Being a secularist who gets constantly trolled by the sanghi trolls online, this writer very well knows the kind of abhorrence they have for secularism and secularists. The Hindutva elements in our country see secularism as an irritant that prevents their ultimate goal of making India a Hindu nation. Therefore it is not a matter of surprise that Narendra Modi, a former RSS pracharak, share that emotion of dislike, to use a milder word, for secularism and its proponents. He has made that emotion clear many a time, but what makes it curious is the place and occasion he chooses to make his comments. It was always when he was on his foreign trips, which he has had many in the last 10 months, that he makes his disparaging comments on secularism and secularists. When in Japan he had mocked secularists in India when he had said that secularists in his country would be kicking up storm on his gifting Bhagavad Gita to Japanese Emperor. And recently, when in Germany, he gave a second swipe at secularism when he suggested that in India respect for secularism and Sanskrit can never go hand in hand. He further suggested that when in the past German radio had Sanskrit bulletin, India hadn’t due to false notions of secularism prevailing in our country.
On foreign soil when the Prime Minister himself makes fun of his country and its principles what impression does he leave behind on the audience about his country? That too from someone who is from a background where they claim themselves to be ultra nationalists. It is also from the head of the same government that had prevented Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai from going to London to criticise a mining project in India claiming that she would have embarrassed the country in front of foreign audience. Is it not an act of hypocrisy that Modi is now doing the same thing that he had accused Priya Pillai of planning to do – embarrassing the country in a foreign land?
Unlike Thomas Gradgrind of Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’, Narendra Modi is notorious for his blatant disregard or ignorance of facts. Like always he got his facts terribly wrong when he connected secularism and Sanskrit. In 1956 it was the government under ‘secular’ Nehru that made a series of recommendations on the promotion of Sanskrit in the private and public media. In 1974, it was during Indira Gandhi’s government, which tried to include the word ‘secular’ in Indian constitution, that All India Radio introduced news bulletin in Sanskrit. So his connecting Sanskrit and secularism in India has no factual basis.
Now what prompted Modi to take up this pointless subject on Sanskrit and secularism during a foreign trip that was supposed to be all about ‘Make in India’? It would probably be the controversy that erupted in India last year about Modi government’s thoughtless decision of replacing the teaching of German with Sanskrit in Kendriya Vidyalaya Schools. But it defies logic why he took up the point of Germany’s respect for the Indian language Sanskrit when what his government did was unceremonious defenestration of German language from the curriculum.
The mocking of secularism, a constitutional principle of India, by Narendra Modi is unbecoming of a PM. It is high time he stop behaving like an RSS pracharak and start assuming the role of Prime Minister of all Indians, with adequate respect for the constitutional values of our country.
