Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A Critical Appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity) by BS Murthy (best pdf reader for ebooks .TXT) 📕

Now, over to the “Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions” that the constitution stipulates.

(1) No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds.

(2) Nothing in clause (1) shall apply to an educational institution which is administered by the State but has been established under any endowment or trust which requires that religious instruction shall be imparted in such institution.

(3) No person attending any educational institution recognized by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto.”

The sum and substance of the freedom of religious instruction is that the State, in true secular spirit, is expected to keep itself away from it (religious instruction) in the physical sense, and no more. However, the catch here is that the religious education is fine so long as the government does not fund it for that allows the State to retain its secular pretence by keeping itself overtly out of religion. Even otherwise, one would expect the constitutional makers to address the content of the religious education to serve the needs of the communities concerned, without compromising the general public order and good, but they failed ‘India that is Bharat’ in that respect as well.

Well, every community needs some amongst them to undergo religious education to meet its spiritual and social needs in accordance with the tenets of its faith and feelings. That should at once be the scope as well as the limitation of the religious education, isn’t it? So as to cater to these legitimate needs of a given religious group, the required religious education with or without the government funding forms a fundamental communal right of the members of that group. Right, but what if in the name of freedom of religious instruction, the dogmas of such faiths, given to deride the religious beliefs of fellow citizens, are sought to be inculcated in an unwieldy number of members of that community? Won’t such a move hamper the secular character of the country besides inculcating religious bigotry in the mind-set of any given community?

Obviously, the framers of the constitution, but for Ambedkar, arguably Islamic naive, couldn’t delve deep enough into the vexatious subject of religious intolerance of the practicing faiths in the country. What is worse, this supposed constitutional religious goodness came in handy for the ugly politician to turn it into an exploitative mask for the minorities’ votes in the election seasons. It is one thing to espouse the cause of the minorities and another to abet the bigotry of the Musalmans and the prejudices of the Christians. Sadly, for the minorities, moreso for the Musalmans our politicians tend to be on the right side of their wrong issues to the benefit of none, save themselves.

Yet, it has become fashionable in the Indian politico-social discourse to juxtapose secularism and communalism that is with a matching ignorance about the latter for communalism is “a principle of political organization based on federated communes.” No wonder that even seventy-one years after its independence, as India is still groping for its political direction in an ideological darkness, thanks to the Semitic promiscuity that Indian constitution grants, for the human rights activists, the Musalmans and the Christians holding on to their scriptural dogmas is kosher, but the right of the Hindus to articulate their religious sentiments or cultural concerns, and/ or both is sheer religious intolerance, and that’s perplexing.

In the light of the above may be seen the hollowness of the fundamental duties Indira’s infamous amendment imposes upon the citizens that are rarely, if ever, fulfilled by the rulers themselves.

1. While it is incumbent upon the citizenry “to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women” -

- the political ethos has been to cynically reap electoral dividends by exacerbating social dissensions based on region, religion, caste et al.

2. While it is the fundamental right of the citizen “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform” –

a) The State had failed its Hindus to rein in the caste panchāyats that tend to lynch the inter-caste couples and

b) The politicians, who treat the Musalmans as a vote-bank had neither encouraged them to inculcate the spirit of inquiry nor provided them an environment conducive for reform.

Whatever, owing to the vacuity of verbiage in the over the 100k word-long Indian Constitution, a rabid Islamic obscurantist and a dyed-in-the-wool Hindu nationalist have been able to pin their juxtaposing positions, with equal aplomb, and that’s ironical. However, while the Hindu secular habit of left-lib brainwash would like to equivocate the Jai Sriram chants with the Musalman rant of Allah hu Akbar, one needs to understand the latter in the context of azan, the muezzins’ five-time a day call to the faithful for Islamic prayers, which reads thus:

“Allah is the Greatest,

I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah,

I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,

Come to Prayer,

Come to success.

Allah is the Greatest

There is none worthy of worship except Allah.”

It is thus, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs et al of India, and of the world, have to endure the azan, blaring from the loudspeakers of their neighborhood mosques five times day, which, besides offending their own belief-system is bound to hurt their religious sentiments. But no one is seemingly caring, not even the evolved Christian West.

That is not all, wonder how the inimical quranic tirades of the Musalmans against kafirs in mosques, madrasas and mohallas reconcile with their FUNDAMENTAL DUTIES as Indian citizens that are stipulated below is anybody’s guess -

PART IVA , 51A. It shall be the duty of every citizen of India

“ (e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women.”

