I differ. Secular usually means being unrelated to religion or faith or 'God'. Like tomatoes are secular. Indian laws atleast are and were always tip-toeing religion. Within Indian government or legal or political context, AFAIK, the attempted or advertised 'secularism' is not favouring any religion, especially majority religion. It is not exactly same as devoid of religion.
Correct. Around 30 students died due to self immolation and 60 due to firing. In my hometown, 5 students died in police firing and the sad part was none of them were part of the agitation and just got caught in crossfire.
IMHO, this pseudo-secularism while Constitution and religious texts remained joined at spine create situations where legislation and enforcement of laws become hard or sometimes impossible. IMHO, we as a nation will do better if we extract the essence of our laws and use them as the ground rules of what citizens in India can and can not do. I will prefer if it is minimalistic in nature and beyond that its up to people and community to adapt what they feel is moral according to their own conventions. A part of our problem is that we try to legislate morality. Its immoral to make fun of religious sentiments of any community but I believe making it illegal puts you in worse situation.
The problem, IMHO, is this kind of secular yet not secular creates a fertile ground for legislative and legal paralysis. Even common sense decisions are hard to take. You want to support poors but you cann't support poors from say upper caste by affirmative action. Why? Because you have chosen the definition of poor based upon caste or may be religion. You want to ensure that rights of women in property distribution need to be protected but you cann't because that goes against definition of tolerance for religion. Here I believe we are wrong and perhaps west has the right answer. There are ground rules of living in a country which are minimalistic; anything apart from that does not have a legal restriction but social taboos with real repercussions.
This IMHO, is the crux of your thought in this context.
I will go and include things like anti-blasphemy laws. This is where I believe we are wrong. We are trying to legislate morality which will not work and will have chilling effect on those who have genuine thoughts.
I thought by 'majority of India' you meant Hindus being Ideologically polarised on choosing or not choosing right wing leadership. Did you mean something else? My apologies on misunderstanding.
This is where I believe I disagree with you. Religion should not be a no-go area in public discourse. In west, I religion is very often dissected and criticized in public discourse and protection of religion by state is thoroughly looked down upon. It still forms a major part of political system but it is both legally and socially acceptable to question religion.
Yes, politicians are politically correct because they want to keep the votes of still a largely religious caucus. That said, among academic, public and even in mainstream media lampooning religion is a norm. Here are some examples :-
Thats interesting. I see your point. However, do you believe that polarization on lines like caste or economic class is not being to a much greater extent than this religious identity of India. That polarization is very much present for more than 6 decades now. And when pulled along multiple axises of religious identity, caste or economic class, along which one will the thoughts of people be most streched? I think it will be caste or economic class. But then thats just me.
