secularism

i immensely envy Rahul Gandhi.
with his kind of intellectual prowess and fabulously flawed sense of history someone else would have queued up for a manual, unskilled job.but some are more equal than others, even in a (working?) democracy such as ours.

this man will be India's prime minister one day, a job which may not be all that unskilled. ( though successive office bearers have managed to make it look like one). i would not get into his merit to be one, for one any good scales to do so we are sure to uncover a history of failure. my contentions are different, something that lies at the very heart of parliamentary democracy. about the suitability of every Indian to reach the top post, even when his name does not end with a Gandhi or Nehru.


i always felt of the late p.v.narsimha rao's regime as something of a whiff of fresh air. together with Nehru and Gujral they were the most learned men to occupy the top post. of course there where flaws in his regime intertwined with the obvious economic astuteness . the biggest failure was of course the failure to save the babri masjid. this is the fact that mr rahul gandhi chose to highlight to prop up his secular credentials and echo dynastic supremacy.

unsurprisingly,not one murmur emerged from the congress ranks. senior ministers of the rao cabinet stay shut without venturing to correct a 35 year old ignoramus's world view, whose only 'achievements' are a columbian girlfriend and endangering indo- afghan relations by hobnobbing with karazai'a daughters. and of course, getting Delhi university admission norms changed for him to get admission in Saint Stephens college ( introduction of sports quota)

coming back to the babri masjid. their are times that larger tides of history engulf and alter the movement of daily events. their is very little for anyone to counter these flash floods. December 92 saw a fervent mobilization of marauding masses like never before.it was laced with emotion and passions unseen after independence. today we can sit back and analyse the event with the benefit of retrospect.


the masjid always had a turbulent history and December 92 was only a climax to what started after mir baki's razing of original temple and the installation of deities in 1949.

the question is extremely complex and there can be no one single answer to satisfy all sides. our best bet lies in letting the issues dissipate with the passage of time and eventually reach a judicial compromise which incorporates some demands of the two communities involved. to try and re-project history in 'what if' terms is meaningless and selfish.

rahul also exonerates his father and presents him as a keystone of secularism. his history teachers perhaps forgot to tell him that it was his dear father who facilitated the opening of masjid locks , allowed the shilanayas ad launched his campaign from ayodhya in 89.in the shah bano case we learnt the full extent of his secularism.


his successor v.p.singh, was much more a man of substance.he gave up his office to counter what he believed to be communalism. his ideals prevented him from accepting office for a second time in 96 . unlike sonia gandhi (refusal?) of office he wasn't mobbed by an army of boot lickers.