Day: January 18, 2008

Arvind Lavakare’s piece in sify titled “Let us all salute Narendra Modi” includes a quote from a letter that K M Munshi wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru:

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’s “divide the country along religious and caste lines and rule” policy will bear very bitter fruits indeed. People are waking up. The springs of traditional tolerance are drying up, as Munshi warned generations ago. Slowly but surely. You see the signs on the internet now and soon it will migrate to the hard copy press.

The Secular Road to Hell by Ramananda Sengupta, chief editor of Sify.

Here’s Shobha Warrier in rediffiland: Modi, a hero.