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HomeOpinionWant to preserve secularism in India? Well, preserve the Hindu ethos first

Want to preserve secularism in India? Well, preserve the Hindu ethos first

Secularism in the Indian context would mean maintaining equidistance from  all religions. Unfortunately, that equidistance never happened.

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August 5, 2020 marked the bhoomi pujan of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. I have noticed that many have been genuinely anguished by this event. Some have been bemoaning it as the death of secularism in India.

I consider myself to be secular, so why do I do not see it that way?

What does the term ‘secular’ mean?

Strictly speaking, secularism means separation in entirety of church and state.

In a secular nation, the government must stay away from anything religious. But isn’t it odd that the word ‘secular’ was not part of the preamble to the Indian constitution when it was originally adopted?

Why was such an important word left out? As I see it, the omission was deliberate. What is even more surprising is that the two people who guided the drafting of the preamble of the Constitution were BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru, whose secular credentials were unimpeachable.

To be secular in the truest sense of the word, the Indian state would have to stay out of the religious ambit completely. And this was almost impossible.

How could Indian courts recognise Sharia-based Muslim Personal Law while claiming to be secular? How could Central and State governments take over the management of Hindu temples if they were secular? How could a secular government provide financial assistance to educational institutions run by religious organisations? How could a secular government codify and modify Hindu personal law? How would the government extend the existing caste-based reservations to minority religions if it were secular?

These and many more such actions would clearly fall outside the remit of a secular nation. The writers of the preamble realised that it was better not to use the term rather than to use it dishonestly.


Also read: Idea of India wasn’t demolished at Ayodhya. That happened in our ‘liberal’ homes


But then, just before midnight of 25 June 1975, the Emergency arrived. Over the next two years, the prime minister could rule by decree and most of Indira Gandhi’s political opponents were thrown in prison.

It was during this time that a series of constitutional amendments were passed. Many of these were extremely controversial not only because they were passed as ordinances but also because of the sweeping powers that they vested in the prime minister. Nestled among other sweeping changes was the insertion of the word ‘secular’—and also ‘socialist’—into the preamble of the Constitution.

Did the insertion of ‘secular’ imply that India had not been secular before 1976? Had the omission of the word turned India into a Hindu Rashtra?

Not at all.

By leaving the word out of the preamble, the fathers of the Constitution were making it incumbent on Hindus to remember their commitment to the Upanishadic ideal of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’. That the world is one family. The framers of the Constitution were subtly saying that the Indian ethos was essentially Hindu in character but that ethos implied an ingrained respect for and tolerance of all faiths.

So, secularism in the Indian context would not mean the state remaining away from religion. Instead it would mean maintaining equidistance from all religions. Unfortunately, that equidistance never happened. Over the years, the test of secularism came to be whether India’s minorities perceived an action as secular or not.

For example, the government gave itself very little day-to-day control over the Central Waqf Council or over Christian institutions but soon exercised incredible control over Hindu temples.

Nehru decided to pass the four Hindu Code Bills while abandoning the objective of a Uniform Civil Code.

Even in politics, seeking Muslim votes by appealing to the Imam of Jama Masjid was considered smart but appealing to Hindu seers was communal.

Speaking up for minority rights was noble but speaking up for Kashmir’s abandoned Pandits was not.

This was no longer secularism; it was selectivity. This particular selectivity eventually came to be called pseudo-secularism by India’s saffron organisations and soon became the rallying cry of the majority.


Also read: Whose Ram Rajya does Ayodhya temple bring — Gandhi’s or Modi’s? Ambedkar can answer


What did several decades of this selectivity achieve? Frankly, all that it did was to create a majoritarian backlash. The Hindus, including myself, felt that there was a permanent burden on us to continuously ‘prove’ our secular credentials; to constantly apologise for actions that could be perceived as non-secular in this country.

Have you heard of the term ‘collective memory’?

Collective memory refers to the shared pool of memories and information of a social group. That pool of memories is significantly associated with the group’s identity.

For example, today’s generation of Jews may not have lived through the Holocaust but they carry collective memories of it. They even carry memories of their exile from Jerusalem and their captivity in Babylon although this event took place 2600 years ago. The same collective memory applies to Hindus too. Many Hindus share the collective victimhood of years of Muslim and Christian assaults on Hindu civilisation.

