by BS Murthy
The sum and substance of the freedom of religious instruction is that the State, in true secular spirit, is expected to keep itself away from it (religious instruction) in the physical sense, and no more. However, the catch here is that the religious education is fine so long as the government does not fund it for that allows the State to retain its secular pretence by keeping itself overtly out of religion. Even otherwise, one would expect the constitutional makers to address the content of the religious education to serve the needs of the communities concerned, without compromising the general public order and good, but they failed 'India that is Bharat' in that respect as well.
Well, every community needs some amongst them to undergo religious education to meet its spiritual and social needs in accordance with the tenets of its faith and feelings. That should at once be the scope as well as the limitation of the religious education, isn't it? So as to cater to these legitimate needs of a given religious group, the required religious education with or without the government funding forms a fundamental communal right of the members of that group. Right, but what if in the name of freedom of religious instruction, the dogmas of such faiths, given to deride the religious beliefs of fellow citizens, are sought to be inculcated in an unwieldy number of members of that community? Won't such a move hamper the secular character of the country besides inculcating religious bigotry in the mind-set of any given community?
Obviously, the framers of the constitution, but for Ambedkar, arguably Islamic naive, couldn't delve deep enough into the vexatious subject of religious intolerance of the practicing faiths in the country. What is worse, this supposed constitutional religious goodness came in handy for the ugly politician to turn it into an exploitative mask for the minorities' votes in the election seasons. It is one thing to espouse the cause of the minorities and another to abet the bigotry of the M usalmans and the prejudices of the Christians. Sadly, for the minorities, moreso for the M usalmans our politicians tend to be on the right side of their wrong issues to the benefit of none, save themselves.
Yet, it has become fashionable in the Indian politico-social discourse to juxtapose secularism and communalism that is with a matching ignorance about the latter for communalism is "a principle of political organization based on federated communes.” No wonder that even seventy-one years after its independence, as India is still groping for its political direction in an ideological darkness, thanks to the Semitic promiscuity that Indian constitution grants, for the human rights activists, the M usalmans and the Christians holding on to their scriptural dogmas is kosher, but the right of the Hindus to articulate their religious sentiments or cultural concerns, and/ or both is sheer religious intolerance, and that's perplexing.
In the light of the above may be seen the hollowness of the fundamental duties Indira's infamous amendment imposes upon the citizens that are rarely, if ever, fulfilled by the rulers themselves.
1. While it is incumbent upon the citizenry "to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women"
- the political ethos has been to cynically reap electoral dividends by exacerbating social dissensions based on region, religion, caste et al.
2. While it is the fundamental right of the citizen "to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform"
a) The State had failed its Hindus to rein in the caste panchdyats that tend to lynch the inter-caste couples and
b) The politicians, who treat the Musalmans as a vote-bank had neither encouraged them to inculcate the spirit of inquiry nor provided them an environment conducive for reform.
Whatever, owing to the vacuity of verbiage in the over the 100k word-long Indian Constitution, a rabid Islamic obscurantist and a dyed-in-the-wool Hindu nationalist have been able to pin their juxtaposing positions, with equal aplomb, and that's ironical. However, while the Hindu secular habit of left-lib brainwash would like to equivocate the Jai Sriram chants with the Musalman rant of Allah hu Akbar, one needs to understand the latter in the context of azan, the muezzins' five-time a day call to the faithful for Islamic prayers, which reads thus:
"Allah is the Greatest,
I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah,
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,
Come to Prayer,
Come to success.
Allah is the Greatest
There is none worthy of worship except Allah."
It is thus, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs et al of India, and of the world, have to endure the azan, blaring from the loudspeakers of their neighborhood mosques five times day, which, besides offending their own belief-system is bound to hurt their religious sentiments. But no one is seemingly caring, not even the evolved Christian West.
That is not all, wonder how the inimical quranic tirades of the Musalmans against
kafirs in mosques, madrasas and mohallas reconcile with their FUNDAMENTAL
DUTIES as Indian citizens that are stipulated below is anybody's guess
PART IVA , 51A. It shall be the duty of every citizen of India
" (e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women.”
Also, the Christian proselytizers as Indian citizenry fare no better in their constitutional compliance for besides branding Hindus as heathens, they label their deities as false.
Needless to say, the copy (from other constitutions) and paste (in the Indian Constitution) work of the so-called framers of our constitution, comprising of the Semitic-naive caste Hindus and a well-informed, though embittered dalit, as argued above, needs a pragmatic overhaul, for which the level of Hindu awareness about the Abrahamic outrage against their sandtana dharma has to raise to self-respecting heights of Himalayan proportions, hopefully.
So, it is time for WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, over seventy years after our fathers, or be it grandfathers, had adopted the constitution, to factor the new realities into a more equitable document? After all, isn't the level playing field the theme song of the modern world order? And the Hindu emotional grievance is that they are denied just that in the religious plane in the country that their forbears made their own before all others.
