As the Ram Mandir inauguration commands the headlines next month, one of the unnecessary debates that will arise before the forthcoming general elections is about secularism. The ruling party and its supporters claim that the Congress’ (and the INDIA alliance’s) advocacy of secularism is nothing but minority appeasement, an insincere pandering to the prejudices of non-Hindus in order to get their votes. Allow me to set them straight.

Secularism is a key value entwined in the Congress’ DNA, and it goes back to before the founding of the Republic. The Congress strived to prevent Partition before finally surrendering to the inevitable, but when it occurred, the party never accepted the logic that since Pakistan had ostensibly been created for India’s Muslims, what remained was a state for Hindus. Its pre-eminent leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and Nehru’s colleagues and successors, all lived up to the lifelong conviction that India belonged to all who had contributed to its history and civilization and that the majority community had a special obligation to protect the rights, and promote the well-being, of India’s minorities. In both governmental policy and personal practice, the Congress stood for an idea of India that embraced those of every religion, caste, ethnicity, or language.

Nehru saw our country as an “ancient palimpsest” on which successive rulers and subjects had inscribed their visions without erasing what had been asserted previously. In his view, we not only coexisted but thrived in our diversity, which is our strength. He was followed in the Congress by a generation of secular nationalists who echoed this tradition, making “unity in diversity” the most hallowed of independent India’s self-defining slogans. Sardar Patel, whom the current government has tried to appropriate, exemplified this by his actions to protect Muslims........

© Mathrubhumi English