And those assaults were many. Take the example of the Somnath temple.

The temple was first destroyed in 725 CE by the Arab governor of Sindh, Al-Junayd. After it was rebuilt, it was destroyed during the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni in 1025. It was rebuilt but destroyed yet again by Allauddin Khilji in 1299. The temple was once again restored only to be destroyed by the Muslim governor of Gujarat, Zafar Khan, in 1395. In 1451, it was desecrated by Mahmud Begada, the Sultan of Gujarat.

The final blow came from Aurangzeb who pulled it down in 1665.

None of today’s Hindus were present when any of those acts happened but we all carry collective memories of that victimhood.

Take another example. One of the most sacred Hindu temples is the Kashi Vishwanath in Varanasi.

The original temple was destroyed by the commanders of Mohammad Ghori in 1194. After being rebuilt, it was again wrecked during the reign of Sikander Lodhi in the fifteenth century. The final blow was delivered by Aurangzeb who razed the temple and built the Gyanvapi mosque in its place.

Similarly, Aurangzeb also destroyed the ancient Keshavnath temple in Mathura and built the Shahi Idgah mosque on its plinth.

Three of the holiest sites of Hindus—Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura—were all destroyed and rebuilt as mosques.

You don’t even need to go to Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi or Mathura to see the wanton trail of destruction. If you are in Delhi, simply visit the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque next to the Qutb Minar. Outside the mosque is a plaque that proudly announces that the mosque was built using parts recovered from the demolition of 27 Hindu and Jain temples.


Also read: Secularism gave up language of religion. Ayodhya bhoomi pujan is a result of that


The collective Hindu memories of victimhood are not only related to the destruction of temples but also to other actions. According to American historian Will Durant, “the Islamic conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history.” Ferishta, the Persian historian of the sixteenth century, talks of instances when the Bahmani sultans set targets of one lakh infidel heads to roll.

Death was often preferable to slavery, particularly sex slavery. Ahmad Shah Abdali’s army captured Maratha women for the Afghan harems. Often, when non-Muslim women were captured and impregnated, they were left with no alternative but to convert to Islam.

When Muslim armies surrounded Rajput forts, Hindu women within would commit jauhar—throwing themselves into open pyres—to save themselves while their husbands were slain on the battlefield.

If it wasn’t destruction, death or defilement, then it was duties—more specifically jizya, a tax payable by dhimmis or non-muslims.

Alauddin Khilji decreed that those who did not pay could be legally enslaved and sold in cities where there was demand for slave labour. Firoz Shah Tughlaq ordered that Hindus who converted to Islam would be exempted but those who chose to stay Hindu would pay a higher rate of jizya.

Jizya was abolished by Akbar but reintroduced by Aurangzeb and charged at twice the zakat paid by Muslims. More than tax, jizya was institutionalised humiliation and punishment for a dhimmi’s non-belief.

And all of this cruelty was perpetrated on a population that prided itself on providing sanctuary to others.

Zoroastrian refugees fleeing Muslim persecution in Iran were provided a home in Gujarat by a Hindu king, Jadi Rana.

St. Thomas’ Christians were provided a home in Kerala.

The first Jewish refugees settled over two millennia ago on the Malabar Coast and a second wave arrived pursuant to their expulsion from Iberia in 1492.

When Buddhist monks were being butchered by the People’s Liberation Army of China, India welcomed the Dalai Lama along with thousands of Buddhists. The country accepted millions of refugees from Bangladesh during the 1971 genocide. The Baghdadi Jews and the Bene Israel from Pakistan were sheltered in India.

That spirit of refuge is intrinsic to India’s Dharmic values. But for how long should India’s Hindus have to remind the world of that?


Also read: Bhoomipujan 2020 is like Balakot 2019, the surgical strike that washes all sins


Some see Hindu revivalism through the lens of Narendra Modi and the BJP but that would be an error. One must go back to the fundamental clash between Abrahamic and Dharmic thought.

