Early Times Report JAMMU, May 3: David Frawley, a renowned American Hindu teacher (acharya) and author, who has written more than thirty books on topics such as the Veda and Hinduism, has rejected the oft-repeated claim that India is a secular country and said that India is, in fact, an "anti-Hindu State". Hindus constitute almost 84 per cent of the country's population. "In India, some claim that state governments can manage temples better than Hindu religious groups, even allowing atheists or non-Hindus on to Hindu temple boards. That states do a good job of managing temples is quite debatable. But it is not the right of the states to do so, and they do not attempt to for Christian or Islamic institutions, however poorly these may be run," he said the other day. He added no secular state worth its name has a right to regulate religious practices and that if it does so, it should not be called secular but a religious state. "In the case of India, the country might be better called an anti-religious state, specifically an 'anti-Hindu state', as interfering only with the majority religion," he said. "India is the only country that is exploiting, not defending its majority religion, and rewarding minority religions. It sounds more like a continuation of the old British Raj than a country that honors its indigenous traditions, which in the case of India are ancient, vast and profound. Relative to India's foreign affairs, the country has rarely defended Hindu interests the way secular Western countries like the USA watch over Christian concerns throughout the world," he asserted. He further said: "India's secularism is also allied with socialism. Socialism works upon the principle of redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. India's secular socialism, it seems, seeks to redistribute the wealth and power from the majority religion to minority religions!" David Frawley was also very critical of Indian opinion leaders. He termed them biased and minority appeasers. How does India's opinion leaders view this problem?, he asked. He lamented that they have never exposed the hypocrisy of secularism in India and asserted that quite the contrary, India's opinion leaders and sections of media "portray Hindus as a privileged majority, as if the laws benefitted them unfairly". "They promote anti-Hindu attitudes, and encourage government and judicial interference in Hindu affairs". Debunking the suggestion of "secular opinion leaders and sections of media that Hindus are intolerant, Frawley said: "When Hindus complain about the brazen discrimination against them, they accuses Hindus of being intolerant. No religious group in the world today tolerates the kind of judicial regulation, state interference, and media denigration such as Hindus in India have to routinely face. Much less denigration has been blamed for fueling terrorism in Islamist groups". What Frawley has said is absolutely correct. Indeed, the Indian political class takes the Hindu community for granted and evolve and implement policies which are more minority-centric. Ironically, the approach of the present BJP-dominated dispensation in New Delhi is no different. It has been leaving no stone unturned to appease the minorities and ignore the majority community. In fact, it has turned out to be more secular than other outfits and this can seen from its policy towards Pakistan and Kashmir, as also from the fact that the BJP has put at stake the very future of the non-Muslim minorities in Jammu and Kashmir. Frawley's intervention is very timely. One can only hope and pray that the powers-that-be in New Delhi, opinion-leaders and sections of media will heed to what frawley said and refashion their whole policies based on the policy followed in the countries like United States, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on. Not to do this would be only to further alienate the majority community and prepare ground for a full-scale civil war in the country. The sooner the Indian political class and the BJP-RSS in particular realize this, the better it would be for them and the country. |