I write this not to praise Tendulkar, but to denounce the hundred.

1. It has come in a game India  lost.

2. It was the cause of the loss (he scored too slowly).

3. It took the focus away from the rest of the team on the game itself.

4. The year long drama waiting for this hundred has clearly affected the man and the team negatively.

5.  It is no indicator of the form that he has been in of late (in Tests and ODIs).

6. The year long focus on the hundredth hundred has meant that we’ve not paid enough attention to the complete disarray the team is in right now. The disarray has happened in front of our eyes but very few eyes have been focused on the causes and solutions of the problem and far more have been obsessing over the hundredth hundred.

7. It is perhaps his most meaningless hundred (in both senses). It didn’t possess the boy-on-the-burning-deck grit of the 114 at Perth, the ferocious beauty (and utility) of the twin hundreds in Sharjah, the spine tingling relevance of the 100 at Chepauk post the Mumbai-terror-attack, the epic Greek-tragedy of the other Chennai hundred (and to a lesser extent the 175 in Hyderabad), the barrier breaking nature of the 200 or the sheer self-denial and strength of will that went into the 241 at Sydney.

All of these hundreds mean something to me and most others. When we tell our long-suffering descendants (yet another) Sachin story, it will be one of these.

Of the cuts and pulls on that Perth bunsen burner as boy barely taller than the stumps. Of the many barriers of pain he walked through under that wrenching Chennai sun to hold up a faltering batting lineup. Of the elevation we all felt when, for two days in Sharjah, he was the most invincible batsman on the face of the planet. Of the tears we wept with him at the emotional release of that hundred after the terror attacks.

As with all good devotees, I’m going to end up blaming the worshippers and not the deity.

We expected too much. We wanted a sign. We wanted affirmation of our own beliefs.

When they were not forthcoming, we raged, ranted and raved at the deity.

At the end of it all, the deity’s just a man. Flesh, blood, bone and sinew.

We refuse to believe that.

——

*I’m not using “God” here in the times of India headline sense, but from this DFW piece

“Khusro Nizam par bali bali jaiyeh,

Mohey suhagin keenhi, mose naina milaake.”

(Khusro would die for you, my Nizam,

Your eyes met mine, and thus, you were my groom.)

There, how does that sound for starters? Now, I hope I’m not misunderstood to imply that the verse is indeed sensual. The verse in particular, and the entire kalaam (this one is called Chhaap tilak) is highly devotional and spiritual, and has a deep meaning beyond the grasp of many. And it is precisely this reason why the Sufis have been considered to be a mystic band, whose myriad practices enter and leave the contours of religion as and when they desire and are almost always outside the limits of organised religion at any rate. It is precisely because of, or perhaps in consequence of the pliability of their kalaams to differing interpretations, that the Sufis have traditionally offended a lot of our moralists and fundamentalists, and in recent times the offence taken has heightened. Indeed, the line between moral policing and fundamentalism is a thin one, but let us not digress into that right now.

Let me take the historical view first before rounding up with the contemporary views on the Sufis. In the Medieval times, at least in the Indian subcontinent, the Sufis were given a high degree of respect and freedom in their religious practices. The Mughal kings were devotees of the Sufis, so also was the general public. Sufis had that quality which most political unifiers of this subcontinent have lacked, the ability to command respect and reverence from all religions and all communities. Hindus hold Sufis in high regard, and the foundation stone for the Golden Temple at Amritsar was laid by a Sufi saint. The spiritual fulfilment found here is often perceived to be lacking in the organised and mandated systems of worship. Obviously, that does not go down well with the people who should be telling us what is right and what is wrong, right?

The trouble in this world is that even if you preach universal love and brotherhood, someone will take a grouse on you. The Sufis were otherworldly, they did nothing to cover their backs and for someone who wanted to have a problem with them, they were easy targets. So, their practices were denounced as immoral, they were branded heretics, and their conception of worship was ridiculed as idolatry and immoral.

One would notice that the rise of Wahhabism and the destruction of the Sufi tradition happened quite contemporaneously. I will not attempt to make a judgment of the views held by Wahhabis, nor do I wish to. Suffice it to say that this sect, responsible for the destruction of the tomb of the holy Prophet at Mecca as a sign of idolatry, believes in stringent and direct action to enforce its ideals. The current wave of fundamentalism in Pakistan has targeted the tombs of Sufi saints with special care, one would begin to wonder, even if one does not know about Sufism, whether just by default the Sufis were right about what they said.

