Mangaluru: Sri Prasanna Heggodu, a Gandhian thinker and proponent of Grama Swarajya advised to “disregard all types of political, religious conflicts” and preach the youth about the “love in the religion” and “softness of religion.”
He was speaking to the audience after inaugurating a state level seminar on “Indian Secularism and Kannada Response” organised by the Kannada Department of St. Aloysius College at Fr. Eric Mathias Hall on July 23.
Heggodu said, “The ‘machine culture’ has made everything and everyone a product of the market. This includes God, music, drama, parents too. The things which we must respect the most have become a product of the market and because of this, our culture, values and thinking have changed. And we have failed to control these changing thoughts and the entire humanity is in a worry, fear, and distrust.”
Commenting on the issue of Indian Secularism, Heggodu said that BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani had popularised the term Pseudo-Secularism during the 1980s. “Till then nobody questioned the concept of Secularism in India. In India, the scholars have interpreted secularism in two ways, that is, the secularism which is adapted from Europe-that keeps religion away from politics. In contrast, during the Indian independence movement, Gandhiji gave another interpretation of secularism where he mixed all religions and politics for achieving the dream of ‘Ramarajya.’ In ‘Raghupati Raghava Rajaram’, Gandhiji brings together the names of all the religious figures into one composition”, he said.
Critiquing the pseudo-secularism, he said, Lal Krishna Advani’s concept of secularism was right, but the implementation of the concept was hasty. “Advani mixed religion and politics but ignored the tenets of morality. This then led to religious fanaticism creating a big tragedy,” he said.
The rector of SAC Rev. Dr. Dionysius Vaz SJ presided in the seminar. Principal of SAC Dr. Praveen Martis SJ and Kannada Department HoD Dr. Sarswathi Kumari K were present.
