Secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life and is capable of being tested by the experiences of this life. Quite naturally Christian Church is critical of such belief which totally ignores and/or denies the existence of God. Besides, the fallacy of atheism and agnosticism, in developing societies in particular, lies in the denial of the inextricable and inescapable influence religion has on the life and mind of all individuals in almost all aspects of their existence from birth to death. Even Nehruvian secularism, it has been argued, co-existed with the localised and dispersed structure of dominant caste hegemony in India. While Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad spoke of secularism from the perspective of religion, Pandit Nehru was the first in the sub-continent to accept the western concept of secularism. It is said that Nehru was an agnostic and indifferent to religion but he was deeply conscious of the grips of religion on the mind and body of man.

In his Autobiography Pandit Nehru wrote "India is supposed to be a religious country above every thing else.. The spectacle of what is called religion or at any rate organised religion in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition and exploitation, and preservation and exploitation of vested interests". Personally he was not greatly interested in after life and found this life sufficiently absorbing to fill his mind. In contrast Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, in his presidential address at Lahore in 1940 declared, "Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but in fact different and distinct social orders, and it is only a dream that Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality... to yoke together two such nations under a single state.. must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state".

Is one then to assume that communal politics in India is a recent phenomenon? Noted Indian historian KK Panikkar (Communalism and its Impact on India-KN Panikkar-1997 Montreal Lecture at CERAR) believes that communalism is a modern phenomenon which emerged during the 19th century and then intensified during the 20th century in India. According to Panikkar, during the course of the 19th century a process of communalisation of the society took place along with social and cultural regeneration and development of social and cultural consciousness in colonial India. This "communitarian" consciousness was subsequently transformed into communal consciousness. As examples Professor Panikar points out that Urdu was used by both Hindus and Muslims in northern India even in 1940s and 1950s. But the demand for Hindi to become the official language introduced in the Hindu consciousness led to the emergence of nationalist slogan of Hindi, Hindu, and Hindustan while Urdu was seen as the language of the Muslims. Equally the Goraksha Andolan(movement for the protection of the cows) brought in the sharp division between the Muslims and the Hindus as the opponent (rightly or wrongly) or supporter of the movement. As a result a series of communal riots took place in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Professor Panikkar subscribes to the view that communal riots are episodic as a result of and as a consequence of communal politics and riots have been the beginning of communalisation. Nineteen twenties saw the ideological elaboration of Hindu communalism as a response to the Khilafat movement of the Muslims. Indeed the partition of India in 1947, according to Panikkar, was the final expression and articulation of communalisation of Indian society. Unfortunately even fifty years after the partition communalism is a common phenomenon in the three countries of the sub-continent. In India Hindu communalists hold Muslims of today responsible for what their co-religionists supposedly did several centuries ago, a scene repeated by the majority community in Pakistan and Bangladesh as the ruling classes in all the three countries had used in varying degrees communalism as an ideology of their politics.

Muslims in India appear to be particularly at greater risk because of the strong historical sense among the Hindus of the fact that since the creation of Pakistan was on communal ground the Indian Muslims of today can engineer another partition and/or encourage centrifugal forces in Indian politics. It is somehow forgotten that the Indian Muslims had voted with their feet against the partition of India by choosing to remain in India. The Gujarat genocide reinforced most strongly India's majority-minority syndrome in which the terms of engagement between the two groups were so asymmetrical that results of any communal confrontation were clearly predictable in discrimination, humiliation, marginalisation, exclusion and subordination of the minority community. Indian scheduled caste leader Dr. BR Ambedkar's analysis of Hindu-Muslim relationship of the pre-partition days holds true even today. Dr. Ambedkar found both communities obsessively considering almost every issue from the point of view of their struggle against the other. Hindus and Muslims, he noted, made preparations against each other without abatement reminding one of a race in armaments between two hostile nations( India's majority-minority syndrome-7th august 2002-Rajeev Bhargava).

Despite the realisation that the durability of the Indian nation-state may depend to a large extent on the dissolution of the majority-minority syndrome, a powerful section of the Indian society believes that the Nehruvian secularism as a political philosophy has effectively lost its credibility. It has proved unable as a national motivating and unifying force because all separatist movements without exception have in common at their ideological level their hatred of Hinduism. This section of Indian society appears to be totally oblivious of the religio-demographic structure of India and is ready to deny equal citizenship, guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, to minority communities. There is no denying the fact that this improvident philippic by the majority community in India is stoked by acrimonious and often vitriolic pronouncements from Pakistan and constant across the border incursions along the line of control in Kashmir. But to fault VP Singh's point that if the claim of Ramjanambhumi is conceded then there would be no ground to deny the Sikhs their demand for Khalistan and such other separatist demands would be to deny poly-centricity of Indianism and reflect to an extent sclerosis of Indian free thought.

In Indian oppositional analysis of Gujarat episode is best described as passage to fascism. They argue that two political principles had fundamentally been underlined by the Gujarat riots: (a) the minority community is to be held responsible for every individual or group action or political trend within the community; and (b) the majority community has the right to exact retribution from the minority community without the due process of law. They further emphasise on the deliberative character of the initiation and the execution of the riots in order to achieve higher phase of fascisation of the state. BJP's rise to power is based on its successful articulation of the mass movement of Ramjanambhumi as reflective of both Hindu and Indian nationalism which captured the imagination of many people who felt that the majoritarian interests were not being adequately looked after. Therefore communalisation of politics (which had remained dormant to a large extent during the long Congress rule) had to be rejuvenated for sustenance of power which in turn necessitated the incorporation of the dalits and lower caste people into an anti-Muslim contract. Such incorporation of dalits and lower caste adhivasis, if not possible socially, had to be done at the political level lest they join the rank of anti-brahmanical framework. Clearly BJP's future strategy would be to become a majority party in parliament by not only holding on to the supporters of Hindu nationalists but also doling out socio-economic benefits to the middle class and declassed millions.

That religion will not cease to be a powerful force in Indian politics is to state the obvious. For India to prosper it would make sense in not putting secularism and religious orthodoxy as binary opposites. A pluralist India aimed at further arrest of social fracture would be an essential pre-requisite for a thriving democracy and a robust participation in the globalisation process. India can ill afford to be distracted from fulfilling its destined role as a major player in the global construct in the making. Eroticisation of death by the jihadis (expecting to meet the houris after death) most recently manifested by the Mumbai blasts, clearly have to be dealt with. But sabre rattling may prove to be an imprudent policy falling into the trap of India's enemies who would like to portray increasing Islamic activism and great community divide as reflective of Samuel Huntington's thesis of major inter-civilizational war involving Muslims on the one side and non-Muslums on the other side. Should such tribalisation of large swathe of humanity(India has more Muslims than Pakistan) occur as premised by Benjamin Barber(Jihad vs. MacWorld-1996) in which culture is pitted against culture, then the emerging situation may catch the imagination of the jihadis to the detriment of the interest of India. Therefore arrest of dysfunctional politics at home and economic and diplomatic engagements abroad may yet provide the balm India needs to patch up the fault lines in its body politic.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.