Now let us turn to the more problematic issue of morality. Is morality something which has always existed? Are values of virtues assigned by nature itself, or are they constructed and deconstructed as one pleases? I don’t claim to be an authority on the subject, and the little analysis that I have recently subjected this to, comes from the study of others who have argued forth, particularly, Nietzsche. So, morality has been constructed and perpetuated, by the powers that be. Thereafter, morality was constructed for the oppressed, in promising them the Kingdom of Heaven, in return for lifelong servitude, passivity and kindness, all virtues, very well established. I would recommend Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals to anyone who is interested further.

However, this establishment of morals, favouring one set of people, and firmly establishing the Other as immoral would lay the path for strife, it would justify oppression, ridicule and control. One may ask why we revel in doing this and just why we cannot live, and let live. I have no answer. All that I could say would be that this hierarchy of values and the action which is taken on them gives cause to much justified resentment and much unjustified persecution. The Sufis were persecuted for their use of music, for thinly veiled homosexuality (refer to the excerpt from Khusro’s writing above and try to misinterpret it, it will not be difficult.) The persecution again was justified on the basis of a constructed sense of morals and values. These persecutions and this ridicule continue today everyday in life around us. Why life must be made difficult for someone is something beyond me. Khusro, if he lived today, would perhaps have smiled sadly and repeated what he had written about an evening, the realisation that love had gone unrequited, or perhaps, the end of a way of life:

“Gori sovat sej par, mukh par daale kes,

Chal Khusro ghar aapne, ab saanjh bhayo iss des.”

(That lady fair, has slept, with hair strewn on her face,

Come Khusro, to your own, dusk now falls on this land.)

Most of those, whom I know, who make the mistake of quoting Einstein at this juncture to appease themselves, are those who after a certain time of practising science have come to the point where they need to face the reality. The reality that fate is in the hands of us human beings and that we have a huge responsibility for all our actions. That the world is based on causality and is not some puppet show. Or it is those who have always believed in God but in a lab their belief system is contradicting their science. Or those, like me, who have always been agnostic but gone along with the flow of religious rituals because they never needed to question their religious views. (It is not uncommon to not have to face your own religious views when you are surrounded by people of very similar views, which happens a lot in urban India).

Before I state my case, I will make it clear that my main source of reference is Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Einstein’s essays on this topic. And I am aware that this may put off many of those who consider Dawkins to be wrong. I certainly don’t think Dawkins is wrong but I also am not an in-your-face-atheist (or a ‘new atheist’ as people call it these days). I say this because, irrespective of your views of Dawkins, his account of Einsteinian religion is an objective account of Einstein’s beliefs and as such can be considered independent of his views on God. So read the following without prejudices please:

Much unfortunate confusion is caused by failure to distinguish what can be called Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion (a supernatural creator that is appropriate to worship). Einstein sometimes invoked the name of God, inviting misunderstanding by supernaturalists eager to misunderstand and claim so illustrious a thinker as their own.

One of Einstein’s most eagerly quoted remark is ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ But Einstein also said, “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious conviction, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Here are more quotations from Einstein to give a flavour of Einsteinian religion:

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Einstein was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. He admired Spinoza’s philosophy. He said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings’?”

I’ll end this discussion with Dawkins’ explanation:

There is every reason to think famous Einsteinisms like ‘God is subtle but He is not malicious’ or ‘He does not play dice’ or ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe’ are certainly not theistic. ‘God does not play dice’ should be translated as ‘Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.’ ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ means ‘Could the universe have begun in any other way?’ Einstein was using ‘God’ in purely metaphorical, poetic sense.

Not to disappoint anyone of you but my explanation is not based on any grand theories. As you will find out, our manifestation of karma, as it is perceived largely amongst the society, is because of a simple folly of human nature – our tendency to be affected by biases….

There is some evidence that our brains may be wired in such a way that we can never avoid certain mistakes. No, I am not kidding. In such cases, there is no learning curve such that you may learn to avoid them. We are certain to make a few of the same mistakes, over and over again. Yes, welcome to the world of biases!

