Seventy Years of Secularism: Unpopular Essays on the Unofficial Political Religion of India

by Sandeep Balakrishna

aesthetics,

our cultural amnesia is too widespread and deep-rooted and we are deracinated to the extent that we are unaware that we are deracinated.

vexed

yad bhaavam tad bhavati (you perceive things according to your mental makeup).

Nobody can be reasonably sure that India would have surely attained Independence…even without Gandhi, but it is extremely doubtful whether there would have been a Pakistan without Jinnah. So, if we are to judge by the result alone, the events of 1946-7 testify to the superiority of violence to non-violence in practical politics, and of Jinnah to the leaders of the Congress.

History books in India try to ignore the dominant Hindu ethos of the country and its history before the Islamic period… The real danger in India is not the arising of a chauvinistic nationalism like that of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy…but a lack of national spirit and historical consciousness that keeps people alienated from their roots and the country divided.