As a devout Hindu is sickens me to align myself with the BJP/ Shiv Sena / MNS combine. The key word here is devout and not rabid. It disheartens me when they get Hindu leaders like Sri Sri Ravishankar to issue statements deriding #AAP. Let us step back a little and look at it this way. What if a Christian religious leader had issued a statement ridiculing BJP in the same language? What was the re-action when Sonia went and met the Muslim leaders in Delhi? It is a principle of good governance that the Church ( read religious leaders ) and State be kept separate. The principle of secularism was enshrined in the Constitution to ingrain this key principle. But over the years all sides have gone to religious leaders to garner vote banks from the faithful. What this strategy necessarily implies is that the leaders have blind sheep as their followers who will not exercise an independent thought process to arrive at their own conclusions. If I were one such follower then my thought would be that I have you as my religious leader not my political leader. Would I seek the opinion of the religious leader on how to decorate my house? Or what exercise plan to follow? In the same way the opinion of the religious leader is not material when it comes to choosing a non corrupt political leader. The BJP/SS/MNS have taken a nice, benevolent and accommodating religion and made it into a hard lined, vote gathering vehicle. While there is nothing wrong in standing up for ones religion ( which I will ), it is wrong to think that you can break traffic laws just because you sport a bagwa flag on your motor bike. Or a skull cap either. Or occupy large swatches of public spaces during festivals with impunity.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 02:32:45 +0000
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