Secularism and Humanism – Any Takers?

Facebook is a social networking site carrying millions of people under its wings. A lot of groups, dealing with anything under the sun are available and people flock to them in droves to take membership in these groups. As long as it is free, why keep away from it, particularly if that group interests you even remotely? One such community is ‘Global Secular Humanist Movement’ and the name itself says it all.

Whatever be the thing about the title, does it cater to the lofty ideals it professes, namely secularism and humanism? One look at the posts indicate that it doesn’t bother much about practicing what they preach. One glance at the page and we come to the conclusion that secular humanism is all about gay rights. The page is littered with exhortations of all kinds to force the society to legalize gay marriage. It is as if you’ve to support the perverted whims of these creatures (hard words, I know, but forgive me) calling themselves gays, in order to be a liberal. Such an attitude is against nature and science (not the two journals, but what they mean!). What evolutionary advantage these people possess? Evolution is all about propagating your genes if they provide you with any advantage to survival. Being a gay confers nothing – it is not conducive to survival and the genes are not going to spread further through offspring. Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, a cul-de-sac. Why should liberals support them?

Indians do a lot of irrelevant offerings to numerous deities

Anyway, that’s not what I meant to say. This Global Secular Humanist Movement recently published a country-wise total of their members, and it proves interesting. They have 5563 members from India and 1993 from Pakistan (on 28 March 2013). These numbers assume significance as a percentage of the respective countries’ total populations. As per Census 2011, India has 1241 million and Pakistan has 177 million people. So, if we take the Indian percentage of members to the total population as the representative figure, there should have been only 792 members from Pakistan whereas there are 1993. And, if Pakistani members are taken as the benchmark ratio, there should have been 14000 Indian members while there is only 5563. What is clear is that more Pakistanis join secular humanist group than do Indians. Isn’t it somewhat odd in a constitutionally secular country as against an Islamic republic alleged to be run by mullahs and religious fanatics? Or, do we accede that even though our country is secular in name, most of its citizens don’t share the ideal?

It is not at all odd, if we look into the antecedents of some of the ‘well educated’ and ‘scientifically minded’ people of this country. Take the case of Shri. K Radhakrishnan, the current chief of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). His organization is entrusted with making and launching space vehicles and satellites – a thoroughly scientific job. Yet, what did its Chief do? He visited a renowned temple at Guruvayur, Kerala just around the time when intimation of elevating him as the Chief was about to arrive, so that he could receive the good news in the divine precincts! Also, he regularly visits shrines to pray for the successful launch of satellites. It was only last month that he rushed to Tirupati in connection with the launch of PSLC-C20 which had on board ‘Saral’, an Indo-French satellite. What feeble chance science possesses to get rid of the clutches of religion from people like him? Not only Radhakrishnan, but many of the educated people won’t even think of starting a new venture or inaugurate a shop or production plant without performing a puja on the premises.

So much for secularism and humanism.