Will the BJP’s new leader practice true instead of pseudo-secularism by keeping politics and religion strictly apart while ensuring the freedom of all the pursue religion as they wish?

Will the BJP’s new leader practice true instead of pseudo-secularism by keeping politics and religion strictly apart while ensuring the freedom of all the pursue religion as they wish?

India is not Gujarat. We are not talking about size of scale alone; it’s the sheet diversity of the nation that makes leading India such a challenging task. Even though in victory he rode the crest of a wave that seems to have washed over so many differences of caste, creed, language and ethnicity, across the country, he would do well to remember that over time waves recede leaving behind the sands of reality.

India is not China, Be in pressed by China’s growth and modernization by all means but any attempt to manage India in an authoritarian manner with in a structure of centralized power will run a risk of explosion. The constitution upon which Modi will place his hand to swear allegiance contains a couple of contentious words in its preamble. One is ‘socialist’ the other is ‘secular’. They were not in the original document; they were inserted later. But the national adventure began with the spirit of those words inspiring the idea of India.

It’ s  Modi’s apparent lack of conviction in secularism  that could be a problem. The Sangh Parivar Portrays  Indians who adhere to secularism as ‘pseudo secular’. By which they mock those who say they are secular but pander politically to religious minorities. But will the BJP’s new leader practice true instead of pseudo-secularism by keeping politics and religion strictly apart while ensuring the freedom of all to pursue religion as they wish and as guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution?

Mohandas Gandhi arrived to merge the streams into a mass movement for liberation by using aspects of Hindu doctrine, for instance by making the Bhagwad Gita a central text of belief or by singing ‘Raghu Pati Raghav Raja Ram’, while stipulating uncompromised tolerance and respect for all religions and faiths.

Along came the RSS to keep alive Hindutva. MS golwalkar, called Guru by the Sangh, wrote that “foreign races in Hindustan” should adopt Hindu culture and language, must entertain no ideas but those glorifying the “Hindu race” and should be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s rights”

The framers of the Constitution eventually opted for the secular stream. When naming the new territory, they chose “India, that is Bharat” and not Hindustan which would have made India a mirror image of Pakistan.

Extract of an article by Gautam Adhikari, TOI 19 May 2014