The Secularism of Fools
Recently, the
renowned author Salman Rushdie was barred from attending the Jaipur Literature
Festival. He was not permitted even to appear by video link. Rushdie therefore
wrote: “India’s secularism is in truth a hypocrisy.” Before the crucial
assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress party needed to establish
itself as the “custodian of Muslim interests.” Hence, the ban on Rushdie. The
threat did not come from religious fanatics wielding swords against free
speech, but from the modern descendants of Jawaharlal Nehru — that patrician
Indian who had once dug the very gutter of this counterfeit secularism. These
power-hungry heirs now wielded the same gutter as their weapon.
The sycophants declared that Rushdie’s presence in Jaipur might incite riots. But let us pause to recall: was it not the same political party that, during the Emergency, managed the “impossible task” of turning the entire nation into a prison? And yet, we are to believe that such a party could not manage a few would-be rioters at a literature festival?
An identical scene unfolded in Kolkata in 2007. The police force of the Communist government claimed they could not control a particular set of rioters. Their solution? Expel Taslima Nasrin from the city. Thus the “secular” Communist state appeased the mob by punishing the writer. And yet that very same year, in March, the same Marxist government was fully capable of quelling — through massacre — the rebellious villagers of Nandigram, deploying both police and party cadres.
India’s one-sided socialism had been established long before independence itself, when the freedom movement was deliberately fractured for the sake of the Ottoman Caliph in distant Turkey. Secularism, and the entire narrative surrounding it, was sanctified only for one community. The rest were designated as a class to be tolerated — but never honored.
In India, secularism has long been synonymous with the Congress Party. The party’s balance always tilts toward minorities. But this is merely the practical form. Its true form is the capture of power through corruption, the installation of dynastic politics, and the use of a cabal of unruly intellectuals and pliant media to dress up family rule as political morality. Secular, secular, secular — repeated with breathless vanity, twenty-four hours a day, to establish their greatness.
Jawaharlal Nehru institutionalized this hypocrisy by entrusting it to a circle of fraudulent historians. Like Goebbels, they devised a program to eternally deceive the impoverished and illiterate Indians who lived half-fed in darkness. They taught them to revere the corrupt as noble. A small elite imposed their “Idea of India” upon a naked, hungry populace. These elites shared power with the ruling dynasty, receiving grants, awards, foreign junkets, government bungalows, and luxuries — and in return, became national icons, serving only to perpetuate the dynasty in power. Thus, an analysis of India’s post-independence political nature reveals that Nehruvianism was nothing more than Gandhism wearing a mask — a carefully disguised fraud. All political parties in India have survived in the shadow of this deception. Thousands of crores of corruption have been conducted under the shelter of this counterfeit secularism. Moral collapse is marketed as moral triumph.
The word routine is not a pleasant one to most ears. It suggests dullness, the imposition of the ordinary. Yet routine is a regular process — through repetition it becomes man’s second nature. Civilization itself weaves a net of routines that keep life imprisoned within predictability. If one is weary of routine, there is only one remedy: trace its rotten roots. Then you will discover that much of what your mind holds as eternal morality is, in fact, sheer fraud.
Routines are the backbone of life. Imagine a day when no one follows traffic rules: chaos, arrests, disaster. Which shoe do you wear first — the left or the right? Test yourself; almost certainly you have been doing the same all your life, without thought. Army marches astonish commoners — the synchronization of thousands of arms and feet. Yet for the army, it is mere routine, ingrained by practice.
So too with Nehruvian secularism. It has become our routine since the days of the Khilafat Movement. Rehearsed across decades, it has entered our very nature. We do not even think to question it. Before secularism became our “second nature,” what were we, who were we, what routines did we follow? That knowledge is now lost to us.
Today, secularism is the backbone of Indian civic life. Preserving and practicing it is declared our civic duty. Soldiers sharpen their marching skills to prepare for great battles. Routine organizes them for war. In the same way, Nehruvian secularism cannot win any real war. Yet it disciplines the citizenry in ways that enable certain politicians to win their battles. It is a cunningly designed political stratagem — a mechanism for ruling the country unquestioned, under the guise of humanity, justice, and “sarva dharma samabhava” (harmony of all faiths). Intellectuals cite Akbar’s Din-i-Ilahi as an example of tolerance. Yet that too was a fraud — an attempt to paint a Hindu-hostile, fundamentalist reign as liberal.
