God votes in India, abstains in Britain, Part II

Screen Shot: The Mail on Sunday.Britain
has undergone rapid secularisation in the last 50 years. It is no playground
for religious bigots. Northern Ireland is an exception. There are some people who are
always ready to die for their religion. In the rest of the country, the clergy’s
influence has waned over the years.

In neighbouring
Ireland, the Catholic church’s hold on popular imagination has been loosened.  This was once considered improbable. The
latest referendum results that went against the Government’s faith-driven
anti-abortion policy have been interpreted as a public rebuke to the Catholic
church.

A fall
in the numbers of church-goers and the growing indifference to religion have
been going on in Britain for decades. Perhaps the deprived tend to turn to God
in desperation. So, when prosperity brought TV sets, washing machines and ample
bread with butter and marmalade, the need for God declined in Britain. Commercial
success promotes materialism. Poets foresee. More than a century earlier, Matthew
Arnold had heard the withdrawing roar of faith!

Even
during the interwar era, the trend of religious indifference continued, though
religious questions could stir up occasional excitement. Post-war Britain did
not witness a religious revival of the kind that gripped the US. American
evangelists like Billy Graham came and went but failed to awaken Britons to a
religious frenzy.

Different flavours

Britain
has taken major strides towards becoming a multi-religious and multi-cultural
nation. The children of the British Empire barged in from distant lands and a
large number of surviving Western European Jews made Britain their home.
Immigration from Pakistan and other countries made Islam the religion of
several thousand Britons.

The
existence of God and the interface between religion and science are debated vigorously
in Britain. The writings of Richard Dawkins helped promote new atheism. The sixties
assaulted orthodoxy and left a legacy of New Age religions. As the hold of
institutional religion loosened, many young Britons started looking inwards.
They found individual ways of fulfilling a kind of spiritual yearning. Many
believers started ignoring the God without and heeding the God within. The
trend of privatisation of religion picked up.

The
swinging sixties further expanded and intensified secular influence despite the
traditionalists warning against television, lurid advertising and creeping
crass commercialism. Society kept marching towards materialism. Growing
affluence led to an increase in crime and vandalism. Rebels against orthodoxy
proliferated.

The Eastern
mystics saw more devotees coming to their spiritual sessions. Esoteric religious
practices aroused interest. Some Christian theologians devised terms such as “Christian
Vedanta” which was contested by an Indian scholar!

In a
land of multiple choices, God started appearing in different flavours. The
traditionalists pooh-poohed it as pick-and-mix approach practised in a
spiritual supermarket! One commentator sees it as a mark of mobility, an individually
decided preference. He says: “It may be as much as the “cool” of freedom that
is being aspired to, as the love of Jesus Christ Our Saviour. If so, Nietzsche
may be dead, but God only survives by being available in many exciting
flavours.”

In a
statement more relevant to America and India, he says: “Annoyingly it may well
be that religion is gaining greater traction, not because of its own strength,
but because of the weakness of political parties. Politicians are desperate to
reach and use pockets of activism, and – with the death of class politics – the
most available and vocal belong to religious organisations.” He finds it slightly
worrying.

The
plurality and diversity of groups within Christianity itself prevented British
politics from being dominated by a single, major confrontation between politics
and religion. British sociologist James A. Beckford, who makes this comment, could
perhaps add collusion to confrontation! He says the British state did not
therefore cast politics into a mould which necessarily polarised or amalgamated
religion and politics. The fact that all major religious groups drew members
from a variety of social classes and cultural backgrounds also helped to
prevent religion from becoming a political issue in itself, he says.

Successive
Governments took steps to end discrimination against religious and other
minorities. Political leaders learnt a lesson from the history of sectarian
strife in Britain. They perhaps cared for their nation enough not to light the fires
of sectarianism that would have turned it into Disunited Kingdom.

Karen Armstrong on Hinduism

A cynic
may say they remembered how promoting sectarian strife harmed the former
colonies and benefited the British Empire! The western powers know that the
best way to destroy a nation is to damage its social fabric. The British
Government created and exacerbated religious strife in the colonies but at home
promoted religious harmony and multiculturalism. Writer Karen Armstrong said:
“It is ironic that the British who had banished ‘religion’ from the public
sphere at home should classify the Indian subcontinent in such tightly
religious terms”.

She
says the castes there did not see themselves as forming an organised religion.
They found themselves lumped together into something that the British called
Hinduism. This term was first used by Muslim conquerors. The British used it to
give a communal identity to the natives which was alien to their age-old
traditions.

Karen
Armstrong elaborates further: The British based the Indian electoral system on
religious affiliation and in 1871 conducted a census that made these religious
communities acutely aware of their numbers and areas of strength in relation to
one another. By bringing religion to the fore this way, the British bequeathed
a history of communal conflict in South Asia.

In
Britain, the clergy saw the clashes between the Catholics and Protestants
bringing a bad name to Christianity and moved to arrest the trend. They cared
for the way their faith was perceived by the people. Considering how Islam is
seen today, they were wise to worry about public perception. The Christian
leaders have been trying to turn religion into a positive force instead of becoming
an obstacle to progress. Modernity was allowed to seep into their very
traditional sphere. That is why Christianity is no longer associated with
primitive hysteria, as it was once.

