FOOLING THE PEOPLE IS SO EASY THAT IT GOES ON INDEFINITELY

There is nothing new in the Kerala Church dabbling in politics as it is as old as the hills of Munnar. Priests have been regularly standing for elections with tickets from parties who call themselves "secular" by the single virtue of abusing Hindus alone. All of us know that Indian secularism is fully dependent on Hindus for its survival as there is nothing predatory about its tenets for increasing the number of believers. Even though Pakistan and Bangladesh were part of Hindu majority India only 60 years back, secularism became the first casualty the moment they became Muslim majority nations.

Kashmir Valley though in India was ethnically cleansed of all Pandits who are the original settlers before Aurangzeb decided to change things around. Today, due to the preponderance of those to whom secularism is anathema and despite being a part of India, secularism is a decisive casualty in the Kashmir Valley similar to Pakistan. How can there be a minority community in a secular country where all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law? We are all Indians. Only in a theocratic state can there be minorities deserving special considerations. Is this a back door admission of India being a Hindu rashtra (nation) by secularists to indulge in secular games?

A UN Charter states that only when a community consists of less than 10 % of the country’s population can it be termed minority. Yet we keep avoiding this internationally accepted doctrine to keep alive the spurious concept of sham secularism in India for vote bank consideration.

All our major concepts of governance are taken from the British including our antiquated laws. Even though England is not admitted to be a theocratic state, yet the King or Queen is the protector of the Church. When London based author Salman Rushdie was sought to be punished under English laws of blasphemy for his book "Satanic Verses" by his coreligionists, the British govt. stated that the blasphemy laws applied only to those who were denigrating Christianity not Islam. Salman instead was for years given state protection at great cost to the exchequer as he was a minority after Ayatollah Khomeini's death edict or fatwa.

Without retaining the flavour of the monarch being the protector of the leading faith as in Britain, we in India decided to graft the balance portion of the doctrine by inserting the word "secularism" into our Constitution by an amendment by Indira Gandhi to promote minorityism as a state policy thus raising the question whether India was "secular" before this amendment? Physical removal of the yoke of colonisation from a country is easier than its removal from the mind. Whilst Mahatma Gandhi and his associates could achieve the former in their lifetimes, sadly their Party failed to not only remove it from our minds but further ingrained in order to make sham secularism the Magna Carta of Indian politics.