What is a bias? A bias is a non-rational factor that systematically pushes one’s beliefs in some domain in one direction or very simply put, a bias refers to a specific, predictable error pattern in the human mind. All human beings suffer from many types of biases all the time.

Do you think the car you own is the best in its class of cars? Well that is because of the choice-supportive bias.

How many times have you thought that you will finish something in a certain amount time but have repeatedly failed to do so? Yeah, I know you have been there. It is because of the optimism bias or the planning fallacy.

In the Google age have you searched for something and then realised that it did not really help you but you would do it again anyway? or you have done a particular medical test even though you were told that it will not really benefit your diagnosis? Well that is because of the information bias.

Do you think you are a more rational person and less susceptible to these biases? Well that is because of the bias blind spot.

Do you think I am wrong and that you truly are less susceptible to biases?Well that is because of the confirmation bias.

I can go on and on with examples. Each one of you will have suffered from more than one of these biases (I suspect, many times) in your life. I am pointing out these biases only to make you aware that it’s a combination of these biases which have lead me to have a continued belief in karma as it is portrayed in the Indian society.

To be able to change my belief system, I had to take a step back and observe myself. I had to look at my daily activities, observe my reactions to events and analyse them as carefully as possible. I had to put in special efforts to rid myself of biases and once I was able to do that it was not hard to see what was wrong with my assumptions in the first place.

From my previous post you will see that my concept of karma wasn’t taught to me by reading some religious text but was passed down to me as an ideology. This kind of bandwagon effect or more exposure effect, which is the same that leads us Indians to believe in cricket as a religion rather than baseball or like Amitabh Bachchan much more than Sean Connery or Harrison Ford.

Then somewhere along the way I transformed my views of karma to suit my needs. I made it in to something that agreed with the kind of efforts-lead-to-good-results theory that we have all been exposed to through out our school education. Remember the story of Mahatma Gandhi or Bhagat Singh? I am not saying that these stories gave us any wrong ideas. As a matter of fact I am proud to have grown up reading about these great men but you can see why I would equate effort with karma points. And I’d class this as the result of choice-supportive bias.

And as this ideology pervaded my being, I was under the illusion of control. I thought about all the injustice in our society and started believing that karma will prevail and that the culprits will be punished. It made me a passive observer of all that around me, and if at all I was enraged, karma doused the fire within.

My choice of friends, clearly a confirmation bias. My reasons to keep believing in the theory and ignoring events that did not conform with my ideology, a status quo bias. And just like before, I can go on giving examples of how different biases played a role in my belief of karma. I think I have made my point. I am not trying to say that I was being affected by all these biases all the time. But it isn’t very easy to defeat an ideology like that of karma when there are so many biases that are bent on defeating you on your way out.

I also encourage you to have a look at a long discussion that ensued on reddit because of this post.

This is not the first time however that the Courts have had to shoulder the responsibility of deciding a religious dispute, in fact either by choice or by lack one, the Supreme Court has often sought to delineate the boundaries of the sacred and the secular. The Constitution does not define the meaning of Secularism and it has therefore been left to the courts to develop a juridical concept of secularism and define its content. The broad contours the Supreme Court has established for itself while delving into the fundamental right of religious freedom are the social welfare content of state action, and distinguishing essential from non essential religious activity. But religion is so omnipresent in every aspect of Indian Society, that the Courts do end up dealing with and even encroaching the realm of religious freedom. While judicial reasoning has often tried to stay from being influenced by faith or religion alone, defining what is ‘secular’ and what is ‘religious’ is where judicial reasoning has proved to be inconsistent in the least, for the parameters of faith and religious belief have often been employed to interpret or misinterpret the meaning of ‘Secular’

While in some cases the court has come out strongly in favour of secularism, in many others the court’s functional definition of secularism has been susceptible to the interests of the majority impinging on the rights of minority communities. A study of these contrasting approaches throws light on how faith has often played a role in determining judicial decisions, and while there are many such examples, I will only be discussing a few cases here. Interestingly, judicial use of the term secularism predates its inclusion in the Constitution. Judges have freely used the term both judicially and extra judicially prior to 1976 (when it was introduced in the Constitution), while explaining the character and nature of the Indian Constitution. In Keshavanand Bharati (1973 (4) SCC 225), the 13 Judge Constitution Bench, in no uncertain terms declared secularism to be the fundamental law of the land. C J Sikri, enumerated “the secular character of the Constitution” as one of its basic features. Secularism was declared to be an unamendable feature of the Constitution as a part of the basic structure of the Constitution. . In S.R. Bommai ((1994) 3 SCC 1) (here), Justice Sawant stated that “any profession and action that go counter to secularism are a prima facie proof of the conduct in defiance of the provisions of the constitution”.

