The garb of neo-secularism is a devious decoy, a sheepskin that camouflages wolves of the most dangerous kind. Real secularism lies imprisoned in the depths of the average Indian’s heart, like the doddering old king in vintage tamil MGR starrers who is kept in underground captivity by a villainous diwan even as an imposter takes his place.
Author: T R Jawahar
“The status of a mosque in Islam is crystal clear. A place once consecrated as a masjid is a masjid in perpetuity. It acquires eternal sanctity. The ownership vests permanently in Allah and the dedication to the almighty is irrevocable and absolute.
Socialism was touted as the supreme solution to all our economic ills. But it turned out to be worse than the disease, relegating the country to the fiscal ICU. Again, the malaise of casteism was aggravated by the strong medicine or rather wrong medicine, called Mandal
Paranoia. Persecution complex. These words were parotted as we expected. But what we did not bargain for was the label ‘ Hindu Bigotry ‘. So, expressing the apprehensions of a mute majority becomes bigotry in the eyes of a jaundiced few. Then so be it. All is fair in love, war and secularism, though the latter today has more leanings towards war than love.
Man may be a political animal or not, but he certainly is a religious animal. Of course, there may be secular exceptions warranting an invention of a nomenclature ‘secular animals’, but even so, such secularism is selective and is always laced with reverence for the minority religions and its’ gods.
Man may be a political animal or not, but he certainly is a religious animal. Of course, there may be secular exceptions warranting an invention of a nomenclature ‘secular animals’, but even so, such secularism is selective and is always laced with reverence for the minority religions and its’ gods.
A spark politicised becomes an explosion. Consider any raging issue and, one can perceive the furtive presence of a politician in the smoky background, holding a torch. After having set it afire, he then basks in its warmth and keeps fanning it so that it does not die away. He then appoints himself as a negotiator, like the proverbial monkey arbitrating between two feuding cats.
Writing seriously about secularism is itself a big pain and one can imagine what it would be like practising it. Indeed our secularists are an extremely persevering lot, holding on to a shadow but still managing to pass of the mirage as the substance. The people might have lost their patience with secularism but that doesn ‘t deter the former from staying put.
A good case could easily be lost by a bad argument. The threat that POTO holds for genuine journalistic ventures is real but that does not mean that the fraternity, even if it means only a misguided few, should lapse into a fit of paranoic euphoria without even a semblance of fair introspection whenever someone from its midst is sought out by the law of the land.