‘For Vajpayee, discrimination on faith was completely no-go’ (Book Review)

New Delhi, Dec 23 : At a time when inter-faith marriages have come under pressure and Uttar Pradesh has even promulgated an anti-conversion ordinance, a new book contends that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was vehemently opposed to discrimination based on faith and that religious conversions deeply offended his sensibilities – but he accepted them.
“Unlike Gandhi, who had detailed exposure of living in a non-Hindu milieu and extensive conversations with Christian theologians, Vajpayee was very much rooted in the larger Hindu traditions. Hence, for him, discrimination based on faith was completely no-go, and the ruler was not to be concerned with the belief systems of his subjects. This worked fine conceptually when boundaries between faiths are fluid and faith is not seen as all-pervasive,” Shakti Sinha, who had worked closely with the former Prime Minister for three-and-a-half years from 1996-99, writes in “Vajpayee: The Years that Changed India” that the publisher, Penguin, is set to release on December 25, his 96th birth anniversary.
But, asks Sinha, can belief systems be equated with religion? Can Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Nath Sampradaya or even Kabir Panthism be categorised as separate religions? Going further, do marriages take place between Jains and non-Jains? “Vajpayee strongly argued for Vijayadashami to be a national event since it symbolised the victory of good over evil and was, in his eyes, was non-sectarian. The same logic would apply to Holi and Diwali too,” the author states.
These assumptions would obviously not be acceptable to most believers of Abrahamic religions, the author states, pointing out that while moving the confidence vote on May 27, 1996 (during his 13-day first term), Vajpayee “had said that India was inherently secular, since Indians did not believe that any faith or system of worship had a monopoly over truth. This, for Vajpayee, was self-evident”.
Syed Shahabuddin, the diplomat turned politician and a prominent voice articulating a Muslim point of view, disagreed with Vajpayee’s description of the Indian philosophy. According to Shahabuddin, it was his belief as a Muslim that his was the only true path. So could Vajpayee say that Indians accept all faiths as true and equally valid?