Dharmic thought is essentially plural. It embraces multiple truths. Some 33 million deities can be part of the same family. Jesus Christ can be incorporated on the façade of a Hindu temple and the Buddha can be absorbed as an avatar of Vishnu.

You can be aastik or naastik; Shaivite or Vaishnavite; vegetarian or carnivore; fire-worshipper, idol-worshipper or nature-worshipper. You may worship Shiva, Shakti or a combination of both. You may see the path to enlightenment as yantra, tantra or mantra or none of the above. You may hold that the Shiv Linga is a stone and I may hold that a stone is a Shiv Linga, and both of us are welcome.

We can have 300 versions of a single epic called the Ramayana but your version does not negate mine. All religions are seen as different paths to the divine.

Unfortunately, Abrahamic ideology attempts to impose a singular truth on a plural world. There is only one true God who will punish you if you are evil. But if you obey his word and follow his orders scrupulously you may save yourself from the hellfires of damnation. When one couples that absolutism with expansionist and proselytising tendencies, one has all the ingredients for conflict.

Judaism was rarely ever expansionist but both Christianity and Islam were. And both these Abrahamic ideologies wreaked havoc on the world and on themselves, be it through the Arab conquests, the Christian crusades, the Catholic Inquisitions, the Protestant-Catholic conflicts or the Shia-Sunni conflicts.

In India, the effects were profound. Whether it was Ghazni, Aibak, Khilji, Timur, Lodhi, Aurangzeb or Tipu, their direct attacks on Hindus and Hinduism were simply too vicious to fade from collective memory.

And why only Islam? Was Christianity benevolent towards Hindus? The Portuguese exported the Inquisition to Goa in the sixteenth century. Openly practicing Hinduism attracted the death penalty. Thousands were tried by the tribunals of the inquisition. Several were even burned at the stake.

Some historians consider the Goa Inquisition to have been one of the most merciless and cruel ever. It was a machinery of torture and death. Under a 1559 order, Hindu children could be seized and converted to Christianity even if one of the parents died.

Parental property automatically got seized when a Hindu child was taken. Hindu temples were demolished in Portuguese Goa and the community was prohibited from repairing them or building new ones. Any man, woman or child living in Goa could be arrested and tortured for simply whispering a prayer or keeping a small idol at home. Many languished in special inquisitional prisons, some for several years at a time.


Also read: Indians will regret their silence over Modi’s ever-growing list of political prisoners


I started out by saying that I am secular. But I could have avoided that by simply saying that I am a liberal even though the word has become politically charged.

The word ‘liberal’ is derived from the Latin word ‘liberalis’, a word that means ‘free’. I am firmly committed to individual rights, democracy, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, racial equality and indeed secularism itself. If you are liberal, you are by definition, secular too. But I am also a Hindu and I am proud of it. And I refuse to apologise for that.

Hinduism is among the few pre-Bronze Age cultures to have survived to this day. Do you see Zoroastrianism thriving in Iran? What happened to the Mithraic cults of Rome? What happened to Ra, Osiris and Horus of the Egyptians? What happened to Zeus, Apollo and Athena of the Greeks? What happened to the tribal belief systems and languages of the aboriginal peoples of Australia?

Most pagan belief systems and cultures could not withstand the onslaught of Abrahamic thought, but Hinduism survived against all odds. And that’s why I am proud of it and wish to preserve that legacy.

I firmly believe that we cannot hold the present-day Muslims or Christians responsible for acts of the past that they had nothing to do with. In fact many of today’s Muslims and Christians are the descendants of the very people who were persecuted generations ago and converted at the point of a sword. How foolish would it be to bear a grudge against them in the present?

Peace and harmony across communities is to be considered the greatest blessing from the divine. Truth and reconciliation is absolutely necessary. But truth must come before reconciliation. Truth begins with acknowledging the past. Unfortunately, we never allowed that to happen in India.

See the spate of statues being torn down around the world. These are reactions to one-sided historical narratives. History can be quite easily manipulated by any group to either erase their past sins or glorify their deeds. In India, we whitewashed our history in our effort to maintain the peace. When we do not heal wounds, they fester. Hindu revivalism is a festering wound. And it is much more a symptom of fear than aggression. We need to cauterise that festering wound quickly.


