archive: The secular debate (excerpts)
The secular debate (excerpts)
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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