The Congress party’s Jawaharlal Nehru indulged in blatant pseudo-secularism right after India’s independence in 1947, favoring and “protecting” two religions over all others, instead of letting the original Indian Constitution guide the citizens and the courts of this country. This was a bad beginning to the dawn of a new country’s future, already reeling from economic and religious wounds, after a sizeable chunk of its land was “given away” on the basis of religion, for the purpose of creating another country, solely on religious basis!
Following in Nehru’s and his daughter Indira’s footsteps, the Congress and all other “secular” parties of India, encourage muslims and christians to remember and identity strongly with their religions while simultaneously discouraging the Hindus from remembering and identifying with their Hindu identity – instead, the pseudo-secular parties of India have encouraged Hindus to remember their caste identities and place these narrow minded, divisive identities well above their higher Hindu religious identity. The pseudo secular Indian political parties have the shameful distinction of encouraging division of Hindus along caste lines instead of discouragng the same, as hoped for, by the tallest leaders of modern India, including Gandhi and Ambedkar!
A recent news report courtesy of “Nijam Today” is a disgraceful example of Hindus divided on caste lines, played masterfully by all the ‘secular’, politically opportunistic parties of Andhra Pradesh. It has come to light that there are two constituencies in Andhra Pradesh where the Hindus have been a majority but all the major political parties of Andhra Pradesh have fielded only muslim candidates for more than 30 years now.
The constituencies in discussion are Guntur East (Coastal Andhra), the closest urban area to the proposed Andhra state capital, Amaravathi and the Kadapa Constituency (Rayalaseema region) which is famously referred to as ‘Devuni Gadapa’ (the Entrance of the Tirumala God’s Premises).
K. Sivananda Reddy was elected from the Congress party in 1989 and is remembered as the last Hindu MLA of the Kadapa Assembly Constituency. From 1994 onwards, all major parties including TDP, YSRCP and the Congress have fielded only muslims in a Hindu majority constituency! Similarly in the Guntur East constituency, all major parties have not issued MLA tickets to Hindu candidates in more than 35 yesrs now, even though Hindus are in the majority.
Why have the Hindus not had a united voice in demanding a Hindu representative for a Hindu majority constituency? The most obvious reason is probably the fracture of the Hindu vote along Caste lines instead of a united vote bank with a strong Hindu identity.
This is just one example of far too many unfortunate instances where the majority Hindu community does not demand a strong and proud Hindu candidate to represent their constituency – it is an indication of the apathy of the Hindus to the dangers of losing their larger Hindu religious identity at the sacrificial alter of divisive, caste-based politics played by all “secular” political parties.
The Hindus had a choice to stay united as a vote back, so that “secular” parties could not take political advantage of an entire community. But they chose not to excercise that choice! This begs the question, how much longer will Hindus choose to remain divided along caste lines? n
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