"Hindu Rashtra is Language Only Pakistan Can Understand": Godbole's Lecture That Was Cancelled

THE CITIZEN BUREAU

MUMBAI: A lecture to be given by former Home Secretary Madhav Godbole on “Is India A 

Secular Country” was cancelled suddenly, three days before the event. This was after

 IIPA had pubished an advance version of his paper. No explanation was given. 

As Godbole wrote to some friends in an email,”The Chief Secretary, Government of 

Maharashtra, who is the ex-officio Hon. Secretary of the Maharashtra Regional Branch 

of the Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi, (IIPA), had requested me to give 

B.G. Deshmukh memorial lecture for 2015-16 on any subject of my choice. I was reluctant

 to accept the request as I had already given two B. G. Deshmukh memorial lectures in 

the recent past--the first in the Symbiosis Law School in collaboration with Public Concer

n for Governance Trust, Pune, and the second in the Asiatic Society in Mumbai.

But, finally at his insistence, I had agreed to the proposal. Accordingly, the date 4 April, 

suggested by him, was agreed to by me. While suggesting the date, I am sure he must 

have taken into account the usual schedule of the budget session of the state legislature. 

He had also written that IIPA would like to have my speech in advance so that it could

 be circulated to the audience. Accordingly, I had sent him my speech titled 'Is India A 

Secular Nation?' by email on 11 March 2016. I was told that the IIPA had also got it printed.

 Against this background, I was surprised when I was informed by email on 1 April that

 the lecture had been cancelled. No reason was given for the cancellation.

Are we back to the Emergency days? The lecture, running into 70 odd pages, 
is an astounding essay on secularism, detailed, comprehensive, informative and 
castigating for those who are playing with this Constitutional tenet. 

The Citizen will be producing excerpts from the lecture that is a major contribution to the
 discourse on democracy 

and secularism, over the next few days. The excerpts are in themselves an explanation 

why the lecture was cancelled just three days before the event at the Mantralaya in
 Mumbai.

The former Home Secretary writes:

“I am going to speak today on whether India is a secular nation. I have deliberately
 framed the question so as not to restrict it to 'India as a secular state'. For, 
I believe, it is not enough if the Indian state is secular, which it is not. It is equally,
 if not more, important that we are a secular society, a secular nation. I believe
 this question needs to be asked, reflected upon and answered truthfully.” 

At the outset it must be stated that I am a firm believer in the concept of secularism. 

It is my conviction that India's survival as a multi-religious, multi-lingual, 
multi-racial, multi-cultural society will depend on how successful it is in working
 its secularism. 

Presently, religious minorities constitute about 20 per cent of India's population, with
Muslims accounting for 14.2 per cent. According to some estimates, in a few years,
 this percentage is likely to stabilise at a little over 25, with Muslims accounting
 for 20 per cent. 

With extremist and radical external forces such as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
 (ISIS) and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, to name just two, bent on 
disturbing the peace and tranquillity in the country, it will be fool-hardy to neglect 
the welfare of minorities. No society can prosper or be at peace with itself if 
one-fourths of its population feels neglected, deprived and unwanted. 

There is a great deal of talk in the country about the appeasement of minorities in
general and Muslims in particular but socio-economic indicators of Muslims brought
out by Justice Sachar Committee bring out convincingly how this so-called "vote-bank"
 of some political parties has remained at the margin all these years. It is shocking to
 see that Parliament did not have time to discuss the findings of this report as also
the major recommendations of Justice Ranganath Misra Commission report.
 Both these high level expert groups were appointed by the then United
 Progressive Alliance (UPA) government

. Many in this distinguished gathering are aware of the predecessor-successor complex
 which is so common in civil services. Unfortunately, studies of expert committees and
 commissions too have been afflicted by this virus. Secularism was expected to bring
 about the integration of the diverse elements of Indian society. But, 
it is a travesty that the majority community as well as the minorities are 
dissatisfied with it. In fact, the concept of secularism has lost all credibility. 

It must be stated that India would not have been either a parliamentary democracy
 or a secular nation, to whatever degree it is, without the firm commitment of
 Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel to these precepts. 
The Indian Constitution is one of the most explicitly secular Constitutions in the
 world though the founding fathers of the Constitution could not agree on calling
 it 'secular' for fears that it would be perceived as anti-religious or irreligious

 in the Western sense of the term. It was felt that by calling it secular, the 
Constitution would be denuded of the ethical and moral underpinning of the 
religious precepts which are so necessary for the governance of the country. 
This deficiency was made good during the Emergency in 1976 by the
 Forty-second Amendment by the inclusion of the word 'secular' in the
 Preamble of the Constitution. 

It is disconcerting to see that, in recent times, serious questions are being raised about 

India's secularism. It is for the first time since independence that the Hindu Rashtra ideology

 is being talked about so openly, defiantly and persistently. It may sound very nice
 to some people to hear it said that we will create a Hindu Rashtra etc...Hindus
 are in a majority in this country and whatever they wish will be done. 
But the moment you talk of Hindu Rashtra you speak in a language which 
no other country except one can comprehend and that country is Pakistan
 because they are familiar with this concept. They can immediately justify 
their creation of an Islamic nation by pointing out to the world that we are doing
something similar. 

Hindu Rashtra can only mean one thing and that is to leave the modern way and get 

into a narrow, old fashioned way of thinking, and fragment India into pieces. 
Those who are not Hindus will be reduced in status. You may say patronisingly
 that you will look after the Muslims or Christians or others as in Pakistan they say
 that they will look after the Hindus. Do you think any race or individual will accept 
for long the claim that they are looked after while we sit above them? 

If the Supreme Court had not categorically declared in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India 

((1994) 3 SCC 1) that secularism is a part of the basic structure of the Constitution and

 Parliament has no powers to dilute it in any way, concerted efforts would have been 

made by some political parties to amend the Constitution to dilute its secular tenets. ...

…..The Supreme Court itself has expressed apprehensions in this regard:
 "India till now is a secular country…we do not know for how long it will
 remain a secular country." 

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