group come to the power? It is not right to say frankly that they are bad. But we should learn from the history and state of the art events. One of my Chinese friends told me that he will not go back to China [from USA], because they don't have any right to express their voice. They are shackled by their communist government, same voices I heard from one of my friends from Venezuela. In addition, I asked one of my Iranian friends, what is the main problem in Iran? Why have sometimes people been demonstrating protest against government for last couple of years? He answered our government is very tough. The minority peoples have less rights. He even told me a pathetic example that "The Bhai'i people are not allowed to university, they don't have any government job, because their religious beliefs are not allowed by today's government."

So we need certain beliefs that will allow all the people to live in harmony. There is a well known quotation - 'many men, many minds'. It means that every person has different interests, beliefs, thoughts of power and views. "We can't cast all the people with a single mold". I mean, the diversity of minds created different paths in different location in the Earth. Due to the modern technology, evolving of information technology comes all the people in same global platform. Now each county is just like a global village. Hence Secularism becomes very popular to today's world. Secularism is very synonymous to democracy. Secularism is the approach and democracy is the system. I don't want to describe here what is secularism. Because most of the people know what is it? But for god's sake, I am obliged to mention it here because both the radicals define it very wrongly. Secularism means - "in government, a policy of avoiding entanglement between government and religion (ranging from reducing ties to a state church to promoting secularism in society), of non-discrimination among religions (providing they don't deny primacy of civil laws), and of guaranteeing human rights of all citizens, regardless of the creed (and, if conflicting with certain religous rules, by imposing priority of the universal human rights)".

In final words, a person can not be identified by two religion if his own religion and religion of country is different; History teaches us that communist government is very reluctant to the common people's views, beliefs and voices; so this is secularism that only tells us to guide a nation to live in concord with full kindness to each other's beliefs and voices.