'Let us all salute Narendra Modi'
Arvind Lavakare, Sify.com
http://sify.com:80/news/fullstory.php?id=14581393

Arvind Lavakare may be 71, but the fire in his belly burns stronger than in many people half his age. The economics post-graduate worked with the Reserve Bank of India and several private and public sector companies before retiring in 1997. His first love, however, remains sports. An accredited cricket umpire in Mumbai, he has reported and commented on cricket matches for newspapers, Doordarshan and AIR. Lavakare has also been regularly writing on politics since 1997, and published a monograph, The Truth About Article 370, in 2005.

From March 2002 onwards they indicted him for the killings of 790 Muslims in the Gujarat riots, never mind that 254 Hindus were also slain simultaneously. They dubbed him a Hindu fanatic, a fascist, a Hitler, the ugly Indian, the mass murderer, the merchant of religion and death. And they used cocktail concoctions like turning 790 into 2,000 and hiding 254 for manipulating western countries to toe this nation-wide calumny.

Their only iota of proof for this character castration was the remark of a Supreme Court judge who dubbed him a Nero who fiddled while Rome burnt, without backing it up with hard evidence. And even a fraudulent sting operation soon turned impotent.

Not satiated with their vocabulary, they debunked even his governance and his catalytic role in bringing about his state’s economic development that was remarkable for the short span of five years. They obviously hated him and his right to disagree with their view.

Now, after five years of suffering ignominy and insults innumerable, the man has humbled and humiliated them all.

Salute Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat. Click your heels and salute the millions of Gujaratis too who stood rock solid behind him.

Thankfully, a leading pseudo-secularist, and therefore a Congressman, Kapil Sibal has accepted defeat with grace, and spoken of drawing lessons from the crow his party has had to eat. Expert analysts, psephologists included, and others of the pseudo-secularist community who wrote and voiced their prognosis on the Gujarat polls more as wishful thinking than as honest men, also seem to have learnt some lessons.

But being what they are because of what is probably in their DNA, they are unlikely to ever learn that their interpretation for over half a century of “secularism” and “minorities” has been hopelessly wrong.

Tragically, this has happened because the founding fathers of Constitution of India chose to remain silent on defining these two words despite the sage counsel of some among them. That counsel was offered in the Constitutional debates and, later, in a letter that a famous Congress leader wrote to another.

Let’s first see what was said in the historic debates that took place during the making of our Constitution.

On secularism:

K M Munshi: A secular state must base its dealings with religion on an equal respect to all religions.

Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan: "We are a multi-religious state and therefore we have to be impartial and give uniform treatment to the different religions.”

J.B.Kripalani: A state which respected all religions was educating its citizens in principles of toleration: "We have to respect each other's faith. We have to respect it as having an element of truth"

Post Script: When the newly formed Janata Party led by Morarji Desai introduced a Constitutional amendment in 1978 to define “secular” as “equal respect for all religions”, his old Congress party voted it out from the Rajya Sabha.

On minorities:

M.R.Masani: “The conception of a nation does not permit the existence of perpetual or permanent minorities. Either the nation absorbs these minorities or, in course of time, it must break up…Ultimately, no legal safeguard can protect small minorities from the overwhelming domination of big masses, unless on both sides (emphasis mine) an effort is made to get closer and become one corporate nation, a homogenous nation.”

Purshottam Das Tandon: “For the sake of securing the Muslim League’s co-operation we have been accepting many things against our ideals. We should now put a stop to that and should not ignore fundamental principles…”

Syed Karimuddin had, in the Constituent Assembly, actually warned the minorities that if they wanted to continue a communal approach and activities, they should be aware that it would not be possible to prevent the majority community from propagating majority communalism.

Combining the above issues of “secularism” and “minorities”, K.M.Munshi’s famous letter warned Jawaharlal Nehru as follows:

“In secularism’s name, politicians adopt a strange attitude which, while it condones the susceptibilities, religious and social, of the minorities, it is too ready to brand similar susceptibilities in the majority community as communalistic and reactionary. How secularism sometimes becomes allergic to Hinduism will be apparent from certain episodes relating to the reconstruction of the Somnath Temple…These unfortunate postures have been creating a sense of frustration in the majority community. If, however, the misuse of the term ‘secularism’ continues,…if every time there is an inter-community conflict, the majority is blamed regardless of the merits of the question, the springs of traditional tolerance will dry up. While the majority exercises patience and tolerance, the minorities should adjust themselves to the majority. Otherwise, the future is uncertain and an explosion cannot be avoided.”

The Congress Party and hordes of other pseudo-secularists, including journalists, alas, and unthinking sycophants, have all along ignored the above advice of wise men.

For decades now, these fraudulent secularists have believed that Muslim League of India is a “secular” political party but the BJP and its ancestors are not. They have believed that the RSS philosophy can be ridiculed and riled but the All India Muslim Personal Law Board viewpoint must be respected and rewarded. They have believed that the thousands upon thousands of Kashmiri Pandits need no exclusive provision in the national budgets but Muslims must have the first right on 15 per cent of the country’s financial allocations. They have believed that when Narendra Modi condemns Sohrabuddin Sheikh, he disdains a Muslim rather than a confirmed criminal-cum-terrorist.

They believe that when Hindus speak of protecting the Ram Sethu for reasons of its sacredness as well as for it being sacrificed for a techno-economically non-viable canal project, it’s just another act of hilarious Hindutva, while it is perfectly legitimate for Muslims to talk of protecting the Shariat in refusing to sing the national song.

An agitated Hindu, P.Deivamuthu, has published a booklet (priced Rs 6/-) containing 121 questions to be answered by those who claim to be secularists; ask for it on hinduvoice@vsnl.net and understand why Narendra Modi has become the icon of millions of Hindus, especially among the youth abroad.

But Modi is much more than the upholder of the Hindu’s rights in his motherland. Modi is also the Hindu whose mission is to usher peace and prosperity among all the people of his state even as he himself lives a simple and austere life. He is the Hindu who will stand up to enemies with kshatriya courage combined with Brahminical brains and the sadhu’s sacrificial strength. The pseudo-secularists have been blind to it all so far. But some Muslims have finally gauged him right. A Muslim journalist of a web news portal, talking to his community members in Ahmedabad immediately after the poll verdict came, quoted several Muslims as saying, “He is the state's only chief minister since 1947 to deliver a riot-free Gujarat these last five years.”

And one Ahmed Hussain said, “Allah is with Modi. It is Allah's wish that he wins and rules Gujarat and we have to obey it.” He added, “We know Hindus are in a majority and it is they who will rule this state.” This sentiment, isolated and belatedly gracious as it may be for the community, is what the Hindus have accepted without a murmur for over 60 years in the Muslim majority state of Jammu & Kashmir.

It’s the pseudo-secularists who don’t want to live with the truths of a true democracy. One hopes that Modi’s Gujarat phenomenon finally wakes them up from their slumber and makes them bring about at least some changes in their thinking.

The Congress can begin by changing their Italian Madam’s speech writer who turned out to be a thoughtless shabdon ka saudagar.