DERIDING HINDU IDENTITY AN ACT OF POLITICAL NAIVETY

First ruling party Congress used the slogan of secularism to claim loyalty of Muslim minority and now that it is in Opposition, it has stepped up its criticism of BJP as a majoritarian’ party

- D.C. PATHAK

The Opposition in the BJP regime, unnerved by the rapid rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a leader of global eminence, has tried to run down his government by alleging that it is giving a fillip to Hinduism and taking the country towards majoritarianism’.

It has tried to build a narrative that the present government is not practising secularism, is putting Muslim minority in jeopardy and only harping on the primacy of nationalism for gaining political advantage.

The word secularism was not used by the makers of the Constitution obviously because the concept was built into the Indian democracy through the adoption of one man one vote’ without distinction of caste, creed and gender, express declaration of equality of opportunity and equal protection of law for all and a clear stipulation that in matters of state, religion will have no place.

The first ruling party of India, however, used the slogan of secularism to claim the loyalty of the Muslim minority and now that it is in Opposition, it has stepped up its criticism of the BJP as a Hindw’ party. This is all done with a political calculation that in the face of a highly-divided majority community splintered on account of caste and region the support of the minority of nearly a fifth of the population is a match-winner.

The desperation of the Opposition to garner this support has only increased with the return of Prime Minister Modi to power in 2019 with higher margin. In the process, some weird arguments deprecating Hinduism have surfaced like contending that India is not a nation’, that Vaishnavites’ and Shaivites’ are two mutually exclusive faiths as depicted in a recent movie on the Chola empire, or that the Hindu identity was an innovation of the British colonial rule.