“Hindu sentiments were deeply hurt in September 2007, when, in the ongoing dispute over ‘Ram Setu’ in the Setusamudram Ship Canal Project near Tamil Nadu, the UPA government claimed in an affidavit before the Supreme Court that Lord Ram did not exist and that the Ramayana had no historical basis. To add insult to injury, a leader of one of the parties in the ruling coalition made certain derogatory remarks about Lord Ram, which were nothing less than libelous. About the government’s stand, which drew all-round condemnation, I was constrained to say: ‘It is clear that the Congress party’s pseudo-secularism has degenerated into sadist-secularism. By filing this shocking affidavit before the country’s highest court, the leadership of the Congress party and the UPA government has poured contempt on the religious sentiments of crores of Hindus all over the world. It is blasphemous and arrogant at worst, and insensitivity and recklessness at best, for a government claiming to be “secular” to trash the deepest and noblest sensibilities of the Hindus. In one stroke of its legal pen, the government has sought to negate all that the Hindus consider sacred in their faith.’

‘I would like to point out,’ I continued, ‘that the Ramayana, along with the Mahabharata, is considered the bedrock of India’s national culture and identity by all the great leaders of India’s freedom movement—from Mahatma Gandhi to Lokmanya Tilak, and from Jawaharlal Nehru to Sardar Patel. By describing it as a pure myth and a work of fiction, the government has wounded the very Idea of India and sought to rewrite the civilisational identity of our ancient nation.’

Equating Lord Ram and Babar

“Closely linked to the politics of minorityism, indeed providing a justification, is the distortion and perversion that has taken place in the concept of secularism. Increasingly, it is being interpreted and practiced in terms that negate the essential cultural and civilisational personality of India. In the context of the Ayodhya movement, Lord Ram and Babur were sought to be equated in the name of secularism, disdainfully ignoring the sentiments of crores of Hindus. ‘Can you prove that Ram was born exactly at this site?’ asked Communist intellectuals disparagingly, something they would never do in the case of a dispute concerning a non-Hindu community.

In an interview to a Hindi journal Vama in 1987, I had said that for any section of Indian Muslims to identify themselves with Babur ‘is like the Christians of Delhi picking up a quarrel over the replacement of a statue of George V with that of Mahatma Gandhi on the ground that George V was a Christian. Now, Gandhiji may have been a Hindu by faith, but he belongs to this country and George V does not. Similarly, Ram belongs to this country whether you call him a mythical hero or a historical personage. Even on the issue of history and culture, I would plead with the Muslim leadership of this country that if the Muslims in Indonesia can feel proud about Ram and Ramayana, why cannot the Indian Muslims?’ ”

“The concept of ‘cultural nationalism’ enjoins upon the adherents of different faiths in India to respect, and take pride in, the common unifying culture of our ancient land while celebrating its many diversities; not to have extra-territorial loyalty; not to denigrate other faiths as false or inferior, but rather to learn from the best that each faith has to offer; not to misuse freedom of religion to expand one’s religious population through fraudulent conversions; and not to try to gain political dominance for the purpose of advocating separatism or establishing theocracy. It means nothing more, nothing less.”

“My reason for referring to Samuel Huntington’s book Who Are We? is simply to suggest that all of us in India should ask ourselves the same question: ‘Who Are We?’ Unlike the United States, ours is an ancient nation with a history that begins with the dawn of human civilisation. Again, unlike in the case of America, an overwhelming majority of our population has been living in India for centuries. Change of the religious identity of a section of the population cannot change their national identity. India has no history of exterminating any native population either. Therefore, if a common, unifying sense of ‘Americanness’ can be forged in 400 years, certainly there is a case for insisting that a far more robust and intrinsically more humanistic sense of ‘Indianness’ has unified India’s diverse religious, ethnic, linguistic and caste groups for thousands of years. Since the word ‘Indian’ itself is of recent vintage, this unifying principle is Hindu-ness or Hindutva, the name given to a broad-minded, tolerant, pluralistic and inclusive tradition. If India is de-Hinduised, there will be no India left anymore.”

“I urge all the right-minded people in the country, including silent but concerned Congressmen, to raise their voice against the politics of minorityism. Since India is not a theocratic state, the religious rights and the identities of the various faith-based communities that constitute the Great Indian Family must indeed be protected. But notions of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ should have no place in the politics and statecraft of our nation much less be manipulated for vote-bank considerations. This divisive mindset jeopardises India as one united, integral and harmonious nation. The Congress party is trying to divide the nation by continuously harping on ‘minority protection’ in the same way that the British rulers did for their own ulterior motives. ”