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It
is heartening to know that secularism can fire both ways. If not handled with
care, it can blow up in the face of even its expert proponents, like a bomb in
the making. Of course, such occasions are rare in this very tolerant' country,
given the one-sided secular-sermons that the people are customarily and
consistently subjected to, but a wonder has indeed happened. The
Madras High Court while ruling that the
closure of schools and colleges run by minorities in the State for a day is not
clothed with legal sanction', has also dropped a few
pearls of secular wisdom that the inveterate secularists can do well to pick.
After declaring that the Court knows no religion, the learned Judge goes on to
say: No student who is studying in minority institutions, regardless of
religion, shall be involved in this kind of protest and we hope that they shall
not be dragged into any kind of controversies, religious or political, and be
spared only for the purpose of developmental activities like education, sports,
etc. so that they grow up as healthy secular students'. Note the catch phrases:
...knows no religion' and ...secular students'. These are normally hurled by the
secularists and of course, the minorities to hound and humble the Hindus. Now
the very same verbal weapons have felled these habitual deployers who had
appropriated them so long for their sole use. And they cannot complain because
it is the court which has put them in place, not the communal Hindus. As they
sow, so do they reap! The
secular boomerang has struck at them with greater force than they had unleashed
it with. The Court had wanted to know from the defendent secularists why at all
the schools run by them have to be closed when there were several other ways of
expressing their protest, particularly when the ordinance was applicable only to
conversions through force, allurement or fraudulent means. The Judge also
queried if he had the jurisdiction to test the veracity of the ordinance or
annul it in the absence of any Supreme Court judgment sanctioning it and then
advised the defendents to shun other modes to express the protest and wait as a
writ challenging the ordinance itself has been filed for specific relief. Of
course, the last word is yet to be said with the case having been posted for
further hearing to January, 2003, but do not the Courts observations echo a
familiar pang in every parents, nay, every, citizens heart? The
Christian community leaders and their secular sponsors were obviously suffering
from a high degree of presumptuousness - that they can get away with anything.
This in turn has been wrought by decades of over-indulgence to them, their whims
and their religion, by everybody who is somebody, both in politics and society.
So, any step to rectify anomalies, balance the scales or check their activities
is met with stiff resistance and dubbed as an anti-minority atrocity which has
to be shunned forcefully and shelved forthwith! Sure, but if the anti-minority
syndrome itself could be so potent, then what if some move is deemed
anti-majority? By the same token and proportion, should not the earth beneath
the nation shake? But in India that is Bharath, not a leaf will ruffle! Because
we are secular and tolerant, while as pet, adamant children, the minorities have
to be pampered, fed, nourished and nurtured so that they are healthy enough and
emboldened adequately to keep asking for more. Now can anyone be satiated by
appeasement? On the contrary, it can only increase the appetite, particularly if
the hungry ones know the giver to be a sucker who can be milked dry. Little
wonder that, having secured hefty aids and grants from the money of the tax
payers, a majority of whom are secular Hindus and so sinners, and then thriving
on the fees paid by students, a majority of whom are again off-springs of those
wretched sheep, the Christian managements still had the temerity to order
closure of the schools. But
for once their bluff has been called with the State government making it clear
that if they went ahead with the closure of the schools run by them, (and not
wholly funded by them, mind you), then the aid would be cut forthwith. Very
few people know that most of the so-called Christian-run institutions are
heavily aided by government doles. These educational institutions and
even those which are self-financed, rely heavily on secular students for
sustenance, charging them fees that are in no way less than the market rates. At
best, they can be deemed custodians of public money, secular money at that,
vested with them for imparting knowledge and at worst can be classified as
enterprising entrepreneurs engaged in the business of education, their holy
attire notwithstanding. That is, there is very little of service involved for
their acts are akin to paying one with ones own coin and all this lofty talk of
the missionaries great service to the cause of education is one of the longest
surviving lies. And by resorting to the closure, they have only reinforced the
common suspicions about their motives, a self-indictment that is more eloquent
than a thousand judicial verdicts. If secularism and service are their avowed
motives as they claim, why should they seek to drag the secular students and
even their teachers into a protest that they have no stake or interest in? But
more basic is the question why a law banning only forcible conversions should be
any business of Bishops and managements who are solely engaged in voluntary
service with no religious strings attached? Rendering
of Saraswathi Vandhana was deemed a blashpemy in this secular country, but day
in and day out lakhs of students, majority of them Hindus, studying in the
thousands of schools that have downed shutters today, are made to begin their
day with an invocation to the Holy Father and Holy-whateverelse. And
this happens in educational institutions that are funded out of the money of
their parent whose purse it exits either as tax or fees. And these donors do not
even know that and instead have all along been led to believe by the past
masters of propoganda that they, the parents and students, are at the receiving
end of benign charity. And now comes the ultimate insult, that the robed
religionists masquerading as educationists will not hesitate to hold society to
ransom if they are not allowed to have their secular way. Indeed, it should be a
revelation for many on the extent to which public funds has been diverted as
grants and doles to promote this sort of perverse secularism. The State
government should press ahead with its warning to withdraw the grants, now that
the Christian institutions have carried on with their closure threat. Let the
gauntlet be thrown back at them. We should never pay a blackmailer, for it is
not in him to say stop!
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