Articles
What Price “Secularism”
Dt: 10/10/17
Updated: 16/2/18
What Price “Secularism”
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
Sri Yashwant Sinha, formerly a BJP Finance Minister in Sri Vajpayee’s cabinet has joined the bandwagon of “bleeding hearts” - Muslims in the Congress party and leaders of some regional parties with a secular badge, leftists and civil society leaders whose minds have been colonised by the imperial West. These people say that “India has failed to win the minds of the Kashmiri people” and that is why there is periodic resurgence of violence and terrorism in J&K. Sri Sinha prescribed that the present government should open a dialogue with the separatists to win their hearts. For the last 70 years, such efforts have been made periodically. Notably, during the UPA regime a delegation of interlocutors, quite a number of them, “eminent” leftists had gone to J&K and spoken with the separatist leaders; to no avail; of course. Recently, a Communist delegation led by Com. Sitaram Yechuri went to Srinagar to meet the Hurriat leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani. That worthy did not even open the door when these illustrious people trying to win the minds and hearts of the separatists wanted to meet him.
2. Even the so called non-separatists like Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah ex- Chief Ministers also speak of the failure of India to win the hearts of Kashmiris. And all these, inspite of J&K with1% of India’s population getting every year 10% of the money transferred from the Center to the States . So far, more than Rs. 12 lakh cr had been poured into J&K. Although the Hindu province of Jammu and the Buddhist province of Laddhak together constitute 35% of the population, about 80% of the Plan and other funds are spent upon the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley.
3. At the beginning of this 20th century the Kashmir Valley had 27% Hindus . They had been reduced to less than 10% by 1947. By 1990, and thereafter to 0%. All Hindus and Sikhs there had been terrorised by warnings to quit Kashmir delivered through loud speakers mounted on mosques all over the Kashmir Valley. Now, even the Hindu majority Jammu area is getting flooded with Muslims not only from across the borders with Pakistan but also by Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar !
4. Article -370 which gives special status to J&K was meant to be temporary. It is, even after 70 years, still temporary. Article - 35A is another special provision as per which Indians from outside J&K cannot acquire any property anywhere in J&K and settle there with a right to vote.
5. The separatist violence and terrorists can be activated whenever Pakistan wishes. So far about 50,000 civilians and armed forces personnel have lost their lives in keeping “peace” in J&K. Is the loss of men and transfer of huge amounts of money to J&K, right?
6. Dr Ambedkar was Chairman of the drafting committee for the Constitution. He was dead set against Article - 370 but Nehru prevailed over the Congress and Dr Ambedkar and got Art- 370 saying it is only a temporary provision. Dr Ambedkar in his book, “Pakistan or Partition of India” wrote that Congress or nobody could prevent the partition ; that Muslims and Hindus could never live together peacefully and that their residence in India was as between two armed people in truce; periodically broken; partition could be a lesser evil than an undivided India with periodical communal riots and totally disaffected Muslim minority. He said that there should be a peaceful exchange of minority populations between Hindustan and Pakistan and cited the example of such exchange in the aftermath of the first World War ( 1914-’19) when Turkey was defeated and its Ottoman Empire straddling some Christian European lands and Muslim Arab Lands in the Arabian Peninsula and north Africa ( astride the Mediterranian Sea) was dismembered. Christians in Turkey and Muslims in European lands like Greece and Bulgaria and the Baltic provinces were peacefully exchanged between Turkey and the respective European countries. Gandhi and Nehru did not agree to this. They and the Congress accepted partition on the basis of religion and insisted for division of Punjab and Bengal also so that Hindu majority areas remained in India and not go to Pakistan . At the same time, while accepting the partition , Nehru said, “ it was not on the basis of religion” Gandhi, Nehru and Congress were not agreeable to the migration of Muslims in India to Pakistan which was created by them (India’s Muslims) even as all Hindus and Sikhs were expelled from west Pakistan and the exodus of Hindus and Buddhists in waves started from East Pakistan, now Bangladesh .