Also read: India’s anti-Muslim fake news factories are following the anti-Semitic playbook


What causes that fear? I have already dealt with some of it. To start with, there are the collective memories of shared victimhood that I spoke of; then there is the sense of injustice caused by flawed secularism; there is also the historical evidence that pagan cultures could not survive Abrahamic onslaught.

But there is also the concern that population growth and proselytising could eventually alter the demographics of the only surviving Hindu civilisations of the world. Also Hindus get worried when they witness the rise of Wahhabi tendencies coupled with the inability of ordinary Muslims to question their faith because they are told that it is the absolute word of God.

When a Hindu looks at South Asia’s demographics, what does he observe? When Pakistan was created in 1947, Hindus were 15 percent of the population but were only 1.6 percent by 1998. In the Bangladesh of 1931, Hindus were 29.4 percent of the population but are less than 9.5 percent today. Contrast that with the Muslim population of India that was 9.9 percent in 1951 and grew to 14.2 percent by 2011. So when those on the left of the ideological spectrum question Indian inclusiveness it rankles the average Hindu.

Hindu fears are also a response to Wahhabi tendencies that have gripped many parts of the world.

In 2013, a Pew Research project was carried out through 38,000 face-to-face interviews of Muslims in 80-plus languages in 39 Muslim-majority countries. It presented some startling revelations.

Around 79 percent of Muslims in countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt and Jordan believed that Muslims who abandoned the faith should be executed.

A startling 39 percent of Muslims across all countries surveyed believed that honour killings could be justified in instances where women had had premarital or extramarital sex.

Scariest of all, 53 percent of those surveyed believed that Sharia, or Islamic law, should be the law in their countries. Can you imagine the fear that such findings trigger in a Hindu who is already carrying historical baggage?

Moreover, according to 2006-2007 Pew polls, almost 42 percent of French Muslims, 35 percent of British Muslims and 26 percent of younger American Muslims believed that suicide bombings against non-Muslims could be justified.

There were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world as of 2015, which was approximately 24 percent of the global population. Although Islam is the second-largest religion after Christianity, by 2060 its numbers will have grown by 70 percent. By that time, Christianity will have grown by 34 percent and Hinduism by around 27 percent. And like the Jews, Hindus have never been very good at proselytising. Why isn’t it a natural reaction for Hindus to worry that they may eventually be overrun?


Also read: How Babri Masjid demolition was rehearsed and executed in 1992 — rare photos tell the story


I am not at all proud of the fact that the Babri Masjid was torn down by a Hindu mob in 1992. But I am proud that 1.3 billion Indians were willing to put their faith in the judiciary to arrive at the Ayodhya verdict. It should never be forgotten that this temple is being built pursuant to a court order and not at the whims of a totalitarian state. And if you believe that the verdict is tainted then you would also have to question thousands of other judgments that went in a direction that fit your sensibilities. You cannot be selective.

Does the Queen of England, being the head of the Church of England, interfere with the secularism of the UK? Does the American President, holding the National Prayer Breakfast each year, interfere with secular principles? Those who believe that India’s secularism is challenged by a Ram temple in Ayodhya should realise that India is secular primarily because of its Hindu ethos.

In most Muslim-majority countries, Islamisation eventually creeps in. Just look at the 49 Muslim-majority countries around the world and you will realise that the only way to preserve secularism is by preserving Hindu syncretism.

We are proud of the Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb of India. For every Bhimsen Joshi there is a Zakir Hussain; for every Vikram Sarabhai there is an Abdul Kalam; for every Rabindranath Tagore there is a Salman Rushdie. But ask yourself: why did this Ganga-Jamuna syncretism not take root in Pakistan? The answer is the underlying Hindu spirit that simply cannot be ignored.

In recent times, the Australian government has apologised to the aboriginal people for their crimes against them. The South African government has apologised for apartheid. The Japanese have apologised for their war crimes in Asia. The Germans have apologised to the Jews for the holocaust. Even Boris Yeltsin apologised for the Bolshevik Revolution. But from whom should Hindus seek an apology? From the Arabs who gave us Muhammad bin Qasim? From the Afghans who gave us Mahmud Ghazni? From the Turks who gave us Qutb al-Din Aibak? From the Turko-Mongols who gave us Aurangzeb? From the Portuguese who gave us Aleixo Diaz Falcao? Or from the English who gave us Reginald Dyer?

