HINDU INDIA IS A SECULAR REPUBLIC IS AN ETERNAL TRUTH

The Hindu India is Republican

Dr. Pramod Pathak

Satyam, Pundalik Nagar, Parvari, Goa 403521

Gautam Adhikari’s edit on 1^st Nov 2014 shows the basic confusion and the typical misguided and misinformed distorted "secular" attitude that overlooks the obvious social trends that prevail in non-Hindu neighbouring countries and also in cultures all over the world. No country or culture in the world can vouch for either cultural or ethnic purity. Since the ancient times this phenomenon of socio-cultural diffusion and diversity within the cultures exist. What makes a national culture to stand out as unique is the one followed by the majority. Although almost all the Europeans countries can be stamped as Christian countries, Christianity in Portugal can no way be compared with British or Norwegian followers of the same faith. It is no new thing to say that the culture is controlled and defined as well by the geography and is always locality specific. The Arabic Islam, for example, has to be different from the Indian or the Indonesian Islam. Excepting a few basic tenets like accepting the Holy books and the Prophet, followers of Islam have knowingly or unknowingly accepted the locality specific traditions and norms till the petro-dollars from Southey Arabia started playing havoc with cultural traditions of the local Muslims propagating the diehard Wahabbi sectarian notion of Islam attempting to impose on all Muslims of the world. Such oppressive thrust of Southey Arabia extends from Pakistan to Malaysia and Indonesia in South and Southeast Asia and is beginning to emerge in the emigrated non-Arabic Muslims who have settled in the West.

Gautam's quoting brilliant jugalbandi of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan does not speak for "secular" nature of the Indian society but actually pays tribute to the tolerant Hindu ethos that prevails in our country. As such entertainment of any kind is not tolerated or accepted in theocratic Islamic countries, and certainly in the Islamic religious worshipping centers or holy places. For example, late Bismillaha Khan when played Shahanai on the banks of Ganga, in front of Kashi vishwanath mandir, he did not play it as a Muslim but as a part of the tolerant Hindu Culture and as part of the Hindu musical cultural tradition. Some fanatic Hindus with their abhorrence for non-Hindu society could have stopped his ancestors from playing it in front of the Shiva temple. But, they did not and hence we had amongst us the Shahanai Navaz Bismillah Khan. At least, say thanks to Hindus of last few generations to have continued with this noble tradition. Will bhajans by Hindu singers be allowed to be openly sung in any Muslim countries including Pakistan? Are the other than Muslim religious worshipping places being allowed to be built in Muslim countries the way the number of mosques have grown in India even before the birth of "secular" India in 1947 and in post-independence era?

Problem today before the entire world community is that of diehard and medieval sectarian Islam taking root in the otherwise secular societies of the East and West. Not a very long ago Muslims in coastal Konkan area of Maharashtra were speaking local Konkani or Marathi language. Today they speak mutilated Urdu and Hindi worse than Bumbayya Hindi. The dress code appears to have taken root among these Muslims who wear the so called Pathani attire and the skull cap. Why? To assert themselves as being distinguished form the rest of the population. They would attempt to do the same in the western counties and have tried to force the Australian government to allow a purdah covered woman's face as a picture acceptable on the driver's license and official IDs; needless to say the Australians were not sympathetic to this proposal.  It is only in India that a second generation of Razakars of the yester-years can come up and as a democratically elected Razakar member of the State assembly openly claim that his people (read Muslim of Sunni faith) can decimate 100 crore Hindus if the police force is removed for just 15 minutes. This is like letting old-fashioned Nazi party to win elections in Israel and threaten to massacre all jews in Israel if police force and law and order was stopped just for 15 minutes. Yet even to this date he (Owaisi) goes unpunished for his inflammatory divisive speech gone viral. This can happen only in Hindu India and not in Pakistan or Bangladesh. What is the position of minorities in our neighbouring countries? Hindus who constituted about a tenth of the population at the time of partition in Pakistan and Bangaldesh have been reduced to less than one per cent. Next came the turn of Ahamedias who were ruthlessly uprooted from Pakistan. Pakistan even lost a Noble prize winner, just because he was an Ahamedia. Shia population of Pakistan faces extinction, they are attacked and their holy places desecrated. Any other Islamic sect of the religion other than Sunni is not tolerated there. Why go that far, Kashmiri Hindus are languishing in their own country and forced to leave their homeland. This is the state of affairs for the Islamic and Hindu minorities in the Islamic countries leave alone the state of the minority Christians in the theocratic "secular" Muslim nations.

All the derogatory talks and comments by these so called "secularists" in India and the vanguards of unity of India are reservedly directed only at the Hindus and their clamors against Hindu nation and its culture is for admonishing the Hindu fanatics, the most elusive entity in the country. The Muslim youths here in India, mostly educated and IT professionals are trying to join the most dreaded Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria sneaking out of their country in large numbers. Compared to their numbers from the reports of their arrests, these so called Hindu fanatics who are protested against with drumbeats by the Muslims and other so called "secularists" form, if at all, a micro-minority.

The reason why have the Indian masses voted for BJP in large numbers in the last elections is that the so called minority community has exploited to the hilt the Congress Party's fear of losing votes of the minority, always making a Boogieman of the Sachchar Committee report. The Muslim population of the country has grown from 10 percent to twenty-five percent over the last six decades and still it is in a better position socio-economically than the Dalits and scheduled castes as illustrated by the same Sacchchar committee report. Now the Muslims (and even Christians) want to have "religion based" reservation. Realising that the Congress party has lost its potential at national level, the Muslim minority community is flocking to the most notorious political outfit of MIM. They have forgotten the way Congress and other secularist outfits wooed them for the votes compromising the constitution of India.

Challenge for secularists

Will the people like Gautam Adhikari and other "secularists" ever dare to tell the Muslims in this country that they cannot consider Hindus as Kafirs, or for that matter any other non-Muslim community as Kafirs? Will they ever tell Mulsims that the "idol worship" as practiced by the Hindus or other religious peoples is to be accepted as an equally valid path to God or Allah? They do not in actuality, as they do not have the courage to preach "secularism" to Muslims. Will they ever dare to tell Shahi Imam that he acts like a renegade by uttering the expletives about Modi and inviting Navaz Shariff at the anointment ceremony of his son. Are there no equally competent Muslims other than head of an a State overtly inimical to India to occupy the seat in his clan among the local Muslims? Will these secularist ever dare to tell the Muslim youths that their open agenda of annihilation of all people of other faiths (other than Muslims that too their kind of Muslims) propagated by ISIS is against humanity, however justified they feel it from the point of view of their so called revered Holy Koran? Looking at our immediate neighbors, Gautam Adhikari and his ilk should realize that India has remained Republican only because it is a Hindu nation and not because of the Congress Party or their own "secularist" outcries in the so called "secular" media. Non-Hindu nations all around India cannot hold a candle to the nobility demonstrated by Hindus and by the Hindu nation towards all non-Hindu religious groups even before the birth of the Congress Party and even to this date.

(Edited and modifies by the editor of Sookta without changing the essence of expressed views of the author )