Is India losing out on secularism?

According to PEW Research Center, there can be?213 million?Muslims in 2020 representing India's 15.5% population. Why I am talking of PEW Research Center rather than Indian census, because I know the Americans like the British take lot of interest in Indian demographic divisions, because this could also be an opportunity to weaken India and stop India’s growth and influence.

The first, of course, was the division of India on religious lines in 1947 proposed by the British and lapped up by Indian polity at that time. Probably they thought that if the British offer (primarily caused by?the loss suffered by the British in the 2nd world war ) was not accepted then, the offer may lapse or wither away. Only Mahatma Gandhi disliked and disowned the idea of dividing India to get out of the clutches of the British governance.

And immediately thereafter, India started the job of establishing a secular India constitutionally. Religious freedom and freedom of expression are enshrined as fundamental rights in Indian constitution. The state of India and the government of India has no official religion. This has fueled the economic development of India and gathered world goodwill in favor of India.

So far Muslims have lived in India within a personal law which is unique to them. But they have also enjoyed all the privileges that an Indian citizen is entitled to. The?abrasion of legally losing the Babri Masjid because of a Supreme Court decision pains them. Still they are adjusting to the current government’s attitude, as far as possible. They want to integrate themselves to current India, as till now India is a secular country. All the 4 leading heroes of Hindi cinema in India are Khans and Muslims. Of course, there is one Hindu superstar also. Indian cinema goers do not make any distinction while watching their films. The TV serial "Mahabharata" was based on the Hindu epic of the same name and its dialogues were written by no other than ?the famous Hindi/Urdu poet Dr. Rahi Masoom Raja, a Muslim by birth.

I have many Muslim students, who are most welcome to my home, all the time.

But the current political dispensation of the country do not look at the Muslims the same way as their predecessors, although theoretically they are working for " upliftment of every citizen of India". They have let loose their middle level politicians to keep alive the Hindu-Muslim divide. Once the Babri dispute is settled by the court, they invent some more disputes on religious structures to keep the issues alive, and a section of the Indian press dramatize them. With history of hundreds of years of Muslim rules in India, it is not difficult to find issues of religious structures in any part of the country and such disputes put extra pressure on Indian judiciary where millions of cases are already pending. Is this an attempt to remodel the otherwise secular Indian judiciary? Who knows ?

Earlier some people were frightening the Hindus by claiming that Muslims will numerically overtake the Hindus in quite a few years. It is difficult to prove, because 15.5% of the population to become 50% , when the other blocks of populations are growing simultaneously, is almost numerically impossible. If that was possible numerically, in hundreds of years of Muslim rules, Hindus would have already become minority in India. With education and economic upliftment, at some stage population of India will start showing a de-growth, which will affect all the blocks of population, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists etc.

When this theory did not hold water some of them started telling there are Muslims who have unauthorizedly entered the country with ulterior motives and are staying here and they will ruin the country, if not upset the numerical balance, which is also not true. India is a melting pot of cultures and is an ocean of people. Sakh, Hun, Pathan, Mughals,?English, Europeans, Arabs, Iranis, Afghanis?whoever has come to India, have got admixed into the Indian population seamlessly, still retaining their identity. A few extremist here and there do not represent the entire Muslim community. Rather they should be seen as a law and order problem and solved accordingly.

The fear of Muslims from Bangladesh coming to Indian states of West Bengal or Assam in millions today is also baseless, because today the per capita income of Bangladesh is more than the per capita income of India. Bangladesh had a higher per capita income of $1,962 in 2020-21 against India's $1,935.

While keeping the theory of Islamophobia on, like in western countries, in a TV discussion a spoke woman of the ruling party made some comments about Prophet Mohammad's personal life. Her comment was in the context of another Hindu-Muslim dispute being created by the party on another religious structure.?When the Indian Muslims?protested these comments on prophet, this was dealt with as law and order problem and led to arrests. But then many countries in West Asia and other places started questioning this demeaning of the Prophet by the ruling dispensation of India and asked for explanation and apology. The wave of international protest was so intense that the government had to explain this as comments by the "fringe elements" of the ruling party, and the concerned woman and another member were suspended from the party.?The woman who made the comment was a lawyer, the official spoke woman of the ruling party, and who once contested against the sitting Chief Minister of Delhi. She is not a "fringe element" of the party.

Ultimately cases have been filed against them, but whether these cases will be taken to their logical conclusions and when is a matter to be watched. India's judicial system is known to have millions of cases pending for decades and the police is biased in favour of the ruler of the day, depending on who is the ruler in a particular state of the country.

There are several reasons for taking quick actions. (15 days is very quick in Indian standard)

1.???India has high energy dependence on the these west Asian countries. Now with high energy prices and world-wide energy disturbance this has become all the more important.

2.???Lot of Indians work in those countries, and they send close to 35 billion dollars of their earning to India, giving Indian rupee the stability that it needs.

3.???India exports lot of consumer goods and food to those countries.

4.???Now Afghanistan, a neighboring country is ruled by extremely conservative and militant Talibans who can look for every opportunity to destabilize India.

What ever was happening to the Muslims, so long these countries were taking that as internal matters of India, but no more, I suppose. India has to work really hard and bring back its secularist credential in full glory.

