sandhya jain: At the cost of Hindus

feb 24th, 2008

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From: Ram

At the cost of Hindus

Sandhya Secularism has evolved into an odious fast-track for the disproportionate ascent of religious minorities in the top echelons of Indian polity, and their hijack of the state and its resources to pander to sectarian fundamentalism. Ever since Rajiv Gandhi's craven surrender in the Shah Bano case, there has been an insidious chipping away at the nation's secular edifice in a manner tailored to crystallise and partition minority identities. This is a departure from the original constitutional tolerance of religion-based personal laws in personal spaces that did not affect larger social interests and the desired separation of state and religion.

Now, the Sonia Gandhi-dominated Centre and Congress State Governments are doggedly pandering to minority sentiments in a manner calculated to affront majority opinion. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Samuel Rajsekhar Reddy, a member of the evangelical Seventh Day Adventists sect, recently used the Governor's address to slip in a scheme to subsidise Christian pilgrims to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The statement that the Andhra Government will "extend the Haj pilgrim scheme to Christian minorities also for their religious visits to Christian holy lands in Israel" is laughable as Israeli annexation has not been internationally recognised.

Moreover, the suggestion that Haj subsidy is being extended to Christians suggests Christianity is a sub-sect of Islam, though it is an older and distinct faith. A religious subsidy for Christians can only involve a fresh outlay exclusive to Christians; it is not cut out of the exclusively-Muslim subsidy. This raises questions about the perversion of Indian secularism, which was premised upon distance from religion, and the legitimacy of state funding pilgrimages for any faith.

Justifiable state intervention in the internal affairs of a religious community must derive from notions of higher justice and contemporary social needs for the good of a larger citizenry. The Shah Bano divorce and Imrana rape case show that the Indian state is incapable of standing up for poor and wronged Muslim women. Instead, it promotes obscurantist orthodoxy by extending the quantum of Haj subsidy which, ironically, is haraam according to the tenets of Islam.

In every religion, pilgrimage is a matter of personal devotion and not the duty of the state, not even a theological state. Islam enjoins the faithful to try to make the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime from their legitimately earned savings. There is no compulsion for those who cannot afford it. The Prophet did not even imagine a non-Muslim state would steal the resources of its Hindu citizens to subsidise Haj - against the letter and spirit of his teachings.

It bears stating that the misguided attempt to placate Hindu opinion with a Kailash Mansarovar subsidy by some States is an affront to dharma. Nowhere in Hindu tradition is the state supposed to subsidise a pilgrimage, though it is duty-bound to provide civic amenities en route. Many facilities are provided by the pious and the authorities of pilgrimage centres.

The Mecca-Jerusalem subsidies are political, not religious, subsidies. Both Islam and Christianity are political religions with an agenda for world-conversion and world-dominion. Hindus suffer double injustice as rich Muslim and Christian nations promote conversions, while secular India funds pilgrimage to Muslim and Christian lands outside India. India's politico-religious subsidies thus reinforce both fundamentalisms at the cost of the native Hindu civilisational ethos.

Residents of small towns have already experienced to their dismay that Muslim neighbours return from Haj with a disconcerting degree of fundamentalism. Indian villages are already experiencing a forced cultural separatism practiced by converts to Christianity at the behest of local padris, and tensions can only rise with Indian Christians visiting the holy lands.

It is pertinent that despite massive funding for conversion, the social and economic status of converts remains unchanged, though a sense of grievance and separated-ness is fostered through intensive religious indoctrination. The lack of social and economic mobility for converts, indeed the perpetuation of old caste inequalities with the tacit consent of the religious hierarchy, has recently come to be admitted by both faiths, though ironically, as an additional grievance against the Hindu community!

As the UPA chairperson was keen to snatch the rights of depressed Hindu castes and pass them on to Muslim and Christian converts, the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities was created with a pre-set mandate. Last year, it delivered according to its brief and recommended extension of Scheduled Caste reservation benefits to Christian and Muslim converts. Justice Ranganath Mishra even suggested a quota-within-quota for OBC minorities.

Justice Mishra proposed 15 per cent representation for minorities in educational institutions and all cadre and grades of Government employment, of which 10 per cent would be for Muslims and five per cent for others (read Christians). Claiming that minorities are under-represented in Government, he argued that they should be regarded as 'backward' according to Article 16(4), but without the qualifying distinction of "socially and educationally backward".

This is deliberate mischief as Justice Mishra knows that minorities are not educationally and socially backward. Besides, this is constitutionally untenable as it tampers with the basic framework of the Constitution. Para 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 limits SC status to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, as caste is a Hindu phenomenon and cannot be delinked from religion. To do so is to facilitate conversions.

The NCRLM mooted earmarking 15 per cent Central development funds for minorities, an idea being pursued by the Planning Commission. Actually, as Islam and Christianity promote conversion with the promise of non-discrimination between believers, both deserve punitive legal action for discriminating against 'low caste' converts.

What stands between India and the deluge is the sagacity of Mr Buta Singh, chairman, National Commission for Scheduled Castes. Mr Singh has cautioned State Governments against using the word 'Dalit' in official documents as it is "unconstitutional" and only 'Scheduled Caste' is notified under Article 341. The de-legitimising of 'Dalit' (meaning broken, crushed) is a blow to the evangelical industry which has been promoting the term to forge separatism among Scheduled Castes. Mr Singh rightly insists that Dalit converts do not suffer the same maladies as their Indic counterparts; hence, Christianity and Islam must prove they practice untouchability and that it exists in their religious theology, before claiming ameliorative measures. This is a timely warning against wilful appropriation of Hindu concepts. It is now up to Hindu India to resist minority aggression.