7. Dr Ambedkar had resigned from the Nehru Cabinet in October 1951 because of the slight he was being subjected to, the delay in the introduction of the Hindu Code Bills and Nehru’s policy in regard to J&K. Dr. Ambedkar said that Jawaharlal Nehru was all the while talking of Kashmir whereas the real problem was the plight of Hindu, Buddhists, Sikhs and other minorities in the two wings of Pakistan. The plight of Hindus in East Pakistan was especially referred to by him as in West Pakistan they had been kicked out en masse in one move. Here is what he said: “On15th of August 1947 when we began our life as an independent country, there was no country which wished us ill. Every country in the world was our friend. Today, after four years, all our friends have deserted us. We have no friends left.
Our quarrel with Pakistan is a part of our foreign policy about which I feel deeply dissatisfied. There are two grounds which have disturbed our relations with Pakistan - one is Kashmir and the other is the condition of our people in East Bengal. I felt that we should be more deeply concerned with East Bengal where the condition of our people seems from all the newspapers intolerable than with Kashmir. Notwithstanding this we have been staking our all on the Kashmir issue. Even then I feel that we have been fighting on an unreal issue. The issue on which we are fighting most of the time is, who is in the right and who is in the wrong. The real issue to my mind is not who is in the right but what is right. Taking that to be the main question, my views has always been that the right solution is to partition Kashmir. Give the Hindu and Buddhist part to India and the Muslim part to Pakistan as we did in the case of India. We are really not concerned with the Muslim part of Kashmir. It is a matter between the Muslims of Kashmir and Pakistan . They may decide the issue as they like. Or if you like, divide it into three parts; the Cease-fire zone, the Valley and the Jammu-Ladhak region and have a plebiscite only in the valley. What I am afraid of is that in the proposed plebiscite, which is to be an overall plebiscite, the Hindus and Buddhists of Kashmir are likely to be dragged into Pakistan against their wishes and we may have to face the same problems as we are facing today in East Bengal.(Source: Dr B R Ambedkar,: The Jnanayogi by V Prakasam; page 45&46).
8. It is better late than never. We must separate Jammu and Leh provinces from J&K; merge them and integrate them into India; Jammu as a separate State like Himachal or Tamilnadu and Leh as a Union Territory like Chandigarh or Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
Let Kashmir valley people decide whether they want to integrate with India or independent or merge with Pakistan .
9. This re-organisation would need amending the Constitution. While facilitating the new dispensation for J&K, the Constitution must be amended to also delete the word “minority” an d article-30 in toto.
India should not be a country and nation of a federation of minorities and majorities of castes and races. It should have one citizenship and all citizens must be subjected to same secular laws. In a truly secular state, religion must be the concern of individuals, their societies and associations and their faiths all managed by themselves with no involvement of the government in the organisation of their religions, their places of worship or their festivals, save the maintenance of law and order and preservation of ethical conduct .
Article-30 is meant for linguistic and religious minorities without defining what proportion of population qualifies to be classified as minority, whether it is the nation-wide or state - wide or a district wide. A majority religious community in one state, is a minority in many others and vis-e-versa. By Article-30 rights are given to the linguistic and religious minorities, right which are not available to the majorities. This is adverse discrimination against the majority and a special right and privilege conferred on the minority. The phrase “educational institutions of their choice” is being misused. First, here is no limit to the number secondly, the admittees are not wholly belonging to the minorities. Thirdly, the subjects like engineering, medicine and business management have nothing to do with either the language or the religion . Why should then the religious or linguistic minorities be free to found engineering, medical, business management and architecture colleges and fill these seats in them not entirely by the minorities but overwhelmingly by students of the majority community. Very often most seats are sold at a very high price to students of majority community. Therefore in order to remove the discrimination against the majority and remove ambiguity as to who, and where are groups are minority, this article should be amended to provide equal rights and privileges to people of all religions and all languages. There should be a ban on denominational that is, religious schools like Madrasas receiving state funding unless they are affiliated to the States’ Boards of Secondary and Intermediate and collegiate education . The colleges should be free to teach religion as optional subjects outside the regular school/ college hours.
