The Congress Party’s relatively comfortable win at India’s recent Lok Sabha elections, besides promising a further eclipsing of BJP-style populism, seems to be freshly underscoring the importance of secularism to the country’s political culture. Said Premier Man Mohan Singh: ‘We have an obligation to the people of India to provide a stable and secular government… I urge all political parties to forget their past disputes and help in the formation of a secular government.’ Rightly, the Indian Prime Minister sees secularism as essential for political stability and single nationhood. In fact, Indian secularism which envisages the equal treatment of all religions, is the veritable cement which has held the Indian Union together over the past troubled, post-independence decades, notwithstanding some prophets of doom who predicted the disintegration of India amid runaway ethnic and religious tensions. One of contemporary India’s secrets of surviving as a single, undivided country, is its consistent separation of religion from governance. The Indian constitution does not provide for the primacy of any religion or for its preferential treatment by the state and this invaluable legacy modern India owes to its founding fathers; primarily Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. For the Mahatma in particular, love for the whole of humanity was of primal importance. From this principle flowed a spirit of tolerance which eschewed partiality for any particular ethnicity, religion, caste or tribe. Accordingly, Indian nationalism has traditionally had at its heart an all embracing vision which rejects sectional loyalties based on the upholding of this or that narrow identity. Obviously, this golden norm has stood the test of time and ensured the territorial integrity of India, besides helping to keep within containable limits destabilizing factors, such as, ethnic and religious friction.

The principle of secularism is of inestimable worth for the Third World in general and for South Asia in particular. It should be clear that the Sri Lankan state would be seen as impartial by the totality of its citizenry if it enshrines secularism as a governing principle. This could pave the way for greater social cohesion and an overarching nationalism which rejects narrow identity-based loyalties, which played a substantial role in fuelling separatist tendencies in Sri Lanka. At present, Sri Lanka cannot be described as a ‘secular democracy’ because its constitution does not provide for parity of status among religions.

Unfortunately, the past decades have seen a gradual undermining of the principle of secularism in Bangladesh, another South Asian state to be watched, and this has played no small a part in Bangladesh being seen by some as ‘the next Afghanistan’. Today, Bangladesh is very often in the throes of religion-inspired violence and need we say that this is a sure cause for the undoing of development?

Sri Lanka would be blundering tragically if it continues with its old governing ways, now that ‘terror’ seems to have been struck a crippling blow, militarily. Disaffection or internal political and social tensions in Sri Lanka would cease only if social cohesion and solidarity becomes a reality in it, and this would not be so as long as the state continues to be seen by some as lacking in neutrality and impartiality. Certainly, equality in all its senses is long overdue in Sri Lanka.

The fact that the Congress has been handsomely voted back to power coupled with the BJP’s rather dismal performance, is proof that the principles of governance initiated decades ago by this ‘grand old party of India’, which has governed India for a good part of its post-independence existence, are still sought after by India’s voting public and are generally seen as having stood the country in good stead.

All this is in spite of religion-inspired violence continuously assailing India. The Congress government’s sensible handling of its ties with Pakistan in the aftermath of last November’s terror attack in Mumbai, seems to have strengthened the average Indian voter’s faith in India’s secular credentials. They, perhaps, saw for certain that giving the terror attack a religious complexion would not only needlessly destabilize India’s relations with Pakistan but set the stage for internal religious tensions which would help none and undermine India’s economic dynamism. The conviction also, apparently, grew among the Indian voting public that the extremist religious currents sweeping the subcontinent, are mostly of non-state origins and have their beginnings, instead, in non-state actors, such as Al-qaeda, which target the Western-centric global power system.

It is hoped that India would now use these positive trends in its relations with Pakistan to step-up the pace in negotiating an end to the Kashmir problem, which is a ‘bleeding ulcer’ in bilateral ties, requiring urgent remedial action. Improved relations between the regional giants would have a positive impact on the SAARC process, which in turn would have a beneficial fallout on South Asia’s development. Meanwhile, India would like to ensure that all is well on its Southern frontier, now that the conventional military threat posed by the LTTE has been defused by Sri Lanka. And India would like to rest assured that Sri Lanka’s North-East would never again erupt in the flames of disaffection, because this could spark fresh political tensions in Tamil Nadu and in turn trigger fresh strains in Tamil Nadu-centre ties. This accounts for India’s current concern that Sri Lanka should speedily go ahead with the task of devolving power on the North-East. Hopefully, these moves by India would not be viewed negatively by hard line nationalist opinion in Sri Lanka.

The old lesson needs to be relearnt that India’s neighbours need to adapt to its sizeable presence in their midst. After all, nothing could be done about geographical locations. These are realities which just could not be wished away. Inter state relations in this region need to be grounded on mutual concern and respect and India has proved that it is more than equal to this task. Cases in point are its handling of the Mumbai crisis and its more recent hands-off policy in relation to Sri Lanka, when the latter’s security forces took on the Tigers.