However, the Supreme Court’s definition of Secularism has in many cases been a very tenuous one, finding its meaning in faith and religion.  In Ismail Faruqui v Union of India (1994, 6 SCC, 360) (here) the court seems to have endorsed a concept of secularism that had its rationale in Hindu scriptures. Justice Verma justified a vision of secularism that had its roots in the Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda and Rig Veda and Akbar’s Din Ilahi.  The court seems to have also accepted the claim that secularism in India exists because of the tolerance of the Hindus who are the majority religion. In Suryakant Venkatrao Mahadhik v Smt Saroj Sandesh Naik, 1996, SCC (i) 384 (here), a statement on the necessity to vote for the Shiv Sena for the protection of ‘Hindutva’, which was made amongst a congregation of Hindu devotees during a Hindu religious festival to garner votes on the basis of Hindu religion, was not declared as a corrupt election practice by the Supreme Court, as Hindutva was understood as a way of life or a state of mind and was held to not to be equated with or seen as something religious. In Manohar Joshi v Nitin Rao Bhau Pate, (1996, 1 SCC 169), the Supreme Court  ruled that the promise to establish the first Hindu state in Maharashtra did not amount to appealing for votes in the name of religion.

Contrast these cases that seem to tilt in the favor of Hindu Majoritarian religion, with ones in which the Court took upon itself to interpret the minority religion: one such example is the ‘cow slaughter’ cases, where the Supreme Court decreed in the State of West Bengal vs Ashutosh Lahiri (here) and earlier, in M H Querseshi v State of Bihar (here) that Muslims of India could not be given the freedom to kill cows as part of their religious practice. The court contended that the killing of cows was not an essential practice of Muslims. By conducting a scriptural search for a statement making cow sacrifice obligatory, the court concluded that it was optional for Muslims to sacrifice a cow or camel for every seven persons and a goat for one person. Another example is the Court’s controversial interpretation of the Quran in Shah Bano’s case, (AIR 1985 SC 943) case, which subsequently had to be undone by the Legislature by passing The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act of 1986. Sometimes the majoritarian religious rhetoric is couched in nationalist terms by the Supreme Court. Consider the observations of Justice Kuldeep Singh  in Sarla Mudgal, (1995 SCC (3) 635) (here), while asserting the need of the Uniform Civil Code:

“the personal law of the Hindus, such as relating to marriage, succession and the like have all a sacramental origin, in the same manner as in the case of the Muslims or the Christians. The Hindus alongwith Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains have forsaken their sentiments in the cause of the national unity and integration, some other communities would not, though the Constitution enjoins the establishment of a “common civil Code” for the whole of India”.

Therefore, decisions of the Supreme Court being influenced by religion (usually the majoritarian religion) and faith is not an uncommon thing, the Ayodhya judgment is not the first and will not be the last in this line of reasoning. However a judicial analysis that derives its rationale from religion and faith alone, subverts secularism. Indian Secularism must not come across only as a tolerant aspect of Hinduism that subsumes other faiths within its philosophy.  By their authority to decide what is religious and what is not, the courts acquire the authority to regulate the meaning of religion. This remarkable power in a country like India must not be used to pander to the majoritarian view of secularism, religion, faith or belief. While a detailed reading of the Ayodhya Judgment may reveal that this is not the case, but if it is, then any political peace brokered on this rationale will be fragile at best because it is based on a flawed judicial reasoning that has dangerous consequences.

Pursuing secularism in India has always been a challenge because basic social fabric and structure of the society and the country has always been inextricably entwined with religion to an extent that even basic reforms have been impossible to bring in without the direct intervention of the State in the otherwise private ‘religious’ realm of the society. Given this fact, the Parliament, political parties, journalists, academics, the Judiciary, and the Constitution have all been active participants in the discourse on secularism. In the background of this complex matrix, the understanding of the concept of secularism in India has always fascinated me, and in part I of this post I will outline the genesis of this concept in the Indian Constitution and the Constituent Assembly Debates.