Chapter 26 The Stymied State
The Indian State with its dominant M uslim minority and its short-sighted constitution was destined to be politically stymied to the hurt of its Hindu majority. And the minority-centric politics of the country as it evolved over the years - stretched to incredulous lengths by Prime Minister Minoan Singh in averring that its minorities have the first right on national resources - has been increasingly compounding the Hindu emotional misery. Why blame Singh, as Muslim Appeasement, owing to the wooly Nehru has been the policy of the Indian State, to start with.
Thus, though it was but natural that Bunkum Chandra's vande mdtaram, the theme song of the Indian freedom movement, should have logically become the Indian national anthem, yet it was not to be for the Musalmans had an Islamic allergy to it as it eulogizes Bharat Mata. So, Rabindranath Tagore'sjanagana mana was brought to the fore and vande mdtaram was relegated to the backbench as a national song, whatever it means. Just imagine how the U.S. politicians would have handled if, say its Hispanicsand Latinos took exception to the 'America is Great' salutation to the newfound land on the specious ground that it hurts their sentiment for the older lands of their forebears.
This about sums up the religio-political dynamics of post-colonial India - its M uslim remnants are accorded the privilege to exercise their veto in formulating the State policy - that is after they had forced its partition to create a separate homeland for its M usalmans in Pakistan! And it makes a sad commentary on the Nehru-led leadership of the 'independent' India that it neither had the gall nor the gumption
to tell its M usalmans that having forced the country's partition on religious grounds, they had no moral right to impose their Islamic whims upon what is essentially the Hindu portion of the divided land.
However, it's nobody's case though that those M usalmans who chose to stay back in India had no right to do so but surely the Hindu India had a legitimate right to ask them to think and behave like Indians as at any rate it's not the case with its sandtana dharma to interfere with the value systems of the other faiths. But instead, and in spite of Ambedkar's words of caution that - the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs - Nehru so directed the State policy as to nurse the Musalmans' 'social self-government that is incompatible with local self-government'. So, it was not long before the lure for the minorities' votes tempted India's self-serving politicians to make the Hindu emotions subservient not only to the Islamic whims of the M usalmans but also to the proselytizing fancies of the Christians.
That is not all; though it's in the nature of history to grant the captors to tilt it against the captives, but once freed, it permits the latter to turn the bend, ironically, in independent India's case, Nehru, who was thrust upon its head by Gandhi, coerced it to bend backwards, so to say by two turns, to resurrect its slavish ethos of its Islamic times in its textbooks. So, he chose as its education minister, out of all his cabinet colleagues, the one who had all along voiced his opposition to India's partition, not for any holistic reasons, but as that would diminish the dominance of those M usalmans, who would be left behind in its Hindu-dominated part! That too he was a Saudi born Islamic theologian, with the tongue twisting name of Maulana Sayyid Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad, shortened to Abul Kalam Azad for the Indian ears! It's only to be expected that the Maulana would grab the Islamic opportunity in Hindu India to hit the 'partitioned' ground running, and that's what he did. So as to bolster the morale of the reduced-in-size Indian umma, and moreso to forestall that of the Hindus, just freed from thousand years of slavery, he devised an
appropriate 'educational' mechanism, and that was the proverbial last straw on the Indian history's back, which happenstance is seldom appreciated.
As post-colonial India's educational in-charge, for nearly ten years that is, he evolved its school curriculum, replete with the life and times of Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, and Sha Jahan, not to forget his Taj Mahal, touted as the eighth wonder of the world, so as to enable the Hindu kids to feel good about their glorious Islamic past. Besides, to drive home their martial inadequacies as well, lest they should entertain any valorous ideas for their 'independent' future, he ensured they were made privy to the furies of Ghazni, Ghuri, Taimur, Aurangazeb et al that their progenitors had to face that is without raising their hackles.
Moreover, so as not to give raise to any doubts about the glorious Islamic order of Hindustan in the impressionable minds, he saw to it that the Indian history did not venture much into the south of the Vindhyas to peep at the Vijayanagara Empire in the M ogul period itself. It's thus; he could drive the notion into the heads of the Hindu kids that India owes its glories to its Islamic rule, thereby perpetuating the Muslim dominance in the Hindu consciousness. Well, it is a testimony to his evil genius that he devised it all in such way, aided in no small measure by the similarly afflicted body of schoolteachers, that it never occurred to the Hindu kids in the secular schools, the author included, that something was odd in all that. Having been so conditioned, most Hindus spend the rest of their lives without ever brooding over their hurtful past.
Needless to say, the wily Maulana wouldn't have been able to pursue his nefarious agenda without the blessings of the wooly Pandit (Nehru), who abhorred Hindu nationalism. Thus in a peculiar congruence of Azad's communal bias and Nehru's personal prejudice, in the former's line of 'educating' the Hindu kids to India's detriment, the latter saw an effective means to nip the resurgence of Hindu nationalism in its bud. Nevertheless, the paeans sung in madrasas for the Mogul rule that perpetuate the false sense of superiority in Muslim minds to the hurt of India's unity, was fine for the Maulana, and Nehru, who couldn't have been unaware that all that furthers Islamic obscurantism, didn't care if it were to keep the Hindu nationalism under check. Well, all this suited his daughter Indira no less, and put together, as they ruled India for around 32 years, the wily M aulana was allowed to indoctrinate the Hindu kids from his grave as well, and that shows to this day. How?