The
tragic headlines about religious violence in different parts of the world may
have also led many Britons to grow more indifferent to their own religion. Islamic
extremism and the rise of British nationalism failed to cause panic in Britain
about the erosion of Christianity. The Christian majority has enough
self-confidence not to fall prey to any narrow-minded group that may try to
instil fear in it by pointing to the growing numbers of the others.

Britain
suffered from sectarian conflicts for centuries, but such ugly incidents are
now limited to Northern Ireland. It is said that the establishment of the
London Stock Exchange brought down the incidence of religious violence.
Capitalism and sectarianism or communalism, as it is called in Indian English,
do not go together. This is not understood by India’s business tycoons.

Science, law and critical
thinking

Apart
from the dampening influence of commerce that requires social harmony, two
professions have helped check religious frenzy. Britain made significant
contributions in the fields of science and law and jurisprudence, producing
many eminent scientists and legal luminaries. Both encourage scepticism,
argumentation and rational thinking.

The
British centres of critical thinking do not come under political attacks unlike
what happens in the US and in India. The Republicans of America do not trust
universities. India’s ruling party has sought to diminish the influence of
universities promoting critical thinking.

The
decline in the number of church-goers, the ageing of congregations, and the
rise in the number of disused and closed churches continue. Church buildings
are reopened and turned into places of worship by other faith communities. The
faithful have got used to seeing the churches becoming bankrupt and being sold!
Rational Christians accept the reality and never make a hue and cry over the
conversion of a church.

Britain
is known for football fanatics, not Christian fanatics! Even the pub fights on
Friday nights never acquire a religious hue. Jokes about Jesus provoke mirth,
not violence. The English trait of not taking things seriously has been
accentuated by the media mocking all those who were once revered and respected.
They can be turned into objects of scorn. No authority, spiritual or temporal,
is safe from cruel hilarity.

The
failings of the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church, as disclosed by
sexual and financial scandals, can get magnified! These convey the message that
to be a Christian is not something great. No menacing group goes around asking
fellow Christians to declare it with pride that they are Christians. In India,
the secular Hindus are asked to repeat: Garva
se kaho hum Hindu hain!

“God is my business.”

In
Britain those looking for “hurt feelings” have to look towards faith groups
other than Christians. An official move to slaughter a diseased temple bull might
hurt another community and footwear with an artistic image of Lord Ganesh have
a similar effect. The host community can’t understand those whose religious
sensitivity is hurt.

Christianity
in Britain mostly does not resist secularisation. At times, it seems to adapt
to it. An Archbishop can preach liberal views or sing along to Beatles’ tunes
during the Jubilee Concert! To a politician seeking to use God, an Archbishop
might say: “God is my business.”

Modernity,
moderation and a new emphasis on civil rights led to the scrapping of legal provisions
for discrimination against religious minorities in Britain. Inclusiveness and
diversity became more acceptable. Several factors contributed to the evolution
of a political culture in which religion plays little part.

Voting
intentions have been studied in terms of religious denominations. A section of
Catholics tended to favour Labour. The Church of England was once called the
Tory Party at prayer! It is now just an interesting saying. Sectarian differences
do not dominate the political scene and never lead to a confrontation. No fatwa
is issued before any election! A fatwa will not work since the Church of
England commands little political influence.

Faith,
in any case, does not provoke passion, thanks to the growing indifference
towards religion. Nor are political battles fought with great passion,
especially since the end of ideology. British politics is not marked by a
cut-throat competition. Failure in politics is not dreaded because a political
career is not essential for survival. A defeated politician can always migrate
to the corporate world and make a decent living.

Britain
has a much smaller and less conservative religious base, so a political
constituency fails to develop. The relations between the Government and
Christian leaders are never so smooth that a politician can think of winning
popularity through their endorsement.

Jesus
in Britain, unlike Lord Ram in India, does not improve the electoral prospects
of a candidate. Thus, there is no political incentive to create social
disharmony by fuelling religious hatred. Political leaders in the UK do not try
to polarise the voters on sectarian lines. They do not politicise religion. In
fact, they fear that an attempt to misuse religion may backfire.  

In
Britain, political leaders know that hate speech may cost their political
career. Indian politicians have no such fear and at times they even violate the
law in order to incite religious violence. That is why political discourse has
been vulgarised in India.

God, on His part, does not do
politics

In the
UK, religion has become peripheral to politics. Even devout Christians among
British politicians do not do God! God, on His part, does not do politics. God
may be an Englishman, but he keeps away from British elections. His messengers
bring no political message for the voters. Even the faithful do not consult Him
in the polling booth.

God grants
no electoral support to British politicians. In India, God does bless selected
politicians who invoke His name on the eve of an election!

Britain’s
commercial ethos, Christians’ approach towards their faith and the influence of
institutions that promote scepticism, critical thinking and dissent – all have
shaped a political culture that shuns extremism. Politics in Britain is not
afflicted with religion. British democracy, distorted by Mammon, is spared by God!