The Constituent Assembly Debates and the limited readings on them make for fascinating reading (Shefali Jha’s briiliant piece “Secularism in the Constituent Assembly Debates”, 37 (30) EPW (2002) is a good beginning, apart from the original texts). The CA had to discuss the issue of secularism in the bloody aftermath of the partition, if a young India had to survive, the CA had to ensure that something like the partition would never be repeated. Therefore, for a democratic India, secularism was considered to be necessary fait accompli. However, when the preamble to the Constitution was discussed in the Assembly in October 1949, disagreement and acrimonious debate over the inclusion of the principle of secularism took up most of the assembly’s time. The first debate that ensued was when H.V. Kamath moved an amendment to begin the preamble by the phrase, “In the name of god.” Rajendra Prasad argued that this amendment would be against the spirit of religious freedom of the Constitution and that religion was a matter of Individual choice and in this matter the collective will should not be imposed. Kamath’s motion was defeated by a narrow margin of 68 to 41. Strangely enough,  Bajeshwar Prasad’s motion to include the word secular in the Constitution was not even debated properly.  ( The word was later to be included in the Preamble by the 42^nd Amendment in 1976.)

The meaning of a ‘secular India’ was also a cause of immense debate. The CA had to decide whether a state was secular only when it stayed strictly away from religion or did a state that equally respected all religions best capture the meaning of secularism in the Indian context. Supporters of the first notion saw a definite line of separation between the individual and the state. It was solely up to the individual to decide whether he was a believer or not and to chose to adhere to a religion or not. Therefore the preamble could not contain any references to God nor could the Constitution establish links between the State and any religion. The second position also began with a theory of religious liberty, but went on to say that in a society like India where religion was a very important part of everyday life of the masses, the state should not stay away from all religions equally but that it must respect all religion alike. Instead of distancing itself from all religion or considering religion to be a private sphere, such a secular state based its dealings with religion on the basis of an equal respect to all religions (Shefali Jha, supra).

These two point of views clashed constantly in the Constituent Assembly debates as the question of secularism cropped up in the discussions around innumerable articles. . One such debate was the choice between the words “Religious Practice” or the words “Religious Worship”. The initial definition of the right to freedom of religion as defined by the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights used the words “Right to freedom of religious worship”. However this was rephrased by the Minorities Sub-Committee to read “…Right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion.” The first view preferred a narrow definition of religion akin to the western notion of secularism, while the second view sought to define religion broadly. Finally the Constituent assembly decided in favour of “Religious Practice”, thus indicating that the assembly was tilting in favour of the second definition of secularism.

On the vexed question of the Uniform Civil Code, Ambedkar’s and Munshi’s draft articles of March 1947 on justiciable rights contained clauses referring to a UCC. However the Fundamental Rights Sub- Committee had decided to make the UCC a Directive Principle. This decision of the Committee was opposed by many, foremost amongst them being Rajkumari Amrit Kaur who believed that one of the main causes of India’s backwardness were personal laws that governed many aspects of life. There were others however who were against the idea of a Uniform Civil Code and some members advocated the right to one’s personal law as a part of the right to freedom. An intermediate position suggested was that the establishment of the Uniform Civil Code must be done slowly, with the consent of all communities.  This of course proved to be pipe dream, the UCC is today an impossibility to achieve.

Therefore,  the Constituent Assembly did agree unanimously on the establishment of a secular state, but ended up defining a secular state as one wherein the state has an equal respect for all religions rather than the state completely disassociating itself from all religion. Thus what emerged from these constitutional endeavors was an accommodating secular compromise at a time when, in the aftermath of partition, such a compromise seemed improbable. In fact, I believe that if India were to start a new Constitution making process afresh today, it is doubtful that a common text would emerge. Given the situation and the circumstances in which we had to draft our Constitution, and given the cultural diversity of India, perhaps there really was no other option for a united India to take other than secularism, but nonetheless the secular character of the Constitution was a remarkable achievement.

In my subsequent posts, I will discuss the understanding of this sort of ‘secularism’ by our Courts.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               –           Quran 9:73

Thus goes a quotation employed by Arun Shourie to provoke a genre of controversy, that he (like many others) has tactfully turned into a subject matter of bestsellers.

