We’re witnessing a second Partition
give it what it wanted, Pakistan.
The Two Nations Theory, we must now remind ourselves, had Muslim and Hindu adherents. Pakistan slaked the thirst of the first. That of the second is now wandering over the Indian countryside looking for, thirsting for, disemboweling the Indian earth for, the aquifers of hate.
The Hindu ‘Two Nationists’, helped along with Islamic fundamentalists, will have nothing to do with secularism now. They want in India a partition of the mind within the partitioned nation. Dogged in their aim, they seek to leverage an India traumatised by terrorism, into what it wants, a Hindu Rashtra.
And as this Partition of the Indian mind, as between Hindu and non-Hindu, is being assiduously advanced, what secularists miss is the strategic toughness and philosophic anchorage of a Gandhi, Bose and Nehru in the cause.
Indian pluralism is not just about Sufi music, Iftar embraces and kebabs. It is about being tough. ‘Lal Qile se aayi aawaaz…’
A formidable condemnation of Two Nationist divisiveness came from our former vice president Hamid Ansari in his convocation address at the National Law School University in Bengaluru. Speaking on the eve of demitting office he warned, in words that were made of steely resolve, that the “illiberal form of nationalism” which we are witnessing “promotes intolerance and an arrogant patriotism”. His own ancestor, MA Ansari would have been proud.
What followed? Studied efforts at sarcasm and even rudeness aimed at Ansari when gratitude should have been offered, respect shown to his person, his office. So much for propriety, basic human decency.
Hamid Ansari should have become President of India. Even as Dara Shukoh should have been emperor of Hindustan. But then…
Whom does history honour? That neversay-die prince of secularism or the bigotry that ruled from the Red Fort awhile?