Hindus do not expect an apology from anyone. But my generation is equally unwilling to apologise for being Hindu. We are also tired of being the ones who have to regularly prove how secular we are. This agni-pariksha must stop.

Do you really want to preserve secularism in India? Then preserve the Hindu ethos first.

Ashwin Sanghi is the bestselling author of The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant, The Krishna Key, The Sialkot Saga, Keepers of the Kalachakra and The Vault of Vishnu. Views are personal.

This article was first published by Swarajya.

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107 COMMENTS

  1. Hindus see all religions as different paths to the Divine. Questions in this context: Where was the first mosque outside the Arab world built during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad? Who helped in building it? For whose benefit was it built?

  2. Please carry on with these unbiased journalism …. It will be good for all …. A serious reconciliation is needed really needed … Hindus are pushed against the wall …. Not a single country for Hindu …. People are even opposing persecuted minorities from radical islamist terrorist countries to take refuge in India , ok the other hand the want terrorist rohingyas to stay in India …

  3. Really a good article, lot of people above trying to find issues in Hinduism to counter this very well written article. Please have some stomach to digest it. Being an one of the oldest religion definitely corruptions happened are likely, we are working to resolve them and we will make Bharat a better place to live for everyone. Because in whole world only Hindus believe in live & let others live peacefully.
    Better you should fix your(Abrahamic religion) problems which are getting bad names to them.

  4. Excellent articles. I expect another 3 articles
    1) variation of Muslim religions and in fighting between them
    2) variation of Christian religion
    3) fighting between Muslim and Christian.

    As hindu devided in cast, Muslim and Christian also devided in many fractions it may be bring out

    • Mr Amitava: Well, your post unwittingly proves the point that religion is a weak glue in nation building. Human identity is multi-layered: caste, class, gender, language, skin colour, religion, political philosophy etc. etc. shape identity and religion alone is a very small aspect of how one perceives oneself. And even within the same religion, caste, class and skin colour separate people, not unite them.

      Jinnah’s Pakistan could not unite behind Islam. Light-skinned Punjabi Muslims of West Pakistan regarded their dark-skinned Bengali brethren in East Pakistan as “Hindus” and worse still, Bengalis who refused to accept Urdu, the language that Jinnah had anointed as the national language of Pakistan. As General Niazi, the man who led butchers such as Gen. Rao Farman Ali and other mass-murderers into war in E. Pakistan said of that country:

      “A low lying land of low, lying people” !

      You have similar forces at work in India where the fracture lines and fissiparous forces are more in number. The BJP’s Hindi policy continues to alienate the South and surprise, surprise, also the North East, Bengal and Punjab. During the Khalistan struggles of the 1980s and 90s, Hindi became a flashpoint with Punjabi Sikhs insisting that their mother tongue was Punjabi whilst Punjabi speaking Hindus were encouraged by the Congress to say that they were Hindi speakers.

      You say that Hinduism is divided along caste lines. The situation is infinitely more complex than that. Hinduism, like Islam and Christianity in India is also divided along lines of language, class, gender, modes of worship, diet and so on. For instance, whilst upper caste Hindus eschew meat, especially beef, upper caste Christians and Muslims too eschew meat on many days and certainly beef. The Nadar Christians in my street in Madras in the 70s never ate beef while the Dalit Christians whom the first group scrupulously avoided ate beef.

      Sadly, the RSS and the BJP do not comprehend these subtleties and complexities and have come out with a “one size fits all” notion of Hinduism. In reality, that is Hindutva which has the potential to wreck the country. The BJP & RSS idea of nationalism confirms what French President Charle de Gaulle (1890-1970) once said:

      “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first”.

  5. Full of factually incorrect statements and fake claims — based on untenable glorification of one religion and one culture. In what way is this different from the ideologies of the ISIS or of Zionism?