Whatever one might have to say about that, Wikipedia estimates that the holy’ Bible and the ‘holy’ Quran have sold (or distributed) more copies than the publishing industry has otherwise been able to manage. Even today, the industry (besieged by more secular threats such as the Internet) is yet to overcome its success with the Bible and the Quran. It finds itself struggling with an abundance of writers who feel the queer need to impart sense, or convince, rather than preach.

But thanks to a majority of us yet being unable to read, write or comprehend these texts, the historical abundance of religious teaching and literature, has turned out to be a relatively an innocent manifestation. The archaic languages in which they are expressed further aid in our misunderstanding of what they contain and provide many of us a passable excuse to ignore what are evidently – bestsellers. Of course, we place them in high regard on our bookshelves, and I suggest we continue to do so, as it is intellectually fashionable.

As someone who conveniently calls himself a ‘Hindu’, I hold ancient Indian texts with the same high regard, and value my time delving into the absurdity of their translation, or comprehension. And as a so-called ‘English speaking, urban middle class Indian’ who will not spend his days worrying about anything that isn’t expressed in English and on paper, that is easily available or can be printed out, understood, underlined and made into paper planes, I don’t typically permit religion to distract from more pressing and immediate preoccupations. In the matter of course, some of us, like my good friend Subramanian has over here, do manage to fly into gardens of roses ostensibly planted by religion, and smell the flowers, letting their religious hues invigorate the religious senses, shutting out the science of the olfactory nerve, and perception of color, abandoning in a flight of romance, the absurdity of roses having anything to do with religion.

That is not to lightly dismiss Subramanian’s erudite illustrations, because the genesis of this piece lies not in what he says, but what they represent. They represent, what I think, is the most pressing dilemma facing religion today. It lies in our inability to rationalize where religion begins and ends. In each of Subramanian’s examples, I would beg to differ on where religion starts and stops, and where music, philosophy and grammar do.

While it may be an academic exercise to demarcate our secular and religious intellectual / academic traditions, and reevaluate such matters as works of art, cultural practices, ‘good and evil’ and the role of the church and state, we often forget that, outside of our intellectually fashionable bookshelves, religion may yet be a formidable force. We pay little attention to its material manifestations. For instance, its figure-heads, who control vast amounts of wealth, endowments, charities and educational institutions, and carry great influence. We pay little attention to the propriety of religion being dished out to children at an age when obeisance is most easily obtained and inculcated. We know little about what our politics means to those who occupy their minds with more religion than we do.

Having developed new ideas, and framed new principles in spheres that we previously left to the holy book and silent prayer, we may be conceding less today to religion than we did before. By scrutinizing and demarcating the role of religion in our lives – in politics, in institutions, culture and society, some of us may be finding it increasingly of little relevance. But, today more than ever before, political and cultural battles may at their very root, be a result of conflicting ideas of what religion does and does not represent,what it must and must not mean, most importantly, what it means in the first place.

Consider the words of this concerned father of a girl (who was a victim of an instance of ‘honour killing’ soon after) warning her against marrying out of caste -

“I would say that what you have done or going to do, is the opposite of Sanatan Dharma… The Indian Constitution says that adults can have their own marital bond but our Constitution is just 60 years. In contrast, our religion, no one knows how old our religion is”

Aghast at the prevalence of ‘honour killings’ on the basis of an ancient religion, (and maybe less aghast at the understandable disdain towards the more recent Constitution) the establishment in Delhi intends to pass laws to wipe the practice out, presumably having overcome its fear of alienating voters in the battle that may ensue with khap panchayats, the cultural / religious muttawwahs of our rural hinterland.

To say that religion is boring or useless is one thing, to say that it is irrelevant is another. Any political battle that religion will wage, will concern us all. And worse, like international terrorism, separatism, certain territorial conflicts and extremism, which are made out to belong to that category, we may struggle to ascertain whether it is religion that has anything to do with it. Like Richard Dawkins here, and in the Mahabharata, maybe – the genesis of Kunti’s offspring!

Like the contradictions inherent in Kunti’s attribution of Karna to Surya, it may be a little late in the day to explore modern secularism’s inherent contradictions, but we have ignored religion for too long, and risk repeating Kunti’s mistake of punishing a contradiction with abandonment! As Subramanian says, we may consider ourselves successful if we were to interest you in a discussion on religion and culture. If it would do the trick, a few sleepless nights too!