Asato ma sadgamaya
Tamaso ma jyotigarmaya
Mrtyorma amrtam gamaya
These are the words of the morning prayer of Kendriya Vidyalayas which the
thousands of students of Kendriya Vidyalaya sing every morning they go to
school. Prayers are a part of people of India. You cannot separate prayer and
Indians. Being born and brought up in Indian society by Indian parents we are
taught to pray before every good things we do because it is said that we need
God’s blessings before we do anything good. So is this concept in school in
which we consider education and studies as a good thing and definitely it is. I
personally thank God as I belong to those privileged children in India whose
parents can afford quality education for me or rather education at all.
The question in the whole petition filed by Madhya Pradesh advocate Vinayak Shah
is whether in accordance to Article 28(1) of the Constitution of India, “can the
religious instructions be provided in the education institutions fully
maintained out of state funds� The morning prayer of Kendriya Vidyalaya is in
Sanskrit and has been borrowed from Mahabharata .The students of Kendriya
Vidyalaya are compulsorily to recite the prayer every morning in school with
closed eyes, joined hands and heads bowed down. And if any student does not do
so then he or she is taken to task by the teacher.
The writ has been filed under Article 32 of the Constitution of India, and
Supreme Court has also referred this matter to the constitutional bench which
means that this is a matter of utmost importance that needs to be tackled by the
Judiciary. It challenges the secular nature of the government.
The whole question here is that whether the language Sanskrit can be associated
to the Hindu religion and is it right to do so? Another question is whether the
language needs to be treated and given importance for it being an ancient
language of India and a part of culture and heritage of India or should we
relate it to any religion at all?
The meaning of the prayer means “from ignorance lead me to the knowledge†and
“where there is justice, there is victoryâ€. Well this is also the motto of the
Supreme Court of India. And even the National Emblem of India “Satyamev Jayateâ€
has been taken from the Mundak Upanishad. Not only them there are many other
government institutions in India which include government owned companies or
educational institutions which have their motto in Sanskrit. So it is not the
language which should not be the issue here. Sanskrit is the language of India
and is the mother of almost all the oriental language.
While making the constitution it was well in the minds of the
Constitution-Makers that they didn’t want to make India an atheist state but a
secular one. But the secular in India is different from the French concept of
secularism. Where secularism means no religion at all, in France Sikhs cannot
carry Kirpan, Muslims cannot keep long beard, Hindus cannot wear Janeu and
Christians cannot wear Holy-Cross. But in India our Constitution makers could
not have made a secular India like that, but they wanted a secular India which
has place for every religion and even for the non-believers. So in India every
religion needed to be given equal importance at the same time government needed
to see that it didn’t favour any religion and keeping the rights of minorities
secured.
Though the Constitution of India in Article 30 allows the minorities to
establish educational institutions or any other institution of their own choice
to preserve their language or culture even if they are receiving the state funds
completely but that does not apply to the majority religion. But in the same
manner it will also not be right to relate Sanskrit, Vedas, Ramayana,
Mahabharata or Lord Ram or Lord Krishna with just Hinduism or relate Guru Nanak
Devji with just Sikhism or Buddha with just Buddhism. All of them are inherent
parts of India, Indian culture and Indian history they cannot be separated from
India. We worship Goddess Saraswati as the Goddess of Knowledge, Goddess Lakshmi
as the Goddess of Prosperity by whole India not just by Hindus. In the same way
Buddha is worshipped for peace by the entire India. While the original
Constitution was being made artists from Shanti Niketan in Calcutta were called
to paint the pages of the Constitution and every page of the original
hand-written Constituion was painted depicting the history of India, so a side
of the page was showing Lanka –dehen and other side of the same page showing
Jama Masjid of Delhi. This is the beauty of India that the people from different
religions, languages and cultures live together as Indians and not as different
identities.
This does not mean that the Government of India is justified in this case. The
entire problem is that why is there compulsion in doing the prayer I might an
atheist or any other form of non-believers or some minority religion sect which
does not allows me to pray to pray by joining the hands and closing or I might
not even believe in praying at all, this is just my choice. No one can force me
do what I do not want to do, not even the Government of India because is the
right given to me by the Constitution of India and no one can take it from me.
In the famous case of (Bijoe Emmanuel and Ors. v. Union of India) there
was an Emmanuel family in Kerala whose children were in the same school, during
the national anthem. They were from Jehovah Witness sect of Christianity which
is very less in number, in their religion or rather in their sect they do not
believe in the existence of state. People of this sect do not join state
services or even the armed forces. Children of Emmanuel family refused to sing
the national anthem as they considered against their sect although they used to
stand in the position of the anthem and did not disturb anyone. But the school
administration suspended them for this so their family challenged this decision
of school administration in Kerala High Court which gave judgement in favour of
school authority but later when family challenged the judgement of Kerala High
Court in Supreme Court, Supreme Court overruled the Kerala High Court and gave
the judgement in favour of Emmanuel family and concluded that the children of
the Emmanuel family being of the Jehova Witness sect of Christianity are a
minority community and thus are allowed not to sing the national anthem because
they are allowed to do so according to Article 25 of the Constitution of India.
Which is the article related to the rights of Freedom of Religion. And article
29 of the Constitution of India which is related to the protection of the
minority communities in India and says that government cannot impose the Indian
culture on certain minority communities of India because many of them are of
foreign origin and certain things of the Indian culture might be against their
religion. Then why is the culture being forcefully imposed on the minority
communities, they are not disturbing any other communities from doing so or
anything like that.
Other aspect is for the non-believers, they do not believe in God or praying but
even they are forcefully made to recite the prayer in school. The prayer
requests God to bring me from ignorance to knowledge. There are people who do
not believe in asking all these things from God but by achieving themselves. An
aspect is that it goes also against the Fundamental Duty to develop the
scientific temper. Science is not completely against the existence of God but at
the same time it is against anything philosophical or anything which has no
existence or cannot be seen, touched or felt.
The entire problem with this PIL is that it is states that prayer is in Sanskrit
so it is Hindu or it is borrowed from Mahabharata so it is Hindu but the PIL
should have been against the compulsion in doing so. Compulsorily going to the
assembly, compulsorily joining hands, compulsorily closing eyes and compulsorily
reciting the prayer. Gone are the days when India was divided by language and
religion but this is India of 21st century which knows its right, if it has got
the right to do something then it also has got the right of not doing something
at all. So we can conclude the prayer is Indian in its context and not just
Hindu but the PIL could have been filed in a better manner based on different
points and stance.
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