Who is a secularist?

A leading Mumbai lawyer, Mahesh Jethmalani, has posed the question: Who is a secularist? Writing in a contemporary, Jethmalani prefaced the above by taking note of the desperation of the so-called secularists to deny Narendra Modi credit for the BJP victory in the recent Gujarat Assembly poll. Indeed, he laments the fact that, ostrich-like, the professional Modi-baiters seem to be blaming the people for the outcome in Gujarat.

If only wishes were horses, our woolly-headed secularists would ride! But in a telling comment, the legal-eagle notes that Sanjay Dutt, Afzal Guru and Sohrabudin had emerged as the 'new poster boys' of the secular camp. Very well put, indeed. For, if anyone polarizes the society on communal grounds, it is, in the main, the large body of professional secularists. Abusing the Sangh parivar in particular and the majority community in general has become second nature to the careerist-secularist brigade.

As the learned lawyer says about Dutt, '. what is indisputable is that long before and just prior to the (Mumbai) blasts he was intimately connected with underworld elements.' And on Guru, he argues, '. the rationale for seeking the commutation of his death sentence is singularly misconceived given the gravity of the crime in which he was involved. his mercy petition talks of denial of procedural justice. others talk of atrocities he was subjected to by the authorities which turned him into a terrorist . Even if this were true it does not constitute a justification for taking of innocent lives, just like secularists rightly remind Hindu fundamentalists that the train-burning in Godhra does not validate reprisals that followed.'

And, finally, about Sohrabuddin, he writes that he was a habitual criminal against whom cases were registered in four States. ' He was arrested on several occasions but miraculously escaped conviction. This is not to suggest that his antecedents justified his elimination in a fake encounter. But was Sohrabuddin's case singled out and highlighted by the media merely because he was a Muslim killed in Modi-ruled Gujarat?' Professional secularists can have no cogent answers to the above inconvenient questions. Instead, you can expect more abuse and further denigration of people and parties associated with the Sangh parivar.

For the record, and for the nth time, we might reiterate that there is nothing in the DNA of Hindus to make them religious fundamentalists. Even those Hindus who disavow their faith are embraced by Hinduism. The strength of Hinduism is that it is not a book-based religion. Actually, it is not a religion the way Islam and Christianity are. It is a way of life. It is more cultural than religious. Its practitioners do not have to necessarily worship in a temple or at home. Nor do they require an intermediary between them and their many gods. Tolerance of all other religions is Hinduism's template. Over the millennia no other people have played host to so many proselytizing religions on its home turf as have the Hindus. Yet, there is an incessant propaganda against the main body of Hindus that it is communal, illiberal and intolerant of other faiths.

Quite clearly, it smacks of a deep-rooted conspiracy to weaken the defenders and upholders of the Hindu faith by making them feel insecure and inferior in their own land. The lingering influence of a series of foreign invaders who had carefully nurtured a small body of locals and planted in them the seeds of artificial divisions by questioning the religious tenets of the majority community is now reflected in the vicious secularist propaganda, the kind mouthed by the self-styled combatants against alleged Hindu communalism. Mahesh Jethmalani's timely intervention in this debate ought to arouse the conscience of at least some people gullible enough to be taken in by the secularist piffle. For only a true Hindu can be secular in the real sense of the term.

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