And for this deception, India’s greatest spiritual minds were cast aside: Bankimchandra, Dayananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya, Vivekananda — and even Sri Ramakrishna, perhaps the greatest sage of modern India, was marginalized. The saffron-clad seers, who embodied knowledge, renunciation, and inner truth, were placed lower in public esteem than the so-called liberals. In West Bengal, under decades of communist rule, Hindu faith itself was replaced with secularism. Indira Gandhi — the true Hitler of Indian politics — declared the Emergency and forced the word secular into the Constitution, against the will of Ambedkar, who had deliberately excluded it.
After Indira, the “Queen of Deceit,” a long line of political tricksters has continued to peddle this counterfeit commodity.
Who are the chief criminals of pseudo-secularism? At the top tier are professors and teachers, the permanent cadres of the “secularism is in danger” and “Islam is in danger” chorus. In the middle rank stand the journalists and family-owned media houses. At the bottom — the intellectuals who need state recognition and patronage to sustain their pomp and privilege.
This entire industry has one goal: to make corruption and elitism permanent in India. Secularism shields politicians — especially the Nehru dynasty — from exposure in scandals. What better shield could there be?
The real issues of the people — black money, middleman-controlled distribution systems, rural development, electrification, clean water, corruption control — these are all secondary. The primary issue is secularism. Thus, a corrupt administrator like Lalu Prasad is hailed by the media as a secular hero, while a reformer like Narendra Modi is branded an enemy of the nation.
When the media chases secularism instead of confronting fundamental issues, it becomes clear that behind it lies Nehru’s original formula — a formula designed to fatten political dynasties and their courtier intellectuals. Anyone who dares to step outside this routine and call it counterfeit is instantly branded communal.
In the absence of real governance performance, many political parties begin to thump their chests, crying: “Secular, secular, secular!” One feels tempted to echo Arun Shourie’s biting words: in India, secularism is akin to the word prostitute — for over eight decades this prostitution has deceived the masses. The Nehru family, along with corrupt politicians, Lutyens’ elites, decadent intellectuals, and journalists, have all engaged in this prostitution together.
Secularism is not a cure. It cannot heal hunger, it cannot eradicate poverty, it cannot create jobs. It is a rotten way of life, not a solution. For decades, the Congress and its clones have fooled the nation with this counterfeit secularism, converting one community into a perpetual vote-bank through brainwashing, and condemning another into illiteracy and poverty for the same purpose.
But change is inevitable. The destruction of this falsehood — and of those media and parties who try to reduce every national debate to “secular versus communal” — is certain. For even if a lie is propagated a thousand times, one day its shell must break. Today, the people are beginning to see through the deception. In the age of digital transparency, history cannot be buried under lies. Every day, falsehoods are exposed naked on social media, while truths long imprisoned for seventy years stir impatiently for freedom.
And this change cannot be stopped by the secularism of fools. A new India will demand answers. And demand it shall.
The sycophants declared that Rushdie’s presence in Jaipur might incite riots. But let us pause to recall: was it not the same political party that, during the Emergency, managed the “impossible task” of turning the entire nation into a prison? And yet, we are to believe that such a party could not manage a few would-be rioters at a literature festival?
An identical scene unfolded in Kolkata in 2007. The police force of the Communist government claimed they could not control a particular set of rioters. Their solution? Expel Taslima Nasrin from the city. Thus the “secular” Communist state appeased the mob by punishing the writer. And yet that very same year, in March, the same Marxist government was fully capable of quelling — through massacre — the rebellious villagers of Nandigram, deploying both police and party cadres.
India’s one-sided socialism had been established long before independence itself, when the freedom movement was deliberately fractured for the sake of the Ottoman Caliph in distant Turkey. Secularism, and the entire narrative surrounding it, was sanctified only for one community. The rest were designated as a class to be tolerated — but never honored.
In India, secularism has long been synonymous with the Congress Party. The party’s balance always tilts toward minorities. But this is merely the practical form. Its true form is the capture of power through corruption, the installation of dynastic politics, and the use of a cabal of unruly intellectuals and pliant media to dress up family rule as political morality. Secular, secular, secular — repeated with breathless vanity, twenty-four hours a day, to establish their greatness.
Jawaharlal Nehru institutionalized this hypocrisy by entrusting it to a circle of fraudulent historians. Like Goebbels, they devised a program to eternally deceive the impoverished and illiterate Indians who lived half-fed in darkness. They taught them to revere the corrupt as noble. A small elite imposed their “Idea of India” upon a naked, hungry populace. These elites shared power with the ruling dynasty, receiving grants, awards, foreign junkets, government bungalows, and luxuries — and in return, became national icons, serving only to perpetuate the dynasty in power. Thus, an analysis of India’s post-independence political nature reveals that Nehruvianism was nothing more than Gandhism wearing a mask — a carefully disguised fraud. All political parties in India have survived in the shadow of this deception. Thousands of crores of corruption have been conducted under the shelter of this counterfeit secularism. Moral collapse is marketed as moral triumph.