Also, the Christian proselytizers as Indian citizenry fare no better in their constitutional compliance for besides branding Hindus as heathens, they label their deities as false.

Needless to say, the copy (from other constitutions) and paste (in the Indian Constitution) work of the so-called framers of our constitution, comprising of the Semitic-naïve caste Hindus and a well-informed, though embittered dalit, as argued above, needs a pragmatic overhaul, for which the level of Hindu awareness about the Abrahamic outrage against their sanātana dharma has to raise to self-respecting heights of Himalayan proportions, hopefully.

So, it is time for WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, over seventy years after our fathers, or be it grandfathers, had adopted the constitution, to factor the new realities into a more equitable document? After all, isn’t the level playing field the theme song of the modern world order? And the Hindu emotional grievance is that they are denied just that in the religious plane in the country that their forbears made their own before all others.

Chapter 26

The Stymied State

The Indian State with its dominant Muslim minority and its short-sighted constitution was destined to be politically stymied to the hurt of its Hindu majority. And the minority-centric politics of the country as it evolved over the years – stretched to incredulous lengths by Prime Minister Minoan Singh in averring that its minorities have the first right on national resources – has been increasingly compounding the Hindu emotional misery. Why blame Singh, as Muslim Appeasement, owing to the wooly Nehru has been the policy of the Indian State, to start with.

Thus, though it was but natural that Bunkum Chandra’s vande mātaram, the theme song of the Indian freedom movement, should have logically become the Indian national anthem, yet it was not to be for the Musalmans had an Islamic allergy to it as it eulogizes Bharat Māta. So, Rabindranath Tagore’s janagana mana was brought to the fore and vande mātaram was relegated to the backbench as a national song, whatever it means. Just imagine how the U.S. politicians would have handled if, say its Hispanics and Latinos took exception to the ‘America is Great’ salutation to the newfound land on the specious ground that it hurts their sentiment for the older lands of their forebears.

This about sums up the religio-political dynamics of post-colonial India – its Muslim remnants are accorded the privilege to exercise their veto in formulating the State policy - that is after they had forced its partition to create a separate homeland for its Musalmans in Pakistan! And it makes a sad commentary on the Nehru-led leadership of the ‘independent’ India that it neither had the gall nor the gumption to tell its Musalmans that having forced the country’s partition on religious grounds, they had no moral right to impose their Islamic whims upon what is essentially the Hindu portion of the divided land. 

However, it’s nobody’s case though that those Musalmans who chose to stay back in India had no right to do so but surely the Hindu India had a legitimate right to ask them to think and behave like Indians as at any rate it’s not the case with its sanātana dharma to interfere with the value systems of the other faiths. But instead, and in spite of Ambedkar’s words of caution that - the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs - Nehru so directed the State policy as to nurse the Musalmans’ ‘social self-government that is incompatible with local self-government’. So, it was not long before the lure for the minorities’ votes tempted India’s self-serving politicians to make the Hindu emotions subservient not only to the Islamic whims of the Musalmans but also to the proselytizing fancies of the Christians.

That is not all; though it’s in the nature of history to grant the captors to tilt it against the captives, but once freed, it permits the latter to turn the bend, ironically, in independent India’s case, Nehru, who was thrust upon its head by Gandhi, coerced it to bend backwards, so to say by two turns, to resurrect its slavish ethos of its Islamic times in its textbooks. So, he chose as its education minister, out of all his cabinet colleagues, the one who had all along voiced his opposition to India’s partition, not for any holistic reasons, but as that would diminish the dominance of those Musalmans, who would be left behind in its Hindu-dominated part! That too he was a Saudi born Islamic theologian, with the tongue twisting name of Maulana Sayyid Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad, shortened to Abul Kalam Azad for the Indian ears! It’s only to be expected that the Maulana would grab the Islamic opportunity in Hindu India to hit the ‘partitioned’ ground running, and that’s what he did. So as to bolster the morale of the reduced-in-size Indian umma, and moreso to forestall that of the Hindus, just freed from thousand years of slavery, he devised an appropriate ‘educational’ mechanism, and that was the proverbial last straw on the Indian history’s back, which happenstance is seldom appreciated.

As post-colonial India’s educational in-charge, for nearly ten years that is, he evolved its school curriculum, replete with the life and times of Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, and Sha Jahan, not to forget his Taj Mahal, touted as the eighth wonder of the world, so as to enable the Hindu kids to feel good about their glorious Islamic past. Besides, to drive home their martial inadequacies as well, lest they should entertain any valorous ideas for their ‘independent’ future, he