Can a Hindu Nation be secular?

Before we move further, we need to ask if we ourselves believe in Secularism or not. Yes, according to me secularism is very important, but not the secularism which is currently being propagated in India. I want to see a nation, where we have Uniform Civil Code (UCC) strictly implemented, which is absolutely classless and where we give merit the highest priority. In addition to this, I would like to see my nation in the forefront of economic, scientific and cultural thought. Though this is idealistic, our approach and attitude should be to ensure that we come as close as possible. The current day reality is that we indeed have all the ingredients, but we don’t have the right environment where we can produce a great nation for the generations to come.

The next thought that strikes us is, if we have the right communities which can embrace Secularism and consider it sacred? Well, the fact is that we have a bunch of people who don’t believe that other cultures can exist and consider all the other faiths and ways of life utterly false. Well I am talking none other than the two great sematic religions Islam and Christianity. Firstly, though it is undeniable that some followers of Christianity have reformed and the “Church” is no more strong as it used to be a few centuries ago. But, at the same time we cannot ignore the fact that the proselytization has gone too far and the conversions targets are poor of the poorest and the downtrodden. Secondly, Islam cannot be excused; they time and again have demonstrated to us that they can never ever be secular and can never live in peace with non-Muslims. For example, consider Pakistan which had 10% of Hindu population just before partition and now it is almost NIL, and Bangladesh which boasted of 28% Hindus in 1947 now has less than 10% of Hindus. Forget the Hindus, the entire Persian culture in Iran and Iraq was destroyed by the Arabs, who even today dislike Persians because they continue to speak Persian language and not Arabic.

If we go through our ancient, medieval and modern Indian history, you will never find even one instance, where there was a large scale prosecution of a religions group. Yes, you will definitely find gory details of Pushyamitra of the Sanga dynasty prosecuting the Buddhist, but the fact remains that such history was written by Marxist writers like Romila Thapar who have dominated History book writing in the post-Independence India, because any Anti-Hindu comments always earned them pointers.

For example is it not true that we have completely accepted the Parsis and the Syrian Christians who were tormented by the Arabs centuries ago? Time and again, we Hindus have proved that we are secular and we have always respected other cultures and even helped them to further their cause. The history has clearly demonstrated this. If one day we become a “Hindu Nation”, we will become “truly secular” and is beyond any doubt.