The word routine is not a pleasant one to most ears. It suggests dullness, the imposition of the ordinary. Yet routine is a regular process — through repetition it becomes man’s second nature. Civilization itself weaves a net of routines that keep life imprisoned within predictability. If one is weary of routine, there is only one remedy: trace its rotten roots. Then you will discover that much of what your mind holds as eternal morality is, in fact, sheer fraud.
Routines are the backbone of life. Imagine a day when no one follows traffic rules: chaos, arrests, disaster. Which shoe do you wear first — the left or the right? Test yourself; almost certainly you have been doing the same all your life, without thought. Army marches astonish commoners — the synchronization of thousands of arms and feet. Yet for the army, it is mere routine, ingrained by practice.
So too with Nehruvian secularism. It has become our routine since the days of the Khilafat Movement. Rehearsed across decades, it has entered our very nature. We do not even think to question it. Before secularism became our “second nature,” what were we, who were we, what routines did we follow? That knowledge is now lost to us.
Today, secularism is the backbone of Indian civic life. Preserving and practicing it is declared our civic duty. Soldiers sharpen their marching skills to prepare for great battles. Routine organizes them for war. In the same way, Nehruvian secularism cannot win any real war. Yet it disciplines the citizenry in ways that enable certain politicians to win their battles. It is a cunningly designed political stratagem — a mechanism for ruling the country unquestioned, under the guise of humanity, justice, and “sarva dharma samabhava” (harmony of all faiths). Intellectuals cite Akbar’s Din-i-Ilahi as an example of tolerance. Yet that too was a fraud — an attempt to paint a Hindu-hostile, fundamentalist reign as liberal.
And for this deception, India’s greatest spiritual minds were cast aside: Bankimchandra, Dayananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya, Vivekananda — and even Sri Ramakrishna, perhaps the greatest sage of modern India, was marginalized. The saffron-clad seers, who embodied knowledge, renunciation, and inner truth, were placed lower in public esteem than the so-called liberals. In West Bengal, under decades of communist rule, Hindu faith itself was replaced with secularism. Indira Gandhi — the true Hitler of Indian politics — declared the Emergency and forced the word secular into the Constitution, against the will of Ambedkar, who had deliberately excluded it.
After Indira, the “Queen of Deceit,” a long line of political tricksters has continued to peddle this counterfeit commodity.
Who are the chief criminals of pseudo-secularism? At the top tier are professors and teachers, the permanent cadres of the “secularism is in danger” and “Islam is in danger” chorus. In the middle rank stand the journalists and family-owned media houses. At the bottom — the intellectuals who need state recognition and patronage to sustain their pomp and privilege.
This entire industry has one goal: to make corruption and elitism permanent in India. Secularism shields politicians — especially the Nehru dynasty — from exposure in scandals. What better shield could there be?
The real issues of the people — black money, middleman-controlled distribution systems, rural development, electrification, clean water, corruption control — these are all secondary. The primary issue is secularism. Thus, a corrupt administrator like Lalu Prasad is hailed by the media as a secular hero, while a reformer like Narendra Modi is branded an enemy of the nation.
When the media chases secularism instead of confronting fundamental issues, it becomes clear that behind it lies Nehru’s original formula — a formula designed to fatten political dynasties and their courtier intellectuals. Anyone who dares to step outside this routine and call it counterfeit is instantly branded communal.
In the absence of real governance performance, many political parties begin to thump their chests, crying: “Secular, secular, secular!” One feels tempted to echo Arun Shourie’s biting words: in India, secularism is akin to the word prostitute — for over eight decades this prostitution has deceived the masses. The Nehru family, along with corrupt politicians, Lutyens’ elites, decadent intellectuals, and journalists, have all engaged in this prostitution together.
Secularism is not a cure. It cannot heal hunger, it cannot eradicate poverty, it cannot create jobs. It is a rotten way of life, not a solution. For decades, the Congress and its clones have fooled the nation with this counterfeit secularism, converting one community into a perpetual vote-bank through brainwashing, and condemning another into illiteracy and poverty for the same purpose.
But change is inevitable. The destruction of this falsehood — and of those media and parties who try to reduce every national debate to “secular versus communal” — is certain. For even if a lie is propagated a thousand times, one day its shell must break. Today, the people are beginning to see through the deception. In the age of digital transparency, history cannot be buried under lies. Every day, falsehoods are exposed naked on social media, while truths long imprisoned for seventy years stir impatiently for freedom.
And this change cannot be stopped by the secularism of fools. A new India will demand answers. And demand it shall.
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