Hamid Ansari's call to SC to protect secularism wrong

One more heavyweight, this time a Constitutional one, has joined the one-sided, pro-minority and anti-majority debate on secularism. Vice president Hamid Ansari, not a stranger to such debates in the past, has called upon the Supreme Court to protect the rights of the minorities from the onslaught of majoritarianism by clarifying the contours within which the principles of secularism and composite culture operate.

Citing a report of two eminent lawyers, Ansari, while adressing the convocation of the Jammu University also called for intervention of Supreme Court to ensure equal treatment for all in keeping with the secular fabric of the country as enshrined in the Constitution.

While a sane person can only condemn the anti-secular and anti-minority statements of a section of the saffron brigade, it is unfortunate that the vice president of India, who has been enjoying the status of second highest head of the Indian state for the past eight years, should get into this debate overlooking historical facts.

Is the issue of equal treatment to be decided only on the basis of loose anti-minority statements of a few from the saffron camp or will historical facts determine whether or not equal treatment is meted out to people of all religions by the state?

A look at the historical fact sheet in fact makes a strong case for injustice to the majority rather minority in this country and raises questions over the purpose behind the debate that the honourable vice president has triggered. When India was partitioned and a new Islamic country called Pakistan was formed India's founding fathers chose secularism and equal treatment to people of all religions as the guiding principle of the nation. The Indian Constitution evolved on this very basis.

But 65 years after the Constitution was formed one can clearly see through the attempts of many to violate the spirit of the Constitution to usher in a Minority dominated polity in the name of minority protectionism. For example, today a government-aided minority education institution in India can employ a Maulvi to teach Koran to Muslim students but a government-aided majority institution can't employ a Hindu preacher to teach Bhagwad Geeta or Ramayana to Hindu students in its school. 

It is indeed surprising that Ansari , who is talking of equal treatment to all, kept quiet as vice president when the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre tried to bring the anti-Hindu Communal bill in the Parliament to thrust minority view on the majority. The bill virtually aimed at creating a minority state within a secular country.  Shockingly, the bill sought to make a distinction even between a Hindu rapist and a Muslim rapist when the fact is that a rapist is a rapist, irrespective of the religion he belongs to. Every police station was to have a certain quota of Muslim policemen in that bill.

The proposed bill was in a way like the May 1946 United Dominion Status offered to India by the British and gleefully accepted by Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League in which India was to be divided into Hindu and Muslim majority provinces. It was at the time rejected by the same party, the Congress, which later tried to bring divisive bills for the sake of votes in Independent India.  

If the vice president is so concerned about equal treatment to people of all religions and groups he should also have advised the Supreme Court to press for a Uniform Civil Code, a cornerstone of a secular nation. Interestingly, Ansari's call for protecting composite culture also looks ridiculous when compared with the fact that the Indian state has failed to take action against Deobandi Madrasas where one of the symbols of India's composite culture in our history books, Mughal Emperor Akbar, is sold as a heretic before young, impressionable Muslim students - the same Akbar who is celebrated by the one-sided seculars as a carrier of Ganga-Jumuni tehzeeb in Mushairas and on plural platforms. 

Incidently, Aurangzeb, an anti-thesis of everything that Ansari is calling for, is a hero in these Deobandi Madrasas where he is addressed as "Hazarat (revered) Aurangzeb". So, what is the difference between the schools of Pakistan where Aurangzeb is a perpetual hero and these madrasas? While calling for protecting minorities from majority domination, Ansari should have spoken on this issue too. Self-introspection is one pathway than can really help Muslim leaders.

Significantly, when one talks of minority injustice, facts on ground are often quite different. When Dadri lynching was being played out as a case of minority injustice by the pseudo-secular lobby there were two rape cases of Hindu women in Muzaffarnagar in UP in which the rapists were Muslims. But since the victims in these two cases were Hindus and the assailants Muslims, they were suppressed by the same pseudo-secular lobby. Finally, when it comes to historical facts, any debate on equal treatment and secularism in this country can't overlook the sad episode of India's Partition.

It was on the demand of a section of Muslims that the Hindus agreed to Partition and carving of a new Muslim country called Pakistan in 1947. But after Partition, Hindus were thrashed, plundered and raped and finally driven out of Pakistan as part of ethnic cleansing by a section of Muslims. When the reaction to it started in partitioned India in the form of violence against Muslims, the Congress leaders successfully restrained the revengeful Hindu masses with the result that a vast majority of Muslims stayed back in India.

This is best indicated when the substantial rise in Muslim population of India compared to the shocking decrease in Hindu population of Pakistan. Clearly, the debate on Hindu-Muslim problem starts the day India was partitioned and not the day BJP started calling shots in Indian politics. And finally the vice president also needs to appreciate there is hardly any Muslim-dominated country in the world where the second head of state is a non-Muslim. Plus, India has seen three Muslim presidents so far. And the best among the three, APJ Abdul Kalam, was the choice of a BJP government. There can't be greater proof than this of Indian secularism.

Clearly, Ansari needs to do his homework.