Article 25 should also be amended to delete the words “ propagate” religions; O.K to profess and practise but not-propagate. Propagation in effect is leading to conversion of Hindus by despicable means like love jihad, allurements, frauds and false propaganda in regard to “deficiencies” in Hindu Dharma and (dubious) virtues in Islam and Christianity . Hindus don’t propagate to convert; it is against their fundamental faith and belief that “God is one; the wise call Him by many names” and everyone is free to worship, Him by any name, in whatever manner. Article -25 therefore throws the lambs of Hindus to the predator Abrahamic religions for gobbling up. Article-25 throws the “unarmed” Hindus to armed ( by their God’s words) aggressors, for conversion. Those who do not like deletion of Article-30 and the word, propagate in Article-25 and the distinctive, divisive word, “minority”, could be free to locate elsewhere in the homelands they rioted and voted to create.
10 . Letting Kashmir to go does not imperil secularism. Hinduism, by faith, belief and history and philosophy was, is and will be truly secular. Every Hindu ruler ( except Buddhist, Ashoka) was secular; there was no state religion: all dharmas including Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and even Charvakas were equally respected.
11. India should not bleed in money and men in J&K and in the rest of its territory to please the “unpleasable” and humour the traditionally, ideologically and practically anti-Hindu “eminent” historians of the JNU or the votaries of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” or those bound to the miscegenated men and women of a Dynasty.
12. That J&K including that area which is under the occupation of Pakistan legally belongs to India cuts no ice. India belonged to England legally and so did Algeria belong to France . But in these countries and so many others, there were struggles against the legal sovereign and the legal government. How much the legal governments tried to supress the “illegal” revolutionary disobedience movements to get rid of the ruling power, the revolutions succeeded. In the case of India it was by the India Independence Act 1947 passed by the British Parliament that we became independent.
13. In Algeria, every French government before Gen. Charles de Gaulle tried to supress the independence movement by use of armed force. De Gaulle calculated that the cost of ruling Algeria was more than the benefit by way of money that France was getting; so they let Algeria go. Similarly, the British could not keep India. They became indebted to the extent of a few hundreds of millions of pounds to India. The Indian Army, Airforce and Navy and the police were in a rebellious mood. The British soldiers in India were eager to go back and join their families. Clement Attlee Prime Minister of UK later said, that UK gave independence to India not because of the Congress’ Quit India movement or any such disobedience movement but it found the cost of keeping is much more than the profit they were getting from the Indian empire and it could not long afford to hold India.
14. Similarly, though J &K acceded legally in 1947 but since then we had witnessed periodic violence; loss of men and property by agitations for secession from India. The secessionists are from the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley. The Hindu and Buddhists majority Jammu and Laddhak provinces do want integration with India. Dr. Ambedkar said that what Kashmir Muslims want is none of our business; integrate the Hindu and Buddhist majority areas with Bharat.
15. We should make no distinction between the people of India depending upon religion calling some majority and other minorities. Every one of the 6000 caste groups among Hindus is a minuscule minority compared to Muslims. This discrimination between Muslims and Hindus as minority and majority respectively is invidious, divisive and disintegrationist . Let Kashmir go the way its people want. But the Muslims in India, or for that matter any other religious groups should net be considered as a legal and constitutional minority with rights and privileges not available to the so called majority of over 6000 Hindu caste groups.
16. Statesmanship requires that reality must be faced. When England was waging war (1775-83) against the American colonies wanting to be free from it, the great Statesman Edmund Burke eloquently pleaded for conciliation; he said that no people can ever be kept under some other’s rule, however much may be the force. The people of Catalonia in Spain, Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran; the Scots in UK are wanting to secede from their ruling nation and held referendums in defiance of the central governments. We have paid and are paying a heavy price to keep Kashmir and to please Muslims in India. Secularism and the integrity and indivisibility of India can be secure and maintained only by a common citizenship and secularism which makes no distinction on basis of religion. A 170 mln strong and furiously growing people cannot be considered to be a minority. They constitute the 7th largest population group in the world. They are the second largest majority in India and not a minority . Secular India should give up its minority i.e Muslim obsession and let go Kashmir, the way its Muslims want. Muslims in India should be treated not as minority with special privileges but as other citizens. (2,571 words)
END