03-15-2005, 07:09 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Asianage
<b>Truth about 'secularism'</b>- full text of the article:
Questioning 'communalism'
- By Balbir K. Punj
'What is communalism? Explain the rise of communalism in India." This question in the CBSE Social Sciences examination flummoxed the Class X students. <b>While students found it out-of-syllabus, their parents complained it of being "mischievous." This six-mark question was actually politically motivated. The education department (of the HRD ministry) which is the parent body of the CBSE, expected a "secular" answer rather than the correct answer. </b>
<b>Thus Gujarat, Ayodhya, RSS, BJP would be accepted as synonyms for "communalism," but Godhra, anti-Sikh riots, Mopla riots, SIMI or Muslim League would draw naught.</b> It is not clear whether HRD grandpa Arjun Singh would send his "secular" answer to the thousands of examiners who evaluate the answer-sheets. But the mischief was certainly evident.
The leftist stamp is quite obvious on such a CBSE question. The leftists have turned history and allied soft-disciplines like social sciences, media studies into bastions of "secularism." <b>"Secularism" is thus an industry for those most of whom are unemployable elsewhere. </b>
The minister wants to learn what is "communalism." Summarily speaking, it was because of "communalism" that a "secular" Congress ceased to be in Pakistan despite Gandhiji's protestation that Partition would leave the functioning of the Congress unaffected in the seceding parts. <b>It was the "ultra-secular" Communist Party which provided Jinnah with the intellectual arsenal he needed to justify partition.</b> Thanks to "communalism" it was the first to be wiped out from
Pakistan after being dubbed as an anti-Pakistani Hindu party. This is the "communalism" that all "secular" parties have to go through to reach out to the Muslim vote bank via the agency of maulanas and muftis - <b>and a maulana being an Osama bin Laden lookalike helps. </b>
Ram Vilas Paswan, as a pre-election stunt, had suggested a "secular" formation in Bihar under a Muslim chief minister. The post-election deadlock in Bihar had provided the most propitious opportunity to actualise that suggestion. Bihar would have got rid of the Lalu-Rabri family, the "communal" NDA would not have come to power, Muslims would have been pleased. Lalu himself should have welcomed this auspicious "secular" move to prove "secularism" was dearer to him than family interest.
But what happened when this suggestion was resuscitated after the elections? Both Paswan and Lalu, competitive exponents of "secularism," pooh-poohed it away. Why? It was because both these pseudo-Muslims knew they would make <b>themselves irrelevant by putting a real Muslim in power.</b> Lalu and Paswanare "secular" for their own benefit, and not for the benefit of Muslims.
The bulk of the Muslims, on the other hand, are "secular" by compulsion and not by choice.<b> "Secularism" for them is a political weapon under democracy</b>, where <b>their burgeoning demography helps to tilt the balance in their favour</b>. Muslims did not need "secularism" when Muslim monarchs ruled India for six centuries.
The British era too provided them a level playing field. Nay, with Aligarh Anglo-Mohammedan College (later Aligarh Muslim University) as the node, <b>Muslims were used as a counterweight against the nationalist movement. </b>They dubbed, with impunity, the Congress as a "Hindu party." <b>The Congress under Gandhi, who bent over backwards, to enlist Muslim support could not attract even four per cent of them. </b>
Hindus, on the other hand, remained loyal to the Congress. The detractors of Savarkar have reinvented him as the icon of Hindu communalism. <b>Savarkar was the sole interpreter of Hindu history and time is only vindicating him. </b>But, as a leader, Savarkar possibly did not have four per cent Hindus by his side. Hindu Mahasabha had little mass following amongst common Hindus. But how come Jinnah carried 90 per cent of the subcontinent's Muslims with him with his stirring call "Ladke Lenge Pakistan (We shall wrest Pakistan through war)." Congress' "secular" myth exploded in the 1946 elections where except for NWFP, it lost all Muslim constituencies to Muslim League. This despite the fact that the Congress at that time was being led by a poster boy Muslim president, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
<b>Jinnah never criticised Savarkar as communal; that epithet was reserved for Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and the entire Congress.</b> Shouldn't the present day Congress buy this wonderful description of their party by Jinnah, who commanded the confidence of 90 per cent of subcontinent's Muslims?
But what happened so dramatically to the Muslims after Independence that they overnight became "secularists?" They remained ardent Congress loyalists for many years till the other "secular" parties like the Communists, the SP, the BSP, the RJD began to unravel that stranglehold. <b>Before Independence, the British were the rulers, and the Congress merely a struggling party. On Independence, the erstwhile strugglers became rulers with all the mechanisms of state, armed forces, police, intelligence agencies at their disposal. Muslims felt they were now at the raham-o-karam (mercy) of the Congress. </b>
Simultaneously, the partition had diminished their numerical strength by two-thirds making them look a pale ghost of their former self. Muslims were hardly visible in the Army, police and IB where once they had dominating presence. Emaciated Muslims made "secularism" a virtue out of necessity to survive. The goal now was to stop the rise of any nationalistic force, the Jan Sangh, as in British time the goal was to prevent the Congress from getting popular.
