varnam

Once my father called up on Good Friday and I was at work and he wondered why it was not a holiday in United States which is a Christian majority country. I explained the absence of religious holidays here.

There was something puzzling about the Indian government's decision to declare a three-day state mourning for Pope John Paul II, Karol Jozef Wojtyla. Did it try to appear more Christian than Christians, or more "secular" than the rest? I am all for showing respect to the dead, irrespective of their creed, faith or colour. However, the Indian government's decision raises some interesting questions. Did it declare a state mourning because the Pope was a head of state?

Does the death of a sovereign of an artificial state of less than 1,000 people deserve it? Vatican is a "state" whose head, the Pope, is elected by an electoral college consisting of 117 voting cardinals â?? all foreigners! Prince Rainier III, the monarch of Monaco, a stamp size principality but substantially bigger than the Vatican and commercially more important, died within a week of the Pope's death. He was Europe's longest ruling monarch, but was there any mourning in India?

And if the gesture was to the head of a billion strong Christian sect, with global presence, then can a "secular state" differentiate between one religion and another? Should it not show similar gestures on the demise of heads of other persuasions in India and abroad? A few years ago, when the paramacharya of Kanchi, in whom many saw a "living God," died, no such gesture was shown. Isn't our "secularism" skewed?

How did the rest of the world react to the event? Ireland, a country with 92 per cent Catholic population, did not declare any state mourning and Catholics were not upset over it at all. The same was true for Spain, a deeply believing Catholic country. Leading French left-wingers criticised the government of President Jacques Chirac for lowering flags on public buildings in tribute to the Pope for a day, arguing that it was a breach of the country's secular principles.

Protestant countries like the US, Britain, Sweden, Denmark etc., declared no national mourning. The same was true for countries like Russia, Greece, Ukraine under the Eastern Orthodox Church. Of about 100 Christian countries, just a dozen, all insignificant ones apart from Italy and Canada, declared a mourning. Only Egypt, a predominantly Muslim country with hardly any Catholics amongst its Coptic Christian minority, declared a mourning. [Who mourned the Pope?]

One way of being secular is not to allow any religious holidays and the other way is to appease everyone.