Editorial: Back to the future

Political parties can and do act in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform or not perform. And usually it is a measure of the leaders' intellect (or lack of it) if they come up with worn ideas that have lost their resonance for society. So one should not be surprised that the BJP President Rajnath Singh dusted off some old ideas and sprung them afresh on his party and voters. At the meeting of his party's national executive last week, he recycled three of these. The first was that India needed a uniform civil code. The second was that Article 370, which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir, needed to be amended. And the third was that a distinction needed to be made between 'Panthnirapeksh' and 'Dharmanirapeksh' because it was the former that conveyed the true sense of the term 'secular' in the context in which it is used in India.

 

The last of these has caused the biggest flutter in the political dovecote. "There is a big difference in being 'Dharmanirapeksh' or 'Panthnirapeksh'. Panth or sect symbolises devotion towards a specific belief, a specific way of prayer and specific form of god, but 'dharma' symbolises absolute and eternal values which can never be changed," Mr Singh said. From this correct statement, Mr Singh drew the incorrect conclusion that the true meaning of 'secular' is not 'Dharmanirapekshta'. It also appears to be the case that Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani have on occasion preferred to use Panthnirapeksh in their speeches. But this is the first time the party has made what seems like a policy statement on the subject. It further appears that even the Constitution uses Panthnirapeksh. When Indira Gandhi was amending the Constitution during the Emergency with the aim of including "socialist" and "secular" in the Preamble, the term posited against Panthnirapeksh was Sampradaynirapeksh.

It is not just Marxist historians who have held that an important cause for the decline of India's scientific and technological prowess from about the sixth century onwards was its amazing penchant for indulging in futile debates about the meaning and nature of 'truth'. Mr Singh's views should serve to remind everyone of this view. The simple point that Mr Singh needs to keep in view is that, whether it is 'Panthnirapeksh' or 'Dharmanirapeksh' or 'Sampradaynirapeksh', the emphasis is on the word 'nirapeksha' or neutral. Whatever be the truth according to Mr Singh, Indians expect the state and the government not to discriminate against or in favour of groups because they belong to one dharma or panth or another. The key issue is non-discrimination, not the exact meaning of inherently imprecise words. The BJP seems to be enjoying a political revival of sorts. It should not allow this to deteriorate into an attempt to revive debates that hark back to an old divisiveness. Indeed, the emphasis on both the uniform civil code and Article 370 sits poorly with the party's desire to reach out to Muslims, as stated by Mr Advani. If the party is serious about wanting to increase its share of the total vote and winning an extra 40 or more seats in the next Lok Sabha (again, a target that Mr Advani has set), then it has to look for other points of differentiation from the Congress. It is not that they don't exist.