I am not content with merely “regulating or restricting” them; I should like the State also to have the power positively and absolutely “to prohibit” any such practice. Such practices in my opinion, only degrade the very name of religion. Nothing has caused more the popular disfavour of some of the most well-known and most widely spread religions in the world than the association of those religions with secular activities, and with excesses that are connected with those activities. Material possessions, worldly wealth and worldly grandeur are things which have been the doom of many an established Church. Many a well-known Religion, which has ceased to follow the original spirit or the precepts of its Founders, has, nevertheless, carried on, in the popular eye, business, trade, and political activity of a most reprehensible character. The State in India, if it claims to be secular, if it claims to have an open mind, should have, in my opinion, a right not merely to regulate and restrict such practices but also absolutely to prohibit them.
