DNA Edit: The secularism bogey

Nothing infuriates those in this country, who believe in status quo, like a jibe on their ideological no-go areas. Secularism, for instance, is one such topic which can drive some so-called liberals into a bout of irascibility.

Obviously, the latest salvo of the Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath — those who have pandered the lie of secularism must apologise to the country — has rubbed off a clutch of garden-variety political analysts and self-proclaimed members of the intelligentsia the wrong way.

Sadly, in their repartees, all they have to offer are weak protestations steeped in idealistic notions and perceptions that are far divorced from the lived reality of millions of Indians. If one is to muster the patience to tell them that their magnificent notions have been just that; that their grand principles have never transcended the domain of ideas; that grandstanding is not the same as ground zero execution, one is readily accused of being a saffron sympathiser.

For a small pocket of elites in India who have had the great fortune of seeing Indian society through the lens of sanitised history books and from the vantage point of lofty constitutionalism, secularism is a go-to catchword that is divined (out of the seemingly endless capacity of Indians to take offense) every time they perceive an imaginary slight to the interests of the minorities in India.

For those who were not born with the proverbial silver spoon, secularism is a bogey deployed, arbitrarily and unpredictably, by the powers that be to undercut opportunities and rewards to a deserving people. Peruse the history of the Indian National Congress in India and it is obvious that its doomed experiments have perverted secularism and taken it far away from the original idea as enshrined in our Constitution.

Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s treatment of the Shah Bano judgment of 1985 shows how the Congress party will not dither from interfering with the mandate of the Supreme Court to secure its hold over the Muslim electorate. In the judgement, the Supreme Court sagaciously called for implementation the Uniform Civil Code in India and ruled that the Criminal Procedure Code would have primacy over Muslim personal laws.

Immediately, Muslim clerics and hardliners questioned the authority of the Apex court and piled pressure on the government to undo the effect of the judgement. Rajiv Gandhi, then a novitiate Prime Minister, more suited to flying planes than running governments, gave in. Abusing his majority in the house, he passed a retrogressive law that permitted Muslim men to abjure any monetary responsibility towards their divorced wives.

Ironically, Gandhi’s blatant pandering did not work wonders for him and he went on to lose the next election. Perhaps, he should have heeded the words of Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of the UK, who famously said that an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping that it will eat him last. After Gandhi, the Congress has steadfastly refused to learn a lesson from this saga.

Over the decades, the Congress and a host of other regional parties have catered to hard-line Muslim sensibilities only to keep them in good spirits.