"Secular India"- an oxymoron

Well, today, I am about to share with you, a story; a story which had a profound effect on my image of India and its self proclaimed, so called Secularism. And you know what the best part of this story is- its not from India.

I know what you are thinking - we're in for another history lesson. Well, in that case, you can give it a pass. Whatever we are today, we are because of our culture, good or bad, we’ll have to take it as a tablet, the consequences of taking it- we do not know, reason being that half the drugs in India are fake.

Every story has a hero – this one has archeological engineering as the protagonist. The story takes us to Egypt – to the ABU SIMBEL temples- massive rock temples in Egypt on the Lake Nasser. As the Taj Mahal has Shah Jahan and Mumtaz, Abu Simbel had Pharaoh Ramsses II and Queen Nefertari. And as a villain , we have the Aswan High Dam.

A time came when the southernmost relics of this human civilization were under threat from the rising waters of Nile that were about to result from the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The salvage of the Abu Simbel temples began in 1964, and cost some USD $40 million. Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was cut into large blocks , dismantled and reassembled in a new location . Some structures were even saved from under the waters of Lake Nasser. Today, thousands of tourists visit the temples daily. Guarded convoys of buses and cars depart twice a day from Aswan, the nearest city. Many visitors also arrive by plane, at an airfield that was specially constructed for the temple complex.

I read the above paragraph in a reading comprehension in a mock cat conducted by my institute. I looked back and thought about the feat which the Egyptians had accomplished. I did a bit of research and found out that these temples were actually belonging to Nubians and not Egyptians. But still – they preserved it.

They justified it by saying that it was a part of their culture. So they HAD to preserve it.

And We Indians demolished a mosque – The Babri Masjid.

And we call ourselves secular.

Here lies an example of sheer contrast, where a country strives to preserve a piece of stone as it a part of its culture, and another, which strives to destroy its culture behind the monstrous visage of Secularism.

The image of the burning Babri Masjid reigns supreme in every Indian. We are abashed, yet helpless. Every time there is a terror attack on India, it is justified on the grounds of the Babri Masjid. This is indeed the sorry state of our country. This is the real India. And as long as we don’t make an attempt to preserve what is ours, we will forever be called a Land of snake charmers.