Sanal Edamaruku

President, Rationalist International

Secretary General, Indian Rationalist Association

Presented at the Australis 2000 Congress, Regional Asian and Pacific Rim Humanist Congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the Council of Australian Humanist Societies Inc. held at Sydney 11-13 November 2000

The ongoing debate about a global ethical value system is surprisingly omitting a crucial question: Who should be its guardian? Power is concentrating worldwide in the hands of those who have disqualified themselves for this position by their arbitrary handling of basic values like democracy and human rights, which become political weapons in their hands. But fear and corruption make silent collaborators and vested political interests in ethical disguise are ignored. Regrettably, this tendency can even be seen in our own camp.

Search is on for universal values. There are efforts to bring about a global moral consensus. Breathtaking new dimensions are unfolding in front of us.

While we are standing respectfully on the threshold of something that once later generations may call the Moral Age, I wish to submit some heretical questions. This is perhaps not the right moment to do so, but when, if not now?

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That universal values have to be based not on divine sanctions but on humane considerations reflecting the changed requirements of our times is not seriously disputed among the enlightened section of people. Several decades back, rationalism was defined as an attitude which approves the primacy of reason and aims at the establishment of a humane ethical system. All over the world not only rationalists but also the later humanist movement, the freethinkers and all those who challenge the authority of religion agreed on this point: that we need a humane ethical system with consideration for human feelings and with enhanced understanding about individual and social necessities.

This discussion, brought up over and over again, has become nothing but repetition, ruminating a cliché of what the enlightened world agreed upon far earlier. The important question at this moment is why we still do not have a globally accepted value system, why societies and polities stubbornly refuse to accede a common understanding of values that would be acceptable for every one.

An instructive example can be seen in the Muslim world. Despite the growth of vocal fundamentalist groups, a section of Islamic nations have corrected several legal positions which had been based on ethical values provided by Sharia. Today, in many Muslim countries purdah is no more compulsory. Triple talaq for unilateral divorce of a woman by her husband is no longer permitted. These changes have been implemented although very vocal groups opposed them from within their own territories highlighting the religious value system that would not allow them.

Despite these promising steps towards a reorientation of the old value system, the question of global values, if presented by groups and forums, meets with resistance and provokes defense of the religious principle that values need divine sanction. Is this resistance simply motivated by deep-rooted religious obligations that would not melt so fast? Or is it rather an expression of serious doubts about the integrity and credibility of those who represent global solutions? Much speaks for the second possibility.

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There are governments and intelligentsia cutting across national barriers speaking and fuming for democracy. Democracy takes a central position among the new global values. But the very same enthusiastic defenders of democracy do not hesitate to friendly cooperate with states that oppress democratic movements within their own countries. Saudi Arabia, for example, has no democratic rights and Sharia is brutally implemented, gender equality as well as the right of religious freedom and conscience is denounced officially and legally. But Saudi Arabia still remains the strongest political ally of the USA that claims to be the champion of democracy all over the world. The US government also does not mind to support military rulers, despots and dictators in several African and Latin American countries when it is politically convenient and serves their aspirations for global leadership. When on the other hand a nation and its political goals become inconvenient, political coups are promoted, dissidents are financed and cities are bombed – all in the name of human rights and democracy. On the backdrop of this arbitrary handling of basic political values, the commitment of the US government and their cheerleaders inside and outside the country to a global moral consensus has to be seen with skepticism.

The USA is not the only culprit. Salman Rushdie, after eight years under the fatwa, describes his depressing experiences with European foreign ministers: "EU leaders pay lip services to the great European ideals – free expression, human rights, the Enlightenment, the right to dissent, the importance of the separation of church and state. But when these ideals come against the powerful banalities of what is called ‘reality’ – trade, money, guns, power – then it’s freedom that takes a drive. When it’s Danish feta cheese or Irish halal beef against the Convention of Human Rights, don’t expect free expression to win."

The fundamental problem of a global value system lies in a small question: who should be the guardian of all these fine universally acceptable values? How can we avoid that things will be measured with double standards? Doubts about the integrity and dependability of the beholders of global values promote societies and polities at the receiving end to look for a waterproof argument to refuse their acceptance. The safest and also otherwise convenient solution is to remain with the old divine sanctions that cannot be touched.

Only if centers of unimpeachable integrity and good intention come up and can be entrusted to guard a global value system, it has chances to find acceptance. The problem does not lie with the contents of the values but with the credibility of their defenders.

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It is common sense that while honesty is generally accepted as desirable it makes much of a difference, who asks you to be honest. If there is a thief at your door step who wants to rob away the little money that you have preserved for your survival and future, and he asks you to be honest and tell him how much money you have and where it is kept, every child could tell you that honesty in such a case is only used to exploit you and that it is therefore wise not to be honest. But when it comes to political realities and power structures dull-wittedness triumphs; it may be a tribute to fear or a tribute to corruption.