Another issue will open up shortly when India will try to impose the controversial citizenship laws, which will ask every citizen to prove his birth or ancestry in India. If a Hindu cannot prove it, he can still evade the law by declaring himself as a refugee from Pakistan or Bangladesh, but the same opportunity will not be given to Muslims. This law hits at the basic secular nature of Indian constitution and principles of equity and will face lot of legal hurdles. But if this somehow crosses the hurdles of judiciary this will divide the secular society of India like never before and will definitely have large international ramification, followed perhaps by huge unrest and lawlessness. Already there was a massive riot in Delhi when the law was first proposed.

Turkey has secularism enshrined in its constitution, and the current government is trying to convert itself into an Islamic republic and is facing lot of hurdles. Once people are born and brought up in a secular atmosphere, it takes generations to covert them to religious fundamentalist as the Turkish experiment has shown and in the process Turkey has become an economic mess with 70% inflation currently. .

Countries like USA and UK are just waiting for such opportune moments against India , and that is why they raise the issue of religious intolerance in India from time to time.

Another community which the ruler at the center alienated are the Sikhs. Canada has lot of interest in this community. In the name of improvement of agriculture the government of the day brought in 3 pieces of legislation, which were encouraging corporatization of agriculture and withdrawal of minimum support price offered by the government to the farmers for selected food grains. The government was in fact playing with the food security of India, inspired by its commitment to WTO. The agriculturist of Punjab and parts of UP objected to this legislation and fought tooth and nail, as a result of which government had to withdraw the legislation. Government was also aware of the fact that lot of Punjabis are in the defense forces of India and the uncompromising attitude of the government could spark some other bigger trouble. So much so in the state election that followed the party ruling at the center got only 3% of the seats in the state of Punjab. This is the power of Indian electorate, some times you are a hero, but other times you could be a zero. In USA electorate are divided almost equally, and parties lose or gain because of a few % of difference in vote, but not in India. We follow multi-party system, not a two party system, and we have three layers of elections and elected representatives.

Hindus do not have a single prophet, because it is a much older religion than Christianity or Islam. In the strictest sense it is not a religion even, it is like a pagan culture. But if one tries to find fault with Hindu gods and goddesses many faults can be found. Many faults can be found with Hindu mythological personalities also. Here are a few examples :

1.???King Ramchandra had sent his wife Sita away from her abode to a hermitage permanently, because she was arrested and interned by demon Ravana, at Srilanka, and people in Ram Chandra’s?kingdom were apprehensive that she had developed some relationship with Ravana during her stay in Ravana’s palace. Sita had to ultimately kill herself by taking a grave inside the mother earth. Ramchandra might have been a benevolent king but did not do any justice to his wife.

2.???Krishna was a playboy enjoying the company of hundred of girls in a community who maintain cow herds and deal with milk and milk products. He even had some relationship with his maternal aunt Radha, who was elder to him in age, even though Krishna had a formal wife in Rukmini. And by utter co-incidence or liking, no one knows, the Hindus worship Radha-Krishna and not Rukmini-Krishna. Such is the attraction for extra-marital affairs (which could be platonic even).

3.???In Mahabharata the queen Panchali had five warrior husbands, and she used to spend time with them separately, one at a time. The Hindus say "Prithvi Veerboghya", the world belong to the heros.

4.???There is a Hindu god called Indra, who is supposed to be the in-charge of the heaven, where other gods also reside. But this Indra had likings only for the girl dancers and he enjoyed their company. He was also, otherwise, a great womanizer.

Sample this : "On returning from his bath, Sage Gautama found his wife Ahalya in bed with Indra, a sight that had him maddened with rage. And so, Gautama cursed Lord Indra to be covered with? thousand vaginas?all over his body, and Ahalya to be turned to stone."

And in Mahabharata there was a capital called "Indraprastha" in Indra's name. An Indraprastha Marg still exists in New Delhi, the capital of India. No one is hating such a dominating womanizer !

5.???One of the super gods of Hindus is lord Shiva, who is very powerful otherwise, is supposed to like cannabis. However, Hindu women revere Shiva as an ideal husband, and have a day of fasting on an occasion called "Shiva Ratri" in his name. And millions and billions even pour water on an object called "Shiva Linga" the genital of Shiva on that auspicious day.

Hundreds of such examples can be given. Those were different ages and circumstances and social orders were different both in India and in other parts of the world. So anything could have happened.

These stories no one else will be probably interested because many of the religions have only one God, the Almighty and one prophet.

Hindu system is fatalistic and therefore it had no problem in accepting good or bad, as they were, and even sometimes glamourizing them. They have a holistic approach to a personality, be it an addict or a womanizer. They know how to appreciate the good side of a person, in spite of his shortcomings. A benevolent king who cannot do justice to his wife is idolized. Extra marital affairs are adored over sacred marriage, not only a God but a part of his body is worshipped celebrating womanhood and birth.

Since Hindu society is so tolerant and since Hindus are fatalistic, the stories of corruption also do not move them much. As per them "whoever goes to Lanka, becomes a Ravvana", means whoever gets the political power will become corrupt.

It is unbecoming and even illogical for a Hindu to discredit prophets of other religions and show them in poor light, when they have accepted and glamourized all the above. They have so many gods, goddesses, "immortal" sages and mythological personalities, that if any one wants, he can find hundreds of faults with them.

Hinduism is a tolerant culture. Some people are converting the Hindus into religious fanatics. The Hindu philosophy is "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam", the whole world is one family. This is uttered by many prominent politicians of the day, but how many are following in letter and spirit?

They find it rather easy to divide the society by religion and get the popular mandate in election. Islamophobia is part of this design. Then the burning issues like food price, energy price, unemployment etc. can be kept at bay.

This has to change for the survival and stability of India.