While the article below may not be comprehensive and completely accurate as far as the problems for secularism in Europe are concerned, it nicely highlights the fact that majoritarianism and religious chauvinism are a world-wide phenomenon. Mr. Faleiro, however, did not cover the situation in the U.S.
U.S. A. is a free country which tries to strictly abide by the principle of separation of Church and State, first promulgated by one of its founders, Thomas Jefferson. But a significant plurality of its citizens do not believe in secularism. There are a large number of organizations in the U.S. that promote majoritarianism and antipathy towards religions other than Christianity, particularly Islam. Some even oppose the Catholic Church. Representatives of these organizations and their supporters are not only well represented in the political sphere and in government, but they have highly popular radio and TV talk shows, and even entire TV channels for themselves. Contrary to the claim in this forum that hate-speech is censored in strong democracies, nobody censors them in the U.S. The first amendment of the U.S. constitution protects their speech, just as it separates the Church and State. Nobody is even able to shout them down. They have the loudest voice in the media. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the worst of these organizations, states that there are more than 1000 such hate groups in America. Here is its website that maps all these groups: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map Even though these groups might all appear to be right-wing, there are also many left-wing groups that use hate speech, and have resorted to violence from time to time. The problem in India, as opposed to the U.S. and Europe, therefore, is not the presence of extremist groups or lack of censorship of hate speech. It is the lack of law and order, and the tendency to violent mob behavior that results in small and large scale religious riots, often amounting to genocide, as in the case of Gujarat in 2002. I contend that it is still over-crowding, poverty and illiteracy that contribute to the latter propensity. Mr. Faleiro is right that in recent times the conflict has extended to the tribal areas such as in Orissa and the North East, and in Kashmir, in large part because of evangelism and gharvapasi. But I have to say that I strongly disagree with his call to ban religious conversion and re-conversion. Secularism protects the right to peacefully convert to any religion or no religion. So what would be my solution then? It would be to strengthen the law enforcement and judicial process in these areas of conflict. This would also involve banning of groups directly involved in violence, and prosecuting of politicians and activists that commit illegal actions and crimes. And it would certainly involve education, economic empowerment and family planning. Cheers, Santosh ----- Original Message ----- From: Goanet Reader <[email protected]> > > F r e e d o m o f r e l i g i o n > > CONVERSIONS, INCITING SECTARIAN HATRED, AND MARGINALISATION > > Eduardo Faleiro > [email protected] > > Religion has emerged as a major source of conflict in the > post cold war era all across the globe. A perceptive writer > points out that ideological strife has now given place to the > "clash of civilizations" and predicts that in the foreseeable > future, religion will be a major source of conflict within > and among nations. > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect Goa's natural beauty Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