Let us take the example of the new value of open market economy. In its name some countries, like for example India, have been convinced to open their national markets for international imports, expecting to be able to vice versa sell their own products in the international market. But international competitors have been fast to discover that the newcomers can be banned for violation of more or less global values. India’s carpet export, for example, has been cut down drastically when child labor could be presented as an acceptable reason for boycott. Recently it has been found by non-Hindu "animal lovers" that India’s leather export is violating the Hindu religious taboo of cow slaughter and can elegantly be stopped by provoking religious sentiments and mob attacks at home. Simple mechanisms of vested interests in ethical disguise are often taken at face value and reach their goals.

Unfortunately, this dull-wittedness encroaches even camps that we hoped to see on the side of rationalism and progress when frontlines are marked. How else can it be explained that the UN supported the absurd idea to invite religious and spiritual leaders for a Millennium World Peace Summit, among them the very people who are responsible for fundamentalism and religious violence. The Indian delegation to the summit comprised of fundamentalist Hindu leaders, yogis, sadhus, tantriks and godmen. The whole collection of radicals and spiritual frauds which Indian rationalists are fighting since decades was given an international image-lift by elevating them as UN peace advisers! UNESCO – since the founding of IHEU in close touch with humanist thoughts and work – planned an international seminar in cooperation with Indian godman Sai Baba on "strengthening values". We do not know what values exactly should have been strengthened in this seminar. Indian rationalists, for one, have exposed Sai Baba thoroughly as fraud and hold him guilty of deceit, claiming authority under misrepresentation of facts, and of unscrupulous mental misuse of millions of weak minded and gullible people. The UNESO seminar did not happen, because Sai Baba stands meantime internationally accused of consistent sexual abuse of children and young disciples in numerous cases.

Let us come to another example that is particularly regrettable.

The US government has recently established a commission for protection of religious freedom, not only in the USA but all around the world. They demand – and may usurp in course of time – the right to correct the violators. In its first report about the situation of religious freedom in the world, this commission has identified India, among other nations, as a grave violator. India guarantees the right of freedom of religion and conscience. Enshrined in its constitution it is part of the fundamental rights of the individual. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, plainly interdicting and brutally harassing the very idea of freedom of religion, was not identified as grave violator. The commission did – in another example – also not see violation of religious freedom when sects and cults eating into the cake of state churches are systematically oppressed in Western Europe, but vehemently attacked China’s attempts to oppress a dangerous cult which asks its followers to denounce and abstain from all medical treatment. These discrepancies, if nothing else, could indicate to the watchful observer that this commission, though undoubtedly referring to an important humane value, comes up to be a political weapon only.

When we, rationalists and humanists, promote and sanction such a commission by entrusting it with the protection of one of our colleagues in Pakistan, our efforts to establish a credible base for a global value consensus becomes a farce. The rationalists, whom I represent, have initially wholeheartedly supported the IHEU initiative to save Dr. Shaikh, who faces death penalty in a blasphemy case in Pakistan. But we have serious reservations towards the step to focus the initiative on an expected move of the US commission for freedom of religion. It should rather be tried to bring world media attention to the case and exert moral pressure on Pakistan against its violation of the primary right of Dr. Shaikh to maintain and express his convictions.

This unlucky example brings us to one of the primary questions regarding the implementation of the values proposed by the enlightened world and partially already approved by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An international convention to arrive at a consensus about a global ethical system and if possible the signing of a document on global values may be an important step which we should try to reach. But it is equally important that no single nation should be allowed to pose as the beholder and defender of such a document and to use it to attain its political goals. It should be guaranteed that a commission that watches the violation of universally accepted values comprises of representatives of nations and international and national non-governmental bodies without a dominance of one power center. If this is not accomplished, it will become another "United Nations" which serves the interest of one power center only and lost – beyond its credibility – the great historical chance to realize the concept of a single interdependent democratic world in which everyone’s voice and vote counts.

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Honorary Associates: (alphabetically) Katsuaki Asai (Japan), Prof. Colin Blakemore (UK), Prof. Vern Bullough (USA), Dr Bill Cooke (New Zealand), Helena Cronin (UK), Prof. Richard Dawkins (UK), Joseph Edamaruku (India), Jim Herrick (UK), Christopher Hitchens (USA), Lavanam (India), Prof. Paul Kurtz (USA), Dr Henry Morgentaler (Canada), Taslima Nasreen (Bangladesh), Steinar Nilsen (Norway), Prof. Jean-Claude Pecker (France), James Randi (USA), Dr G N Jyoti Shankar (meanwhile deceased) (USA), Prof. Harry Stopes-Roe (UK), Prof. Rob Tielman (The Netherlands), Jane Wynne Willson (UK), Prof. Lewis Wolpert (UK).

Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, can be contacted at Edamaruku@rationalistinternational.net