T R Gopalkrishnan
The Week
May 9, 1999.
Title: The secular debate (excerpts) Author: T R Gopalkrishnan Publication: The Week Date: May 9, 1999. I have often wondered what our politicians mean by these words. The dictionary definitions of these words have little in common with how some of our politicians use them. To many this question will be blasphemy of the worst kind, but let me risk asking it: "In what way is the BJP 'communal' and how are the Congress, the Left parties and Mulayam Yadav and Laloo Yadav 'secular'? …….. The only yardstick was that if you were part of the BJP-led coalition, then you were 'non-secular' and 'communal'. The moment you left that coalition you became 'secular', like Jayalalitha and her AIADMK, which the Left welcomed into its 'secular' embrace. An embrace that till only a few days earlier had in its fold Jayalalitha's arch foe Karunanidhi and his DMK. The latter had become 'communal' for having sup-ported Vajpayee's confidence motion. No one bothered about anyone's track record in governance. The Left parties in Kerala and West Bengal for instance. No one bothered to ask how 'secular' their rule and their political alliances had been. Or how 'secular' had been the rule of Mulayam and Laloo Yadav. Their appeasement of the Muslim vote bank in UP and Bihar had made them the quintessential 'secularists'. Till Mulayam decided not to play along with the Congress, which promptly pushed him into the 'non-secular' camp, even while opposing the BJP. As for the Congress, no doubt the Muslim Women's Bill is the jewel in its 'secular' crown. So here we go again with another election likely to be fought not on the basis of imaginative policies aim programmes but on the hackneyed premise of 'secular' versus 'communal', with a dash of 'stability' and a pinch of 'swadeshi' thrown in. Abroad, old, traditional parties have tried to reinvest themselves-witness the new Labour in Britain. I can't think of anything new that this election mill throw up here. Can you?
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