    If any religion or culture is really superior to all others, then why should this be promoted only in some countries on the basis of “majority”? Why not “Hinduism”/ “Christianity”/ “Buddhism”/ “Islam”/ “Judaism” etc for the whole world — if any of these is not other than deeply flawed?

    On what basis should anyone be proud of identification with any of these religions — rather than imbibe the spirit of vasudha eva kutumbakam, in its real sense?

    • While the Hindus don’t believe in expansion like Islam or Christianity, at one point of time Hinduism had way more followers and was followed by people of way more nations , search for akhand bharat.

  6. If Islam was secular there would be no problem. They believe is prophet Mohammed and sharia law. If the law of a democratic country contradicts Islamic law then they do not care for it. Firstly Muslims living in a democratic country need to respect all religions. Most look down upon idol worship and other religions and believe Islam is the only true religion. Prophet Mohammed is the last and only prophet and alaha is the only God. How democratic is that? Recently a Facebook post caused Muslims in Bangalore to cause violence and take law into their own hand. India has freedom of speech and a reasonably efficient police and judiciary. Majority of the Muslims don’t think so. This is sad since they are enjoying the benefits of a democratic nation that tolerant to all peaceful religions. Muslims in India have to learn to respect all religions and their gods. The print however has a one sided naritive. Muslims need to introspect and stay clear of the likes of Owesi and Zakir Nayak. Such people are spreading hatred and are using the word democracy to propergate a very dangerous ideology. Modi is a lesser threat compared to these people. I would like to see some truly constructive journalism and unbiased articles from the print. Or a day will come when you can shift your office to a Muslim majority democratic country like Malaysia where lashes are given out in the name of sharia law.

  7. Several commenters, including the author Mr Sanghi, assert that it is due to Hinduism’s inherent tolerance that we have secularism in India. This Hindu ethos and tolerance is being credited with a lot of virtues that it needs to be subjected to a litmus test of sorts.

    Hence, if a referendum were to be held in India today and if the question on the ballot had been:

    Do you want secular India to be changed to a Hindu Rashtra *?

    YES/NO

    I would wager that the majority would vote YES and would want India to become a Hindu Rashtra. Particularly if the BJP campaigns for a YES vote.

    How would you vote ? Want to reply to my comment with a simple YES or NO ?

    It won’t be a scientific poll, but a mere indicator of how the wind is blowing…

    *A Hindu Rashtra would be one where the state religion would be Hinduism. This implies that schoolbooks, history would be written with a Hindu perspective. Additionally, Art. 25 of the Constitution which states:
    “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health”
    This article would be scrapped or rewritten. There would though be freedom of religion in the country for those who already belong to other non-Hindu religions.

  8. Mr Gary: You raise an interesting question in your comment somewhere below:

    “If sixty Muslim countries can be Islamic, what is wrong with India being a Hindu country?”

    But that raises the follow-up question: a Hindu Rashtra based on whose version of Hinduism Mr Gary ? That of the Hindu beef-eaters of Kerala? The Bengali Brahmin version that is vegetarian but paradoxically regards fish as a vegetable ? The TamBrahm Iyengar version? Or the TamBrahm Iyer version? And then why not the PalBrahm version? Indeed, Hinduism is so varied and so different from region to region, caste to caste and even class to class that it does not lend itself to easy, neat definitions in the legal and political sense that a nation state needs.

    But Pakistan might give some pointers here. The Constitutent Assembly of Pakistan is yet to define who a Muslim is, a task that it has been trying to resolve for the last 70 odd years. Despite the fact that Islam has one Book, is far more homeogeneous compared to Hinduism and relatively more standardised.

    I cite historian Ayesha Jalal from her book “The Struggle for Pakistan” on the problems faced by Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly that tried to draft the Constitution:

    “.. no two religious divines could agree on the definition of a Muslim .. Adopting the definition of any one religious scholar entailed becoming an infidel in the eyes of all the others .. Religious divines such as Mawdudi of the Jamaat-i-Islami maintained that non-Muslims were not entitled to equal rights of citizenship in an Islamic state .. laying down a precise definition of a true believer was a dangerous game of brinkmanship ..”