However, Muslims adopting this political "secularism" was a bargain for their being allowed to flounder in their obsolete and anachronistic mindset. The Muslim problem did not disappear from India. The Congress did not take up this opportunity to "secularise" their mindset forever. Nehru introduced reformist measures like the "Hindu Code Bill" for Hindus, but left the Muslim mind in that dark corner. While Hindus (and other minority communities like Christians, Sikhs, Parsis) went to regular schools, madrasas were given a free run for Muslims. <b>Madrasas churn out students who are physically in 20th century India but mentally in 7th century Arabia. A 13-year-old boy from a madrasa knows everything about Prophet Muhammad, his wars, his relatives but hardly how many states there are in India, or how many countries there are in the world. </b>
It is not that Muslims who have to adopt "secularism" out of circumstances, hate a "secularist" any less than they hate a "Hindu fundamentalist." <b>This was recently made clear by two fatwas in the Marxist bastions of Kerala and West Bengal. In Kerala, Muslim scribes recently issued a fatwa against Muslim girls marrying a Communist. In the second and most sensational fatwa West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee received warning mails spilling the beans of an ISI plan to assassinate him and abduct his daughter. </b>The mail, with "personal" inscribed on it and opened by the chief minister himself, said, "Some heavily paid people injected with jihadi ideas have been sent to this state to assassinate you. We don't want to lose you and we think it is our duty to inform you beforehand." <b>It also said that a plan was being hatched by some ISI agents who had already landed near Tiljala and Kasia Bagan (at a stone's throw from Mr Bhattacharjee's home in Ekdalia Avenue). </b>
In February 2002 Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was made to shut up by his party colleagues when he expressed grave concerns about the proliferating madrasas along the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangla borders of West Bengal. The Dhantala mass rape in Nadia district inside a madrasa under construction during the wedding of a CPI(M) activist's daughter, later that year, was also watered down. But now it seems the "secular" Communists can no longer ignore the elephant in drawing room.
<b>It is not that "secularists" love Muslims. But the situation has now actually got out of their hands, nor is it possible for well meaning Muslims to bring any enlightenment in the Muslim community. The "secularists" would soon find, without the benefit of "Hindu fundamentalism," Islamic extremism rearing its evil head as on the eve of partition. "Secularism" failed then, "secularism" will fail now. </b>
Balbir K. Punj, a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of the BJP's think tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Truth about 'secularism'</b>- full text of the article:
Questioning 'communalism'
- By Balbir K. Punj
'What is communalism? Explain the rise of communalism in India." This question in the CBSE Social Sciences examination flummoxed the Class X students. <b>While students found it out-of-syllabus, their parents complained it of being "mischievous." This six-mark question was actually politically motivated. The education department (of the HRD ministry) which is the parent body of the CBSE, expected a "secular" answer rather than the correct answer. </b>
<b>Thus Gujarat, Ayodhya, RSS, BJP would be accepted as synonyms for "communalism," but Godhra, anti-Sikh riots, Mopla riots, SIMI or Muslim League would draw naught.</b> It is not clear whether HRD grandpa Arjun Singh would send his "secular" answer to the thousands of examiners who evaluate the answer-sheets. But the mischief was certainly evident.
The leftist stamp is quite obvious on such a CBSE question. The leftists have turned history and allied soft-disciplines like social sciences, media studies into bastions of "secularism." <b>"Secularism" is thus an industry for those most of whom are unemployable elsewhere. </b>
The minister wants to learn what is "communalism." Summarily speaking, it was because of "communalism" that a "secular" Congress ceased to be in Pakistan despite Gandhiji's protestation that Partition would leave the functioning of the Congress unaffected in the seceding parts. <b>It was the "ultra-secular" Communist Party which provided Jinnah with the intellectual arsenal he needed to justify partition.</b> Thanks to "communalism" it was the first to be wiped out from
Pakistan after being dubbed as an anti-Pakistani Hindu party. This is the "communalism" that all "secular" parties have to go through to reach out to the Muslim vote bank via the agency of maulanas and muftis - <b>and a maulana being an Osama bin Laden lookalike helps. </b>
Ram Vilas Paswan, as a pre-election stunt, had suggested a "secular" formation in Bihar under a Muslim chief minister. The post-election deadlock in Bihar had provided the most propitious opportunity to actualise that suggestion. Bihar would have got rid of the Lalu-Rabri family, the "communal" NDA would not have come to power, Muslims would have been pleased. Lalu himself should have welcomed this auspicious "secular" move to prove "secularism" was dearer to him than family interest.
But what happened when this suggestion was resuscitated after the elections? Both Paswan and Lalu, competitive exponents of "secularism," pooh-poohed it away. Why? It was because both these pseudo-Muslims knew they would make <b>themselves irrelevant by putting a real Muslim in power.</b> Lalu and Paswanare "secular" for their own benefit, and not for the benefit of Muslims.
