Separated at Birth

India and Pakistan are children of the same mother, forcibly and violently separated at birth, the result of political expediency (payback) by shortsighted armchair politicians. The great Mahatma Gandhi agreed to it without recognizing the potential for disaster that has loomed ever since. Pakistan has chosen the path of theocracy while India has remained staunchly secular. India’s commitment to secularism has once again been underscored by recent elections in which the (often referred to as the muscular) ‘Hindu’ party (BJP) was roundly defeated – even in the aftermath of the outrageous attack on Mumbai by Islamic terrorists. (Is it still permitted to say ‘Islamic’ and ‘terrorist’ in the same sentence? I wonder…)

India strives to be a secular nation. The attack on Mumbai is seen here as political, not religious. There were no reprisals against Indian Muslims to speak of. ‘Secularism’ here is seen differently than it is in the West. In India it means that any and all religions are equally respected (as opposed to the view that all religion is in some way unnatural and must at the very least be marginalized). Gurcharan Das, speaking in a debate in London on May 12, 2009, in support of the motion entitled, The Future Belongs to India, Not China, compares India to “a salad bowl in which the constituents retain their identity”. China and the U.S., on the other hand, must be seen as ‘melting pots’ in which (religious) homogeneity is variously enforced. They fail to understand that in their zeal to (selectively) wipe out religion, they merely supplant it with something equally potent but apt to have far worse effects: the tyranny of ideology.

I have often argued that the commerce of ideas must be free and unregulated. It is those who seek to isolate themselves within the silent tombs of religious dogma or ideology who tend to succumb to madness. Pakistan is on the brink by virtue of its theocracy. There are now many others, of course, suffering from a similar affliction. America is on the brink by virtue of its newly minted (socialist) ideology. Caught in the middle are the people escaping the ‘Swat Valley’ of their 401K’s. …while the rest of the world watches horrified as the train wreck unfolds.
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Slick Dog – Thank you! Have you any idea of how difficult it is to get published these days – especially if you write from a decidedly ‘conservative’ perspective? I’m just happy to have found an outlet; a forum significant enough to spur me to write (which is always the first crucial step, after all). I’ll let you in on a little secret: My most successful posts are the ones in which I learn (or have learned to articulate) something new as I write. I never proceed from a position of attempting to impart ‘stored knowledge’. John Batchelor’s varied approaches to the news that interests him give me the fuel to start my own engines that invariably launch my own imagination on flights of discovery.

As you very well know, a key ingredient in this is India itself. It prompts you to forget all you have ever known; to reset your parameters almost daily. I agree, it’s a fascinating country, now poised for ascendancy. Its core principles of acceptance and tolerance, as enshrined in its Constitution (“JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship” – 11/26/49) have not yet been corroded by rogue influences, chief of which is indifference.