Pseudo secularism - can we be secular in India?

India is a nation with over a billion people having all sort of diversities starting from religion,caste,languages spoken and culture to background,status and getups. It is perhaps, as said by one, the land with most vivid culture and people.This is certainly a factor which makes our country great because despite of so many differences we are a single geographical entity. But!!! but what........ i mean are we really a single geographical entity in our minds. Well the answer is still a mystery truly a mystery we don't know in real sense.
                                     India is sovereign, socialist,secular, republic and a democratic country which does not see difference in any religion.Every religion is given equal importance and freedom and thus is a secular country.But in real sense a secular country is one which does not see difference in any religion and also does not give importance to every religion. You need to give importance to critical things only, not to the welfare of individual religions or minorities. A secular state is basically a welfare state for every people and you dont need to show it for minorities separately which is done in India. And the big question here is, what does minority group mean as if India is a secular state then there is no difference in religion so there should be no one minority here but it still prevails in our society. And we are the 2nd largest Muslim population in the world. And the facilities for so called minorities if are a problem for the so called majorities that are the hindus then these are of no use. The minority reservation for an instance is creating 100% difference among the people which is not a sign of a secular country. So this is a big contradiction made of India being a secular country.
                                            Being secular means to be secular in minds not only on the political base. Meritocracy
is perhaps what should be the aim of a secular society with all people enjoying equal freedom. This means that always merit of a person should be given importance not that he is a minority. But is it done. Well the answer is no to a large extent.We have right to freedom of religion and speech in our country but it is practiced to what extent. There are some religious fundamentalists who compel people of other religions to change their religion otherwise are either threatened or murdered. There are many instances of this which leads to several riots and mass killings. This leads to many people claiming themselves that one can never be secular in India.
There are long speeches given by many religious fundamentalist groups who want every reason to blame other religion it might be related to their practices or culture. So isn't this secularism only on papers but certainly not in minds which is certainly a form of pseudo secularism. And its not that only religious groups are responsible for this. These groups certainly have directly or indirectly support of some of our self interested  politicians and parties wanting to fulfill their vested goals which leads to lots of conflict among our fellow countrymen.
                                              These sort of incidents not only destroy the image of a secular society but also
leads to poor governance and democracy and for sure loss of human ethics. The inhumanity caused in the name of religion is perhaps the biggest threat to a well valued society where peace can never prevail. A true
secular society is one where humanity is religion and work is worship. So this should what be our motto and
we are the only ones who can help in making humanity our biggest strength because after all we are humans and should posses qualities like humans not animals.

Hawala trade

In today's world illegal activities have become quiet common and has found its roots from traditional methods of illegal trade. Starting from illegal gold and other costly items smuggling in 1970s to drugs smuggling in early1990s continuing till now to illegal money and fund transfer all have been a major sources of income of many. These are things that have not only become the mainstay of many but have become the money source of different terrorist and insurgent organisations in the middle.Illegal money transfer through hawala has today become a major source of terrorist fundings who have claimed lives of many innocent.
           The history of hawala dates back to ages.It has its origins in Islamic law and is also mentioned in many Islamic texts.Basically this system acts as a bridge between money suppliers known as hawaladars and the customers for money transaction from one place to other. In short we can say that this is parallel to a banking system to some extent.In fact this system functions totally like a bank in some countries which are backward and have no banking facilities like Afghanistan.It is also helpful for people who want money transaction to remote areas. So it is therefore a legal system in many countries including USA but it was made illegal after the Sep. 11 attacks. So in broad sense it is certainly a type of banking system which is accepted but using this
many illegal activities are also undertaken.
                          The major and the most critical of all is the money supply to different terrorist organisations.
And in India its root starts from the Mumbai underworld. The Mumbai underworld is one of the most active
mafia groups in the world which have claimed lives of many innocent people not only in Mumbai but also outside the city. Basically they charge high profile personalities with a huge amount of ransom or they say it 'protection money' for the protection of their lives otherwise threaten them to kill and use this money for funding the terrorists. The ones who are not willing to pay the ransom are either threatened or killed. The underworld has a very wide chain of people troughout the world basically in the Gulf countries and countries in Africa by which they carry on their so called ' Dhanda'. Not only that the crores of money involved in scams like match fixing is also a major source of terrorist funding and all this is done through hawala. In countries where hawala is legal their govt. itself funds the hawladars with sufficient money. There have been scams like the hawala scam for an instance in India in which some high profile politicians were involved only to satisfy their vested goals. Also the huge amount of money collected from international smuggling especially drugs is also the source of terrorist funding through hawala itself. And the most recent method of fund collection are the cyber crimes such as hacking into security and other sites of a nation which also involve lots of money are also linked to this trade. So hawala now has become the easiest way of money funding for illegal activities.
                                                     Hawala is a preferred system not only because it can be used for money transaction in remote areas but also becuase of low commission charged as compared to banks. Not only that this an informal value transfer which has links with the foreign exchange rates of many countries. It involves money transaction from one country to other seeing the market value of their respective currencies with respect to basically US dollars through max. trading in the world is done. This certainly needs a lot of skill
and concrete evidence of market position. Basically this is done by the hawaladars in one city  who transfer money to the recipient in another or same city.
                                 So it is certainly a fact that whatever man has created is certainly for benefit of each other but there are certain anti social in fact anti human elements who are always responsible for demolition
of  humanity and therefore mankind. It can all change if we being humans can want it to change.
                  

