By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: India today is united because it has, to large extent, maintained its secularism. The day it became communal or religious state it will be divided into 20 while the communal Pakistan got divided into two, so vast are the diversities in India, said V N Rai, former DGP, Uttar Pradesh.
Though secular ethos were not maintained properly – textbooks were filled with communal elements; official programs were opened with Hindu rituals – the nation as a whole remained secular defeating the attempts of the communal forces to turn it into a Hindu Rashtra. There are so many diversities that only secularism can keep it united, said Rai.
Currently Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi Antrashtriya Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha, Nagpur, the ex-IPS was delivering a lecture on Women and Communal Riots: Role of State, organized by Sarojini Naidu Centre for Women’s Studies of Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi on Wednesday.
V N Rai, former DGP, Uttar Pradesh
Post-Independence India has witnessed communal riots at regular interval barring the first 14 years wherein no big communal clashes took place in the country. But after 1961 various major communal riots killing thousands have taken place in different parts of the country. About three-fourth of the sufferers were Muslims in these riots, with women most affected. These riots were the result of the failure of state. The state failed because its face Police had got communalized as secular ethos of the constitution and the nation were not maintained properly, said Rai.
Elaborating on the issue he said: the early leaders of free India were freedom fighters; they were visionary having high dreams of the nation in their eyes. The communal forces, though existed since the beginning, could not influence these leaders, and so their dream to turn the country into a Hindu Rashtra remained just dream. But the same communal forces got active in some other spheres and communalized the new mind.