Je Suis Charlie

Before even going into the what-a-bad-act-of-violence sentimental outpour I want to focus first on the meaning of Secularism as interpreted and enshrined by the Constitutional Council of France. The idea of this article is not to analyse whether it was a bad and horrific action or a good and justified reaction. Certainly there are causes responsible for an action. In fact Mr. Devdutt Patnaik goes so far, although not very impressively, to give a philosophical bend to the recent attacks by talking about maya: we live in our constructed realities smothered by the maya which makes us the killer and the killed both. One can always throw in more constructed jargons like Justice by arguing that 12 people lampooning prophet get killed in cold blood in France by two isolated militants and 3.7 million people come out in their support but 2000 plus innocent people including children and pregnant women are captured in their own homes in Nigeria and butchered for committing no crime by an army of organised militants and still only a handful of news agencies talk about the incident. Call it the ridiculousness or mishandling to deal with global terror outfits or the absurdity of modern day realpolitik one cannot but be compelled to frown at these incidents. These are matters of grave concern which make us rethink our basis concepts of justice, freedom, peace, tolerance, security and allegiance to basic humanism and simply commenting that it was good or bad would be gross oversimplification.

The text-book definition of Indian secularism is that the government shall remain neutral to all religion by not meddling itself into the affairs of any single one of them. Free practice, profession, propagation (of) your religion (conversion although is not a right as said by SC in one verdict and de facto conversion by force is infringement of freedom of conscience), freedom from taxation (on religious institutions), freedom to give religious instructions (to autonomous private education institutions), freedom to manage language and culture (religious minority) are some provisions mentioned under part-3 of Indian Constitution also called as ‘Fundamental Rights’. Pretty impressive isn’t it? In theory, yes. But this is not the case in France.

In France, Secularism simply means concerning with the affairs of natural and not the supernatural. The French state does not recognize religion and recent past incidents would also show that there’s a certain element of hostility against religion in their secularism. The French accepted the concept of Laïcité – the separation of church and state way back in 1905. However the more severe version of secularism was defined by the French courts recently in 2004. Increasing amount of immigration in the past decade gave way to the emergence of multiple identities. To prevent the practice of appeasement politics, which destroys social fabric – India being a fantastic example, the decision was taken to identify secularism as a strict non-recognition of any religion. This essentially means that the people of France have the right to offend religion just as they can other sensitive matters like public figures. In 2011 they passed a law for mandatory revelation of face at places of work, officially banning Hijabs and Naqabs. This came into implementation since 2014.

Charlie Hebdo was practicing this legal and political facility to express its disagreement of institutionalised religion, specifically Islam as per the context. Certainly the fact that they didn’t express why they disagreed with Islam but straight away lampooned it as a joke is questionable. Charlie’s belief is that rather than pouring in over the top militarised troops into the middle-east, they should instead create such an atmosphere of liberal thought that Islam like Christianity is reduced to a banality. Despite several threats and some previous attacks, Charlie did not succumb. Theirs was a provocative, thoughtful, funny, obscene and an anarchist method.

Most important now is to understand the socio-political implications of these attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Anti-immigration sentiments are high in European nations. Whether they are anti-Islam marches in Germany or the rising Islamophobia in France, one must clearly understand the backlash that Charlie Hebdo will create.

Clearly there were reported attacks on Mosques and other Islamic centres which only corroborate the rising fear of Islam in European countries. These are not isolated incidents. The growing immigration compounded by an anti-Islam sentiment has been further responsible for alienating the Muslim communities in European countries. This has caused ghettoization and marginalisation. I even heard Mr. Bobby Jindal recently talked about certain no-non Muslim zones in England where a more severe form of Islam is strictly followed. The idea is that if one reads the profile of majority of Muslim people living in these areas, one would find that these are 2^nd and 3^rd generation immigrants from marginalized working classes living in grim high rise suburbs at the outskirts of large cities where unemployment, drug exploitation and other crimes plague day in and day out. Such marginalisation and unemployment brings along dejection and stigma with it, which if can be solved by joining a radical Islam then the latter is considered a viable option. Such reasons which provide a meaning to these despondent men and women then become an explanation to incidents of young people flocking in groups to join radical forces in Middle-East like IS.

Charlie Hebdo and its aftermath must be treated very sensitively. The government and law enforcement agencies must work hard to keep all the sections of people in confidence and ensure their ideal of secularism in practice.