Who’s Secular and Who’s Not?

As soon as one mention about communal forces faces of RSS, BJP, Shiv Sena etc. strikes our mind and that too with a blitzkrieg speed. On the other hand when we talk about secular groups or parties, within no time we tend to think about Left, BSP etc. with congress being the main protagonist. All the credit for our country becoming secular after partition being held on religious lines and Pakistan ending up as a Muslim state goes to congress and from time to time the party leaders have also cried hoarse in claiming their secularity. In today’s world what we see is not always true and what we perceive from what others have to say is seldom true. So is congress really secular to the extent to which it claims to be?

Every day we hear a lot about the wrong doings of the “Saffron Brigade” and anyone who thinks of himself as a member of the intellectual and the concerned thinking class very rightly criticizes it to the maximum possible extent. But why always when we talk about communal forces only the face of saffron brigade flashes to our mind? Does communal forces are those who think and works only for Hindus? Or there are any Muslim communal parties also? To put in other words, is there any other party which always tries to make Muslims happy, may be trying to hide their communal nature by giving their [mis]deeds name of minority uplifting? But people do not really think that way, you know why? It’s because their actions are portrayed as goodwill gestures, but when it comes to the saffron brigade they are regarded as perpetuators of atrocious crimes.

To begin with, first let’s try to figure out who really a secular is? Someone who is secular or some organization which is secular in ideology is not concerned with any religion. The word to note here is any even if it is a minority.

It was year 1959 when the congress government under Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru first introduced the Haj Subsidy, given by none of the 57 Muslim countries, which continued till very recently when the Supreme Court ordered to terminate it as it was anti-secular and the government never provided any such benefit to any other religion. I do not understand why for so long tax payers hard earned money was spent on someone who only god knows in the backyard of his house might be planning a bomb blast. Isn’t being partial towards one particular religion what we call as communalism?

There are many more instances like these which clearly bust the pseudo-secular face of congress, but few which are most shocking and alarming among them is the consideration of withdrawal of security forces from Kashmir, just to please pro-Pakistan Muslim elements.

Another case is the support of Bangladeshi Infiltrators who are at par with external aggression and constitutionally and by the judgment of Supreme Court dated July 12^th 2005 should be deported. But instead of doing so the so-called ‘secular government’ just to make Muslims happy again, on Feb. 10, 2006 brought the Foreigners (Tribunals for Assam) Order to nullify the Court’s judgment, which however was quashed as unconstitutional and illegal by the court. But still nothing has been done by our ‘secular government’ to deport these people who are not only a liability on the country’s GDP, but also a big contributor to the depleting condition of law and order in the country. What should we call it, secularism or acts of kindness, perhaps minority upliftment?

Call all this as pseudo-secularism or Muslim appeasement, but the truth is for decades congress has been continuously working for Muslims in a manner which in no way is different from what BJP or Shiv Sena does for Hindus. But if we regard former as secular then why we have permanently labeled the latter as communal? Why we still believe them when they call themselves secular? At least the saffron people say what they do and are not at all shallow like the so called secular party, whose actions are completely communal in nature but who claims to be the lone bearer of flag secularism in our country. At the end of the day who is to decide, who is secular and who is not? If it is us only, then why can’t we see the truth, which is staring at our face?