It's to be expected that the alien yoke besides robbing the Hindus of their selfesteem would have suppressed their self-interest. So, as India became free, while its political atmosphere turned conducive for Hindus to acquire their self-interest with vigour, as the Nehru-Azad combine constrained their intellectual sphere, they failed to retrieve their self-esteem of yore in any measure. It was thus, fifty years after India gained its independence, they still allowed themselves to be bossed over by Sonia Maino, the Italian daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, as the dynastic head of the politically dominant Congress party for over two decades. That's not all, when she so illtreated the mortal remains of PV Narasimha Rao, the architect of India's economic reforms, as an Indian equivalent of Achilles' abuse of Hector's, unlike the Trojans who avenged the insult to their valiant prince, the Hindus, bereft of any self-esteem whatsoever endured it all without a demur. More than this nothing illustrates the success of Azad's insidious Islamist strategy to 'demean Hindus in their own minds', and that they, to this day, haven't recognized the Goebblisian role he played to their enervation is something that their progeny should ponder over, and moreso, rejuvenate themselves.
M oreover, the way Hindus went about using and abusing their hard-earned freedom makes no rosy reading either. In what was left as the 'secular' India, the princes of democracy have come to rule the land as per the age-old Hindu political credo - unto
each his own province. The Westminster model of governance that the Union of India adopted and its political devolution that the regional aspirations demanded, brought Bharat into the domain of a Samrdt in Nayi Dilli, the Indraprastha of yore, Sultans of its linguistic States and the Sarpanchs in its panchdyats, of course in tow with their hangers on, vying for its politico-economic pie. Besides, the democracy brought into the positions of power the jogirdors of the National Parliament and the thonedors of the State Assemblies with their attendant minions for a like calling.
And lest the favoured-lot of the powers that be should miss out to savor the cream of the world's most populous democratic cake, there are the councils of ministers, chairmen politicians for assorted boards and numerous bodies; and not to leave out the lordships of its judicial wing, there are tribunals galore for the retired judges to head. Thus, even as the minor deities of the Indian politics are well propitiated, the edifices of Bharat's democratic temples are being ruined by its political parties, barring exceptions, are but family-owned hereditary setups. That being the case, isn't it stupid even to murmur that we are a democracy, leave alone proclaim that ours is the biggest, or is it the largest, democracy on earth?
Though, thanks to the British, Hindustan got rid of the Islamist misrule, it is as if the politicians of free India retained the governing ethos of the M usalmans as sarkdri legacy for posterity. After all, now as ever, it's the personal interest of the regional political masters that prevails over the national interest, and what is worse, in the Indian democratic domain, the high ideal of 'nursing the constituency', though marketed in ugly packages of parochialism, is considered even a virtue! And coming to the public morality, we have it from Alberuni and others that Hindustan, in times gone by, was, by and large, populated by honest people, but then how come it had long metamorphosed itself into a nation of cheats!
As there is recorded history as such to facilitate any research, we are left to speculate about cause(s) of the abominable fall of a race as a whole. The millennia alien rule - first that of the Islamic invaders and then of the British colonizers - needles
s to say, would have been a cause of resentment for the Hindu natives, which inexorably could have developed into an enduring grudge against them. It's a psychological possibility in that the impotent Hindu rage would have manifested itself into cheating the imposters of their royal monies through corrupt means so as to derive a vicarious pleasure for themselves, which over the centuries, insensibly became a norm that invariably tattered India's moral fabric.
M aybe, the presidential form of democracy on the American lines would have served India better but then that would have made so many sundry politicians irrelevant, a scary prospect for the political class, which turned politics into the best business that there is. Thus, for that very reason, the founders of the nation State could have chosen the survival route that every generation of politicians would find it expedient not to deviate from. So, one can expect the political satraps to keep the legislative circuses on, for everyone knows whose interest in the end prevails in the mobocracy of India. After all, in the land of Bharat, the privileged class had always been apart, and that came to be a part of its socio-political ethos, and since the Brahmans are, anyway out, let the politicians be in, so seems the rationale of the Indian democratic process.
Yet this faulty political model lifted the morale of the depleted stock of the Indian Musalmans in an unexpectedly way! Since their vote mattered in numerous constituencies, the politicians grasped the electoral merit in playing the Islamic fundamentalist footsie with the mullahs and the moulvis, umma's vote traders that is besides being the conscience keepers. However, to start with, the Congress political lenience towards the Islamic religious sentiment, conceived by the Nehruvian mischief, charitably approached, could have been well-intended to reach out to the masses of the
Indian M usalmans, orphaned by the exodus of their classes to Pakistan. It was as though Nehru wanted to be a J innah to the M usalmans of Bharat, oblivious to the fact that the Hindus too were sorely in need of a leader to address their hurt at the loss of a fourth of their ancient land to Pakistan.
