The most serious challenge to Secularism springs from the ignorance of the silent majority of the Hindus about the impending probability of their becoming a minority community in their own country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi should not participate in the Bhumi Pujan ceremony of the Ram Mandir construction at Ayodhya. And the State-owned national broadcaster Door Darshan must not telecast the live proceedings of the ceremony. Both the acts would be violative of the spirit of Secularism that is the guiding principle of the government, enshrined in the Constitution.

These were the vituperative outpourings of the raving and ranting Muslim Opposition and the leftists who were not, in any case, agreeable to the very idea of the construction of the Ram Mandir in the first place.

This is a classic example of how the anti-Hindu Opposition manipulates every issue by introducing a communal twist to it. Be it the enactment of a law, or its implementation, every move by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is applied to the touchstone of the Secularism doctrine. Even earlier, some opposition parties had employed the same tactic to sabotage the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

It derided the Act as a BJP ploy to brand Muslims as infiltrators or illegal immigrants and throw them out of the country as part of their purported communal agenda. Under the ruse of peaceful protest meetings and rallies, they orchestrated violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims, which claimed several lives and caused large-scale destruction of public and private property. Vast amounts of money smuggled from across the border were used to fund extensive chaos and anarchy.

Government Maligned

After instigating communal clashes in Delhi, the political Opposition went to town deriding the Union government for its alleged failure to maintain law, order and overall peace. The biggest loser in the bargain was communal amity. Though the insidious act of the Opposition to create a sectarian divide between the Hindus and the Muslims has been successfully thwarted for the present, there is no denying the fact that the threat to communal harmony persists.

Enemy Factor

Fighting communalism is no more an issue restricted to the different communities on the one hand and the government on the other. There are some external agencies involved. These agencies are interested in seeing the creation of more and more theocratic states like Pakistan and Bangladesh in place of a strong and secular India. Our nation’s enemies are hoping to achieve their end-goal by instigating one community against another and creating a religious divide between the communities.

The following window provides a sneak preview into the magnitude of the problem:

• The intelligence agencies had already got leads into the sources of funds pumped into the country to sabotage the implementation of the CAA. The National Investigating Agency (NIA), which is probing the international gold smuggling racket in Kerala, has revealed that the sale proceeds of the smuggled gold were meant to be utilised for financing terrorist operations and anti-national activities such as anti-CAA protests.
• The secret financial dealings of the Congress party with the Chinese government, which have been recently exposed, are currently under probe. Money is seldom received for no good reason and thus, suspicion of what was done in exchange for this money has been raised by several people.
• If the available intelligence reports are anything to go by, several places of worship of the Muslims and Christians and the educational institutions run by them have become dens of radicalisation and conversion activities.

Acts of War

The real threat is to the communal harmony and not to Secularism, which the anti-Hindu governments of the past that spoke of ‘Saffron Terrorism’ used as a fig leaf to cover their shame. The days of the soft options like spreading awareness among the public regarding the evils of communalism and the perils faced by Secularism are over. Now is the time for the enemies of the State to be weeded out. Being a State policy, threats posed to Secularism should be treated as acts of war against the State. 

The enemies of the nation are working overtime in the mainstream and social media for the subversion of the State. Gross abuse of the right to free expression is rampant. The degeneration of the mainstream and social media, which are public forums for the exchange of ideas, thoughts and useful information into a platform for the nefarious activities of the anti-nationals needs to be arrested forthwith. 

Urgent Steps Needed

Unfortunately, the most serious challenge to Secularism springs from the ignorance of the silent majority of the Hindus about the impending probability of their becoming a minority community in their own country. They seem to be indifferent to the irrefutable truth that Secularism is safe in this land only so long as the Hindus remain the majority community. 

The day the Hindus become a religious minority in India, their eventual decimation would become a matter of time as it happened in Pakistan and Bangladesh. One does not even have to look too further away for the repercussions of a state where Hindus cease to be a majority. Even a cursory look at the history of Kashmir would show the consequences.

To make matters worse, the TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of Hindus is nowhere near compared to the Muslim community. Which only means that the Hindu community, in numbers, is growing at a much slower pace. Furthermore, both these Abrahamic faiths practise conversion without any check by the local governing bodies or the state governments. The NDA government should, therefore, implement the CAA, National Register of Citizens (NRC) and also impose a strict ban on conversions.

(The article “The challenges to ‘Secularism’ and the need to implement NRC to preserve it” published in ‘OpIndia’)