Attack on Indian Secularism

7/31/2019 Attack on Indian Secularism

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Attack on Indian secular ism

BY: chandan

Rohit


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Secularism as a modern political and constitutionalprinciple involves two basic propositions. The first isthat people belonging to different faiths and sectionsof society are equal before the law, the Constitutionand government policy. The second requirement isthat there can be no mixing up of religion and politics.It follows therefore that there can be no discriminationagainst anyone on the basis of religion or faith nor isthere room for the hegemony of one religion ormajoritarian religious sentiments and aspirations.


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Secularism in India has very different meaning andimplications. The word secularism has never been used inIndian context in the sense in which it has been used in

Western countries i.e. in the sense of atheism or purely thisworldly approach, rejecting the other-worldly beliefs.

India is a country where religion is very central to the life ofpeople. Indias age-old philosophy as expounded in Hinduscriptures called Upanishad is sarva dharma samabhava,

which means equal respect for all religions. The reasonbehind this approach is the fact that India has never been amono-religious country. Even before the Aryan invasionIndia was not a mono-religious country.


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Aryans brought new religion based on Vedas and Brahmins dominatedintellectual life of north India. But a section of Brahmins also migrated tosouth and evolved new cults marrying Vedic cults with Dravidian ones. Thus itis said that Hindu Indians worship more than 33 hundred thousand gods andgoddesses.

Thus even before advent of Christianity and Islam India was multi-religious innature. Christianity and Islam added more religious traditions to existingIndian traditions. Thus it would be correct to say that India is bewilderinglydiverse country in every respect religious, cultural, ethnic and caste.

India is one country where caste rigidity and concept of untouchability evolvedand still plays a major role in religious, social and cultural matters. Castedynamics in Indian life, even in Christian and Islamic societies, plays largerthan life role. Since most of the conversions to Christianity and Islam tookplace from lower caste Hindus, these two world religions also developed castestructure. There are lower caste churches and mosques in several places.


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EMERGENC OF COMPETITIVE POLITICSHowever, the entire social, economic and political scenario changed afteradvent of the British rule in 19th century. Differences between Hindu andMuslim elite began to emerge for various reasons socio-cultural, economicand political. The British rulers adopted the policy of divide and rule, distortedmedieval Indian history to make Muslim rulers appear as tyrants to the Hinduelite. This distorted history was taught in new school system, which wasestablished by the British rulers.

SECULAR AND UNSECULAR PEOPLE

Now question arises how many Indian people are secular and howmany unsecular? Since secularism does not mean being this worldly inIndia, one cannot say how many are believers and how manyunbelievers? On the contrary in Indian context what it means howmany people are against people of minority religions like Islam and

Christianity and how many people respect them.


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Tribal Christians of the Dang district of Gujarat, Jhabua of MadhyaPradesh, and Kandhamal of Orissa are major victims of the organizedattack by Hindutva forces. The episode of black Christmas in theKandhamal district of Orissa in 2007 and the ongoing attack in differentparts of the country are the latest signposts of the attack on Indiansecularism and democracy.

The ongoing and uncontrolled communal violence on Christians has leftover 30 deaths, over 100 churches, 300 Christian villages, 4000 Christianhomes burnt down and 50000 Dalit Christians made refugees in forest.

The terror strikes have taken hundreds, indeed thousands of innocentlives. Numbers are meaningless to a numbed people. Still, we may countsome instances that readily come to mind.

In the interregnum between May 2004 when the Congress-led UPA firstcame to power, to the present September 2011, India has suffered umpteenattacks at the hands of Islamic radicals, mostly trained and funded andbacked by Pakistan and its dreaded Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Now,there are enough home-grown terrorists to serve as handmaidens to thereligion ofpeace


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- 37 on September 8, 2006 in the Malegaon mosque attack;- 68 perished on February 18, 2007 in the Samjhauta Express

bombing.- 13 died in the Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad, blast on May 18, 2007.

- 42 died on August 25, 2007 in the two bomb blasts in HyderabadLumbini Park;- 63 liquidated in the nine bomb blasts caused by terrorists in Jaipur

on May 13,08.- 29 killed on July 26, 2008 in the seven bomb blasts in Ahmadabad.- 3 on September 27, 2008 in Delhi flower market bombing blast;- 171 in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks;- 17 in the Pune bombing on February 13, 2010.- 18 in Mumbai serial blasts on July 13, 2011; and- 13 on September 7, 2011 in the Delhi High Court terror attack.

-70 innocent civilians lost their lives in the three powerful blasts in New Delhi

on oct 29 2005

21 in the three terrorist attacks on Shri Sankatmochan Mandir and VaranasiCantonment Railway Station on March 7, 2006


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The government itself audaciously, and mindlessly, described theArmed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) as inhuman anddraconian and held out assurances to a certain community thatit would give a human touch to the anti-terror law that the

Army and paramilitary forces needed utmost to bring thesituation under control, and protect the territorial integrity ofIndia.

The UPA repeatedly tried to communalize the cult of terror bysaying, Hindu terrorism is more dangerous than Islamicterrorism (read Rahul Gandhi and f lunkies like Digvijay Singh).The political elite hobnobbed, and continues to hobnob, with

those denouncing the institution of the Army and demandingdemilitarization. All this to appease a particular community,overlooking the grave evils that followed, including directencouragement to separatists and terrorists.


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The terror attack outside the Delhi High Court should have served as awake-up call for the UPA and Congress leadership. But nothing of thesort happened.Oblivious to public suffering, the Congress-UPA tried to deflect

national attention from the scourge of terrorism.

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Attack on Indian Secularism