India- a country with endless issues

Winston Churchill once said " If British would not have ruled India it would have been run by the goons". Well  he said this when Britain ruled India and was on the verge of establishing a never ending imperialism. Goons are people who are stupid and backward in thinking in simple words. After 64 years of independence does it seem to be true. Well lets see.
           India is a country with over a billion people having mixture of different religions, caste ,culture, get ups, language, sex and much more.The contrasting geographical features, rich history and a stable democratic political system also adds to the diversity and greatness of our country. But at the same time there are issues which we are certainly not very proud off. The issues caused by the goons......remember i mentioned goons in the very beginning of the topic. The socio-political issues like communal ism, caste ism, regionalism, the socio economic issues like poverty, illiteracy and unemployment, the international  and security issues like insurgency,cross border terrorism and border conflicts, economic issues like inflation, fiscal deficits etc and other issues like corruption, crime, law n order violation and many more are the ones which become the major obstacles and hindrance in the path of our growing economy and well valued society.
              Lets start  with the socio political issues. India has people of many religions, caste and culture who have different thinking and style of living. So it is obvious that all will have different demands.This is where the problem starts. If one group is benefited from a certain rule the other group is discriminated and there is conflict between the two. For eg;- making hindi the national language is admired by the hindi speaking people is not very much liked by the south indians especially Tamils, consumption of beef and other items is a part of Muslim society is strongly opposed by the hindus so cow slaughtering is banned in many places, reservation for lower castes is not at all liked by the general caste people and it continues.These differences leads to conflict and thus cause the above mentioned issues.
                  Illiteracy, poverty and unemployment are the issues which are interrelated in one way or the other.
Poverty leads to illiteracy which ultimately leads to unemployment. The consequence is that the unemployed person ultimately chooses the path of crime for his living as some self interested minds show them the greed of money to fulfill their vested goals which again leads to corruption. Well it will not be wrong to say that corruption and vote bank politics are the root to all sort of crimes and issues in the society. For eg:- to end the tenure of ruling govt. the opposition can go to any extent possible so that they can never come to power again. They can lead to communal riots, exploitation based on caste and background etc for this and make politics a dirty game for people to think.
                       Globalization came with a very positive factor to our economy but ultimately lead to rich becoming richer and the poor getting poorer. This can also be proved by a small example. The farmers who grow crops and vegetables depend totally on weather for their production. If weather is not suitable for production then this is a loss to the farmers as they have nothing to give to the supplier.But as the crops are to be exported for which the supplier raises the value of  the crop because the stock is not sufficient. This indeed is a benefit to the supplier. This leads to inflation which in turn raises the price of fertilisers used in farming which becomes double blow for the farmer which leads him to suicide. So it is also concluded that poverty is the major cause of increasing crime and corruption in the society.
                                These issues are not less as we have added issues of insurgency and cross border terrorism.Insurgents like maoists, nxals ,ULFA, bodos and others cause a lot of destruction and killings. They say that until there demand s are not fulfilled by the govt. they will continue doing massacres.Again problems like cross border terrorism and border tensions , thanks to our hostile neighbors are issues which seem to be unending even when India has always been the epitome of peace and friendship.
                                        So seeing all these issues it seems as if now we are ruled by the goons but again on the other hand we still have a stable form of government which is certainly surprising and encouraging. We certainly cant blame the govt fully as we are a democracy and we have a share so we are also equally responsible for some of the issues. So its important that we change our attitude towards the society and hope for a better future.

Indian society- Our perception

 The quest to understand India is old but it still continues and persists. Well why not a country whose history dates back to ages, with so many social differences, composite culture, regional differences, different languages and get ups, religious and caste entity and what not is the base for which India has been enjoying the tag of being the most vivid of all other civilizations in the past. Indian society is perhaps the only one where there is no single language or religion but many.One has well said that India is not a country but several countries within. And this is not wrong in the sense that the differences between a Punjabi and a Tamil is much more than an English and a French. But still then a single geographical entity,well this says it all.
                                The pre independence era saw many mass uprisings by people of all religions of the country against the British. Unity in diversity was the biggest strength the society then possessed. But this did not last as soon after independence we lost unity and India was partitioned into two on the basis of religion. This was perhaps the biggest shame ever on part of the society as for so long the reason for which our society was cherished was slowly in its way to subversion. After six decades of independence where do we stand. Communal riots, caste ism, regionalism and many more have become horrors of our well valued society.
Our  perception of the society before independence and after has certainly changed in great extent. And our political system has also been responsible for it to some extent. Vote bank politics has made our leaders self interested for which they can go to any extent. And in a democracy like India where people choose leaders and have a share is bound to be affected by all these. These differences have become so violent that this has led to several killings. The Godhra riots for instance was the biggest communal riot ever in the history of our society which claimed lives of many. Even the beating up of North Indians by MNS workers in 2009 in Maharastra and many more have been instigating poison of hatred among our fellow countrymen.
                                     So this the condition now for which we are not very proud off rather should be ashamed. Hatred for humanity is the biggest hindrance on the path of development of any society. And why all of a sudden the things which were once jewels of our society have now become throat slitting weapons. Well this is because of our perception to our society and its in our hands to bring the lost glory of our society back.
This is democracy and its our duty to make it successful by not choosing good but great leaders, one who can create the feel of oneness among all through his insight. Todays youth who have become quiet secular and scientific should take up the responsibility to clear up the mess.Lets take oath to make humanity our religion and work as worship and bring our past glory back.

                                                             JAI     HIND !!!!!!