View: Don’t fret, India remains pluralistic

In his column, ‘A Very Practical Secularism’ (July 14), Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar observed that ‘since BJP came to power in 2014, India has become less secular and more illiberal’. His verdict calls for a careful evaluation. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar was recently asked in the US if ‘Hindutva policies could undermine the secular nature of Indian democracy’. He had replied, ‘In the past, there was a great reliance on what’s called votebank politics, which is appealing to vote banks on the basis of their identity. And the fact that we have departed from it has obviously been a difference.’He added, ‘India is a deeply pluralistic society… We define secularism as equal respect for all faiths. Secularism doesn’t mean that you are in denial of your own faith or anybody else’s faith for that matter… What you are seeing is the deepening of democracy… Of people who are much more confident about their culture, about their language, and about their beliefs.’ Some would argue that Jaishankar spoke as a BJP leader. But so widespread is the exasperation with the Nehruvian-Congress brand of secularism championed by the Left-liberal elites, that even those not particularly fond of the BJP-RSS worldview find the idea problematic.In a different context, sociologist Avijit Pathak recently noted, ‘I have no hesitation in saying that the ideas of Gandhi, Tagore and Aurobindo don’t get adequate importance. And any reference to texts like the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads is often condemned as ‘brahminical’.’ How did things come to such a pass?The Congress brand of secularism — minority appeasement — amply demonstrated what was fundamentally wrong with that party and, by extension, a major part of the Indian political system. The report of the A K Antony Committee, formed in the wake of Congress’ 2014 debacle that highlighted the party’s minority appeasement politics, was not even made public.BJP’s rise under Narendra Modi, with its thrust on ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas’, must be viewed in this background. The present dispensation’s ‘India First’ philosophy puts the common Indian, rather than any community, at the centre of India’s universe. It has corrected an historical wrong.India’s commitment to a pluralistic, tolerant, secular way of life — ‘Sarva pantha sambhava’ — has always been part of its DNA. If anything, New India’s commitment to pluralism, while being proud of its civilisational moorings, has got strengthened

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3itaxSy