    Paradoxically, Mawdudi speaks the same language as Golwalkar who wrote in “We, our nation defined”:

    “The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture … In a word they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizens’ rights”
    People like you Mr Gary and the BJP’s Hindutva ideologues are making India into a Hindu version of Mawdudi’s Pakistan. And we all know how that state fared. Or rather failed.

  9. The past is very painful. Religious intolerance has been exerted on other communities.
    Since quite long time, the discussion is around the religious intolerance of muslim rulers towards Hindu community.
    It seems people/leaders/thinkers of Hindu community are now taking the revenge for the past misdeeds of muslim rulers.
    What is the impact of such revenge or actions in the name of preserving the Hindu ethos?
    Whether it is not impacting the harmony in the current society?
    Whether it is not impacting the innocent Muslims who are not related to past misdeeds?

    And on another note,
    I agree that the “secularism” is not suiting to Indian constituion while keeping multiple religious personal laws along with caste based reservations.
    But what is the solution for mistreatment of few castes in the society?
    Where is it stemmed from?

    • You are very narcissistic or self conscious.!
      Too much of “I” in your letters.
      What do you say for the attempts by Muslims and Christians to change the indian demography by conversions.
      Don’t say it is permitted by constitution.
      It is against the spirit of multiculturalism.
      So called liberals frequently point out castism in Hinduism.
      Yes Hindus accept that!
      Can any liberal muslim or Christian or even so called leftist accept their philosophy “my way or highway” is wrong.

  10. Why is it that theprint is not running my following cooment:
    The Indian past looked through the Hindu Muslim binary has its serious limitations. One major problem is that despite India being a five-thousand-year-old civilization but it is only the period 0f approximately 700- 800 years in which people with the Muslim names ruled/attacked India is under scrutiny. Let us read what Hindu luminaries narrated facts about this period. The most important Hindutva ideologue and second chief of RSS, MS Golwalkar while describing desecration of Somnath Temple wrote:
    “One thousand years back our people invited foreigners to invade us. A similar danger threatens us even today. How the glorious temple of Somnath was desecrated and devastated is a page of history. Mahmud Ghazi had heard of the wealth and splendour of Somnath. He crossed the Khyber Pass and set foot in Bharat to plunder the wealth of Somnath. He had to cross the great desert of Rajasthan. There was a time when he had no food, and no water for his army, and even for himself left to his fate, he would have perished, and the burning sands of Rajasthan would have consumed his bones. But no, Mahmud Ghazi made the local chieftains to believe that Saurashtra had expansionist designs against them. In their folly and pettiness they believed him. And they joined him. When Mahmud Ghazi launched his assault on the great temple, it was the Hindu, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul-who stood in the vanguard of his army. Somnath was desecrated with the active help of the Hindus. These are facts of history.”
    [MS Golwalkar’s speech in Madurai cited in ‘Organiser’ dated January 4, 1950, pp. 12, 15.]
    Ashwani Sanghi falling prey to the Hindutva narrative and skips what ‘Hindus’ did to Buddhists/Jains and their religious places for hundreds of years. Swami Vivekananda a darling of RSS describing the past of Jagannath Temple at Puri admitted:
    “We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like that yet.”
    [Swami Vivekananda, ‘The Sages of India’ in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 3, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta, p. 264.]
    Founder of Arya Samaj, Swami Dayanand Saraswati while describing the heroics of Shankaracharya in SATYARTH PRAKASH:”
    “For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are now-a-days dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst those that are found whole here and there under the ground had been buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken (by those who had renounced Jainism).”
    [SATYARTH PRAKSH BY SWAMI DAYANAND SARSWATI, CHAPTER XI, p. 347.]

    • Your narrative is just based on some references in books. One cannot deny the facts in history that islamists destructed so many sacred temples of hindus and other religions/faiths. Is today’s muslim repent for these deeds of their prior generation’s. No doubt today’s muslim is not responsible for those acts. Still if he is humane he should be able to “see” the heinous acts committed by his ancestors and may be in his own mind should think of what justification can be given to these acts except “INHUMANE”. Be rational. Respect other person’s belief. The moment one thinks MY BELIEF is supreme; he starts hating other beliefs. Thats to say the least is ridiculousness.