The bulk of the Muslims, on the other hand, are "secular" by compulsion and not by choice.<b> "Secularism" for them is a political weapon under democracy</b>, where <b>their burgeoning demography helps to tilt the balance in their favour</b>. Muslims did not need "secularism" when Muslim monarchs ruled India for six centuries.
The British era too provided them a level playing field. Nay, with Aligarh Anglo-Mohammedan College (later Aligarh Muslim University) as the node, <b>Muslims were used as a counterweight against the nationalist movement. </b>They dubbed, with impunity, the Congress as a "Hindu party." <b>The Congress under Gandhi, who bent over backwards, to enlist Muslim support could not attract even four per cent of them. </b>
Hindus, on the other hand, remained loyal to the Congress. The detractors of Savarkar have reinvented him as the icon of Hindu communalism. <b>Savarkar was the sole interpreter of Hindu history and time is only vindicating him. </b>But, as a leader, Savarkar possibly did not have four per cent Hindus by his side. Hindu Mahasabha had little mass following amongst common Hindus. But how come Jinnah carried 90 per cent of the subcontinent's Muslims with him with his stirring call "Ladke Lenge Pakistan (We shall wrest Pakistan through war)." Congress' "secular" myth exploded in the 1946 elections where except for NWFP, it lost all Muslim constituencies to Muslim League. This despite the fact that the Congress at that time was being led by a poster boy Muslim president, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
<b>Jinnah never criticised Savarkar as communal; that epithet was reserved for Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and the entire Congress.</b> Shouldn't the present day Congress buy this wonderful description of their party by Jinnah, who commanded the confidence of 90 per cent of subcontinent's Muslims?
But what happened so dramatically to the Muslims after Independence that they overnight became "secularists?" They remained ardent Congress loyalists for many years till the other "secular" parties like the Communists, the SP, the BSP, the RJD began to unravel that stranglehold. <b>Before Independence, the British were the rulers, and the Congress merely a struggling party. On Independence, the erstwhile strugglers became rulers with all the mechanisms of state, armed forces, police, intelligence agencies at their disposal. Muslims felt they were now at the raham-o-karam (mercy) of the Congress. </b>
Simultaneously, the partition had diminished their numerical strength by two-thirds making them look a pale ghost of their former self. Muslims were hardly visible in the Army, police and IB where once they had dominating presence. Emaciated Muslims made "secularism" a virtue out of necessity to survive. The goal now was to stop the rise of any nationalistic force, the Jan Sangh, as in British time the goal was to prevent the Congress from getting popular.
However, Muslims adopting this political "secularism" was a bargain for their being allowed to flounder in their obsolete and anachronistic mindset. The Muslim problem did not disappear from India. The Congress did not take up this opportunity to "secularise" their mindset forever. Nehru introduced reformist measures like the "Hindu Code Bill" for Hindus, but left the Muslim mind in that dark corner. While Hindus (and other minority communities like Christians, Sikhs, Parsis) went to regular schools, madrasas were given a free run for Muslims. <b>Madrasas churn out students who are physically in 20th century India but mentally in 7th century Arabia. A 13-year-old boy from a madrasa knows everything about Prophet Muhammad, his wars, his relatives but hardly how many states there are in India, or how many countries there are in the world. </b>
It is not that Muslims who have to adopt "secularism" out of circumstances, hate a "secularist" any less than they hate a "Hindu fundamentalist." <b>This was recently made clear by two fatwas in the Marxist bastions of Kerala and West Bengal. In Kerala, Muslim scribes recently issued a fatwa against Muslim girls marrying a Communist. In the second and most sensational fatwa West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee received warning mails spilling the beans of an ISI plan to assassinate him and abduct his daughter. </b>The mail, with "personal" inscribed on it and opened by the chief minister himself, said, "Some heavily paid people injected with jihadi ideas have been sent to this state to assassinate you. We don't want to lose you and we think it is our duty to inform you beforehand." <b>It also said that a plan was being hatched by some ISI agents who had already landed near Tiljala and Kasia Bagan (at a stone's throw from Mr Bhattacharjee's home in Ekdalia Avenue). </b>
In February 2002 Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was made to shut up by his party colleagues when he expressed grave concerns about the proliferating madrasas along the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangla borders of West Bengal. The Dhantala mass rape in Nadia district inside a madrasa under construction during the wedding of a CPI(M) activist's daughter, later that year, was also watered down. But now it seems the "secular" Communists can no longer ignore the elephant in drawing room.
<b>It is not that "secularists" love Muslims. But the situation has now actually got out of their hands, nor is it possible for well meaning Muslims to bring any enlightenment in the Muslim community. The "secularists" would soon find, without the benefit of "Hindu fundamentalism," Islamic extremism rearing its evil head as on the eve of partition. "Secularism" failed then, "secularism" will fail now. </b>
Balbir K. Punj, a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of the BJP's think tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->