Indian Secularism needs to set its house in Order!

OK, so the man for this week of Mr Abdul Rehman Antulay, Minister for Minority Affairs of the Govt Of India. Apparently Mr Antulay aired his "suspicions" that it was sheer coincidence that all the senior offices of the Mumbai ATS, including Late Mr Karkare, who apparently was one of the "few" genuinely secular and honest police officers in India went to Cama Hospital rather than the Taj". I am pretty sure that any account by the eyewitnesses including the injured policeman at that spot who was with Mr Karkare would reveal the chain of events for that day.

1) To be honest, I am appalled by the media reaction, and for the umpteenth time, we in India has shied away from doing a serious self introspection of the kind of secularism we follow. Agreed, that being a Minister in the Govt of India, Mr Antulays comments were irresponsible, but Mr Antulay is a symptom, not the disease afflicting the Indian Political space. For that matter, Mr Modi, Mr Tagodia, Mr Advani, The shahi Imam of Delhi, the Shiromani Akali Dal in Amritsar, all and I repeat, all of them as institutions/Parties/Individuals are just the symptoms of a deeper malaise afflicting India. You can bash all these guys anytime you want, you can plead them every day to rise above their prejudices and narrow vote bank politics, but all this amounts to asking a TB patient, not to cough. Cough is the symptom, TB is the disease. :)

2)Look at the history of the subcontinent, we have had bloodbath and trouble each time religion has "transgressed" into Political space. Pakistan is not wrong entirely when it asks India to look at its Mirror, when it brandishes a Sachar report to question India about the possibility of fifth column, or when it shows the likes of Advani/Tagodia/Modi and plays the "allienation" card. Similarly, Indian Muslims are also right when they say that they should not be made to prove their loyalty to Indian state every time there is terror in the name of Islam, similarly, their grievance about misuse of so called "Draconian Laws" is legitimate and from a neutral perspective, there is also a reason for increasing number of Hindus drifting towards the sangh and its affiliates.This is the breeding ground of the disease, the environment, which facilitates the diseases. Like those unkempt and polluted neighborhoods as compared to TB example.
3) Lets analyze the argument further, take the example of Sikh Militancy of the 70's to the late 80's. This was the time when Sikhism as a religion was allowed to transgress into Political space. This was the disease, namely of allowing religion, and facilitating the entry of religious zealots in the Political Space, who did it and what were the reasons is immaterial in the present analysis, but a honest evaluation of the events would prove that, until Sikhism only was preached at the "Golden Temple' in Amritsar, we were fine, the moment political discourse started flowing from there, we were in trouble, we ended up with the unfortunate situation of taking our Tanks into the holy shrine and hurting the emotions of the patriotic Sikhs :(
4) Take the instance of Babri demolition, was it not again a case of Religion transgressing into the Politics ? Opening up the Gates of Somnath and Babri, and allowing a particular amount of religious transgression, namely the interference of VHP, the RSS and even Muslim organizations like the MPLB and the Ulemas in the policy making resulted in the unfortunate events that culminated on Dec 6 of the fateful year and makes the head of the Indian state hang in shame every where.
5) Godhra also is testimony to the same malice that has afflicted us, we keep on allowing religion into Public space and polity.
6) Just in case you brand me a "Pseudo Secular", I would also emphasize an example of the Shah Bano Case, The day the Indian government showed its impotency to stand up to Muslim religious extremism and was not able to provide a small amount of money as alimony, it allowed Islam to transgress into Political Space. Now we have a Parallel Sharia Law being enforced in the name of MLPB. Every time it allows the Shahi Imam of Delhi to speak into his mosque, and berate the Indian Democracy, allows him to make rants like not flying the National Flag on republic day, the Indian state allows transgression of religion into politics. Every time we bring religious affliction to contest singing even national patriotic songs, we gave scope for the disease to spread.

7) The Role of Pakistan: The role of Pakistan has just been that of a "Catalyst" to the Indian disease. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan was born "Islamic" its masses largely support the totally "Sharia" compliant nature of its rule of state. India by itself agreed to be secular. So the only thing Pakistan can actually be accused of is facilitating the training, indoctrination , moral and physical support of subversive activities by the Indian 5Th column, be it the Sikh Militants of yesteryear's, the Radical Muslim fringe of today or the Insurgents of NE. Apart from this, Pakistan can not be blamed for the other ills, now Pakistan for sure is a catalyst and I am not trying to absolve it of its sins here.
8) The Recent Hindu Right Wing extremism: By recent, i do not mean to say that we never had Right Wing Extremism in India, saying that would be to be in a denial mode. What i want to emphasize on is the recent trend in change of the methods employed by the right wing. The point that people miss, largely is that, the main accused in the Malegoan case is an "Army Man" who was trained in explosives. This is no surprise to me, as the right wing desperately needed this, this is one aspect that the right wing in India never had, that is physical training and guidance in arms and ammunition handling. If you look at all the incidents before Malegaon, be it Godhra or Mumbai or Babri, the Hindu Right wing could never use sophisticated military grade explosives (RDX), it hardly used the automatics that Islamic and Sikh militants used, just for the specific reason that it never had the "catalyst", it never had some one like "Pakistan" whose army(ISI) could train them :)
The LTTE could do it, because the Indian Army was the catalyst, but the Hindu Right wing till Col Purohit came in was more reliant on mob culture, it used the numbers which favor the majority to show its Muscle. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that Hindu Right wing and Christian Right wing have largely used mass mobilization and riots as weapons unlike the Islamic/Sikh radicals.

9) We as Indians, allowed free discourse of religion in society assuming that it wold be used responsibly. We chose not to be secular the "French" or "Turkish" way. But the problem is that, the way we chose was the toughest, it was based on the assumption that, each group would act in a civilized way, with utmost restraint and accommodation of ideas/faith along with a high degree of tolerance. We failed to play by the rules, be it Hindu's, be it Muslims or Sikhs or Christians, we largely failed to our stated objective. We let our Gods, Government and Guardians down.

10) We can sure take Pakistan to task for acting as "catalyst" but till we tell our Mullahs/Pundits/Priests to keep religious discourse from transgressing into our Politics, we will never be able to win the war on Terror at least inside India. Bombing the Catalyst might reduce the speed of spread of the disease, but would not eliminate it completely, we need to sanitize the surroundings, have a clean society and then some medicine, some love, some prayers could alleviate our pain :) Amen!