Written by: Ishan Raj Upadhyay - 2022008, Grade XI
Posted on: 05 May, 2021
One of the dimensions of democracy can be referred to as secularism because it surely implies the extension of democratic ideas of liberalism and individualism in the realism of religion. The protestant reformers had been asking for freedom of judgment of right and wrong and secularism stood for a protest towards the theological hegemony of the Pope. The democratization of ecclesiastical groups was once called secular response in Europe. Nepal had no organised Hindu or Buddhist religious institutions, same with the Christian church. On the other hand, it had an indigenous thing of secularisation from the mediaeval times.
The spirit of tolerance and coexistence grew to become a landmark of secular mind-set and outlook. Asoka’s famous twelfth rock edict on ‘Religious Toleration’ echoes it. It triumphed in the reign of Akbar, who, being a liberal Muslim ruler used to be alive to the risks of non-secular bigotry and tried to promote country wide harmony by way of his catholic eclecticism and secular policies. The Constitution drafted by members of parliament and posthumously promulgated by Dr. Ram Baran Yadav in 2074 had a particular provision concerning secularism.
Few Ministers paying a tribute to Nepali eclecticism did no longer permit the European concept to enter into the Constitution due to the fact faith in the Nepali context can by no means be ‘one last Book way’ of knowing the truth. Religion in Nepal has extraordinary meanings to special humans as individuals, as citizens and as co-religionists. Rinchen Tamang, a veteran freedom fighter and litterateur firmly maintained that secularism can neither be a religion, nor indifference to religion, nor mere tolerance and coexistence of religions.
Those who saw it as anti-communists had been disregarded on the floor that spiritual groups are no longer communities. Broadly speaking, it is used not as adversarial to faith however as divorced from all religion or religious having nothing to do with the behaviour of nation affairs. In Nepal the word has been used not in anti-religious sense, but that means treatment to all non-secular on an equal footing and ruling out any discrimination of any Indian on the floor of his religion.
The utilization of equal recognition to all has recognized the word secular with tolerance amongst the distinctive religions in Nepal. In-fact “Secularism does not now imply irreligion or atheism or even stress on material comforts. It declares that it lays stress on the universality of non-secular values which may be attained by a range of ways.” Thus, in nutshell, secularism tends to have equal reputation to all religions in the context of Nepal.
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
