Tag: Secularism

Jai Hind.

Jai Hind is Indian for Long Live India.

I have been extremely cynical about my country’s political and bureaucratic leadership and have mixed feelings about its armed forces. Mixed in the last case because while by and large they are honourable, black sheep have been caught with their hands in the till too often for me to give them a completely clean chit.

In this scenario when a foreigner, that too a Lady Pastor talks well of India, it gives me goose bumps to realise that the Indian people are still capable of being decent and wonderful human beings, despite all the sufferings that they are forced to endure by the inept and corrupt leadership and administration.

I leave my readers with this article to share my pride with.

Secularism, Indian Style.

“Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.” -Oscar Wilde

I am a secular Indian. I pay my taxes without complaint. I am a law abiding citizen and am considered to be a pillar of the local community.

Some of the following passages are from Wikipedia which I have accessed to convey the contents of this post in an unbiased manner.

The Preamble to the Constitution of India declares that India is a secular state.[1] The term secularism in politics refers to the governmental practice of indifference towards religion. Though such bifurcation is not totally possible, still, secular politics attempt to prevent religious philosophies or bodies from influencing governmental policies. The philosophy that the Indian constitution upholds is a kind of secular humanism made relevant through a historical development of the ideology within the context of religious pluralism in India.

The Hindi word that is commonly used for “secularism” in India is dharmanirapekshata (धर्मनिरपेक्षता) and which means “indifference towards religion” The usage itself denotes the understanding of secularism as more a policy of political practice than a philosophy in itself.

Here is a story about a modern Indian woman teacher from a modern Indian family and background who is facing secularism at its best, as practiced in India.

As I write this, no protests by any secular Indian has been raised and the University officials have not taken on the students’ union, because it is all about vote bank politics. Now, vote bank politics must not be a familiar term, to some of my readers as, it is perhaps not used to describe a phenomenon that is seen, but not described as such, in the countries from which my non Indian readers come. So, here is some more information about it from the Wikipedia.

I love India.

“Assasins Of The Mind.”

I have just read a chilling article by Christopher Hitchens in the Vanity Fair. Let me kindle your interest with how he concludes the article.

“Two decades on, Salman himself is thriving mightily and living again like a free man. But the culture that sustains him, and that he helps sustain, has twisted itself into a posture of prior restraint and self-censorship in which the grim, mad edict of a dead theocrat still exerts its chilling force. And, by the way, the next time that Khomeini’s lovely children want to make themselves felt, they will be armed not just with fatwas but with nuclear weapons.”

He uses the well known story of Salman Rushdie to illustrate what is happening in the name of political correctness and secularism.

I do not wish to add my two bits. The article is powerful enough to cause ordinary people to reflect.