Inventing history to inculcate hatred

When 70 years ago India obtained freedom it also got divided on religious grounds. It may here be mentioned that much before the term “secularism” came into use, the United States Constitution of 1787 and, particularly, the French Revolution of 1789-94, by barring religious influences from all conduct of state affairs, had already produced fair models of a secular state, the French being clearly the more radical one than the American. Whenever the word “secular” is today used outside India in respect of the state it does not, therefore, mean just the pursuit of neutrality among religions, or dharm-nirpekshita as secularism is officially rendered in Hindi, but invokes a more positive notion of rational conduct, uninfluenced by the requirements of any religion or set of religions. Yet, what is taken as the meaning of secularism worldwide was expressly rejected by Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher and India’s second President, in his book Recovery of Faith, page 202, in a passage that is now apparently a standard quotation in Indian legal commentaries: “When India is said to be a secular state, it does not mean that we reject the reality of an Unseen Spirit or the relevance of religion to life or that we exalt irreligion…. The bland slogan “Make in India” is a happy replacement of the work of the Planning Commission whose demolition was one of the first acts of Modi’s government in 2014.