  11. Congrats on this article. I consider myself secular/liberal too, and have the same thoughts as articulated by you. Live and let live, and this applies equally to all sides.

  12. Excellent article. Expressed in a neutral, intellectual way Thanks.
    one correction though -re this – St. Thomas’ Christians were NOT provided a home in Kerala.
    St. thomas’ Christians are not refugees who came in from outside and needed a home. St. Thomas (One of the 12 disciples of Jesus) came to India from Syria in 500 AD and in a peaceful way talked about Jesus and his teachings to the Hindus in Kerala and performed many miracles. Some of those Hindus (mostly Brahmins) were convinced of his teachings and of their own free will converted to Christianity. These former Hindus, who converted to Christianity are referred to as St. Thomas Christians. They are native Indians only and not looking for a home here.
    Please acknowledge and correct. Thank you.

    • Ms Lalita: Your post gives one the impression that one particular minority, in this case St. Thomas Christians – presumably your own community – has greater claims to staying in India due to the voluntary nature of their conversions. I refer to your claim:

      “.. Some of those Hindus (mostly Brahmins) were convinced of his teachings and of their own free will converted to Christianity .. They are native Indians only and not looking for a home here ..”

      Am I to understand that citizenship in modern democracies should be based on the nature of events that took place in 500 AD?

      Essentially, you are indirectly stating that you, have a much stronger claim to citizenship in India than say Muslims as you are more “native”. And that is because the historical events that took place in perhaps 1947, or 1526 or perhaps even in the 13th Century makes Muslims less eligible for citizenship, right? After all, you do emphasise that your community consists of “.. native Indians only and not looking for a home here ..”

      I am aware that I am reading too much into some seemingly innocuous statements from you. I am perhaps even putting words in your mouth. But you are restating the dangerous RSS & BJP idea of tiered citizenship in India built on Golwalkarian ideas – that some have greater and stronger claims to living in India than others. As Golwalkar writes in Bunch of Thoughts:

      “.. Here was already a full-fledged ancient nation of the Hindus and the various communities which were living in the country were here either as guests, the Jews and Parsis, or as invaders, the Muslims and Christians .. They never faced the question how all such heterogenous groups could be called as children of the soil merely because, by an accident, they happened to reside in a common territory under the rule of a common enemy ..”

      As long as one is loyal to the nation, I do not think that one’s religion or how one came to practise that religion should matter for equal citizenship rights. Yes, democracy is being diluted and debased in India by the many admirers of Hindutva who think it is the same as Hinduism. As a Hindu who has vehemently argued in many posts in The Print against this “second Partition” of India, I find it rather disappointing that you find common cause with the Hindutvaists – they very people who will come for you next after they are done with the Muslims.

  13. Excellent article. Expressed in a neutral, intellectual way Thanks.
    one correction though -St. Thomas’ Christians were provided a home in Kerala.
    St. thomas’ Christians are not refugees who came in from outside and needed a home. St. Thomas (One of the 12 disciples of Jesus) came to India from Syria in 500 AD and in a peaceful way talked about Jesus and his teachings to the Hindus in Kerala and performed many miracles. Some of those Hindus (mostly Brahmins) were convinced of his teachings and of their own free will converted to Christianity. These former Hindus, who converted to Christianity are referred to as St. Thomas Christians. They are native Indians only and not looking for a home here.
    Please acknowledge and correct. Thank you.

  14. Ashwin Sanghi’s article – which undoubtedly is well written – seems more like a rant because while bringing out the evil sides of the Abrahamic faiths (Christianity and Islam), he completely ignores the evil side of his own faith.

    Also as one reads the article, one realizes that the present day Muslims of India – a majority of whom were the indigenous folks converted perhaps under duress – are suffering a double whammy. First their forefathers bore the brunt of the invaders and converted to Islam, and now their descendants have to bear the ire of Hindus for practicing the faith they did not voluntarily choose! What could be a greater tragedy than that!

    In fact it could be argued that the pain of an average Indian Muslim is bigger than the pain from “collective memory” that a present day Hindu suffers. Collective memory pain is only imaginative – as you think about the pain of the past inflicted on your forefathers. What present day Muslims are suffering, is not imaginative but something real – all for absolutely no fault of their own!

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