IHEU has used a meeting with UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief Asma Jahangir to highlight human rights problems in India. At a meeting in Mumbai on 11 March 2008, IHEU International Director Babu Gogineni made a presentation to Ms Jahangir on separation of religion and state in India and the rights of Humanists.

For six full days, from 25th to 31st December 2007, over 60 participants from several regions of the Indian sub-continent gathered at IHEU Member Organisation Viveka College of Education in Chirala to discuss, to debate and to learn about Humanism, Rationalism and Secularism. Activities started at the crack of dawn and ended only well past midnight.

The 1st Annual Conference of Gujarat-Mumbai Rationalist Association and the 77th Annual Conference of Rationalist Association of India was held on 24 & 25 November in Palanpur. Babu Gogineni reports on this unique event that turned out to be a vehicle for inspiration and excitement for more than 250 Humanists.

'May God Protect Us All!'

An excellent start has been made to IHEU’s campaign against popular superstition with the launch on 27 August 2007 of a unique Science Education Programme in India.

In the latest article in his series The Human Angle, Babu Gogineni reports from Suryapet, India on a leadership training camp for Dalits and alarming talk of human sacrifice in rural India. In his illustrated article, he brings news from the front line of the war against superstition and charlatans.

A Day Charged with Humanism
The Leadership Training Camp for Dalits that was being organised in Suryapet town (14 and 15 July ’07, Andhra Pradesh, India) through the International Humanist and Ethical Union's support was going on full-speed. Mr. Veeraswami the leader of Spoorthi, the local implementing organization, and Mr. V.B. Rawat, Director of the Social Development Foundation, the event's sponsor were participating as resource persons along with Hyderabad-based Dalit women's rights campaigner, the sociologist Sujatha. There were a hundred Dalit youth, men and women, eager to learn about modern science, about the situation of Dalits and that of women in the country, about superstitions, and about the plight of untouchables worldwide.

In the fourth of his series of articles "The Human Angle", Babu Gogineni highlights Humanist work to counter superstition among Dalits in an Indian village.

Despite great civilizational achievements for her citizens, modern Europe suffers from archaic systems – hereditary royalty, state religions, state-appointed bishops, un-elected bishops in parliament, religious privileges and tax concessions, church taxes....

Few people know that untouchability existed in Spain and in France just a few hundred years ago. Today, despite her tainted past of colonialism, and the shameful responsibility for starting two world wars, Europe can boast of one of the most peaceful and egalitarian societies in the world. Untouchability has been so thoroughly eradicated there that few in Europe even know that it ever existed on the continent. There is no reason the same level of cultural development cannot be achieved elsewhere in the world where this terrible practice persists – in the Indian sub-continent, in Japan and in Nigeria. But before these societies can cherish the values of equality and establish true democracies, they need to first undergo the same kind of historical transformation that the Enlightenment made possible in Europe. Humanism, Human values and the flourishing of the scientific temper can help in the process of modernisation. It will be for the organized humanist movement to help make this happen, and IHEU has created the means to support international humanist activism.

The recent abolition of the caste bar to priesthood in India will have far reaching consequences for the unequal social order that orthodox Hinduism promotes. Babu Gogineni looks at the implications.

Recent elections

The recent elections in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu were a curious spectacle of rival Dravidian parties trying to outbid each other in the unsustainable promises they were making to the electorate: free colour televisions, free computers, writing off of loans that farmers owed to Cooperative banks were only some of them. It was the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) which won the electoral first-past-the-post race through clever political alliances and intelligent exploiting of caste vote banks. Both the parties claim to be inheritors of the legacy of Tamil Nadu’s rationalist movement of the early 1900s, but this is not entirely convincing: the outgoing government of All Indian Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) had the indignity of being led by a Chief Minister who visited temples, performed rituals as well as modified her name on the advice of astrologers and numerologists. Neither party has ever shied away from corruption or from nepotism.

In the third of his new series of articles "The Human Angle", Babu Gogineni questions the popular image of Kerala as a progressive and modern state, in the light of the government's reiterated support for the ban on entry of young women to Lord Ayyappa's temple on Sabarimala Hill. The Kerala situation has moved the legislature of neighbouring Karnataka state to protest, but it has left the pathetically backward leaders of the Travancore Devaswom Board unmoved. How long can this egregious violation of the fundamental rights of women be tolerated?