There is nothing more fallacious than Indian secularism, because caste consciousness is too old and too deep seated to be neutralised by a couple of casual’ clauses in the constitution besides, the Hindu polity is highly communal and rigidly conservative. It is just not possible for a fragile sapling like secularism to take roots in such an sin friendly soil, Equally difficult 15 the task of evolving a truly democratic system in such a climate. The fact that communal Hindus form a permanent majority rules out justice and equality for minorities like Muslims Sikhs, untouchables and Christians. The minorities can never hope to gain supremacy or even equality through democratic processes. They are doomed to the fate of second class citizens, because the majority community is paying only lip service to secularism. It is using secularism more as a window dressing to mislead the outside world than as a moral commitment to legal and constitutions instrument. The post-independence history presents a sad spectacle of successive governments resorting to policy decisions based on short-term political expediency of pandering to the communal intolerance of the majority community rather than mobilising it to adopt a fraternal and patronising attitude towards the minorities. This policy pattern is singularly responsible for the “escalating scale and frequency of social violence in India. It is already clearly understood in India that there are wide range of conditions in which it is quite possible to get away with large sealed murder. The results are profoundly destabilising and demoralisiny. A number of India’s leading civil liberties and human rights organisation are convinced that government has become a partner in 4 process that is fearing India apart.”(The Point Stategangsterism terrorism through police and paramilitary forces have rendered all norms of the free world irrelevant.
A regimented fundamentalist suppression of the legitimate aspirations of the minorities is being carried out through black laws like The National Security (Amendment) Ordinance No, 5 and 6 1984. The Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) NO. 9 of 1984 and the Amendment to Indian Evidence Act making it obligatory upon the accused to prove that he or she is innocent. Government white papers state anything but truth. Writing about the white paper issued after the Operation Blue Star, Justice V.M. Tarkunde says, “What is stated by the government’s White paper is far from the truth. ‘The 4th of June, 1984 was wrongly chosen by the Army for an attack on the inmates of the Golden Temple because the 3rd of June being a Gurpurb (martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev Ji), a large number of pilgrims nearly 10.000 had come to stay in the temple. Many of there appeared to have been killed in the army action.” “We found that the Army was hated not only by the common villager but by their own retired Havalders and Captains. Today the image of the Army is of a communal, corrupt, cruel and grossly insensitive force,” he asserted.
“Ordinary citizen who becomes victim of Army’s arbitrary power is left without any channel for redress of his/her grievances. The section 7 of the Act lays down: ‘no prosecution, suit or other legal proceedings shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in respect of anything done in exercise of powers conferred by this Act.”
Article extracted from this publication >> October 26, 1990
