No secular India if Hindu ethos undermined: Advani

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>[bJP News] No secular India if Hindu ethos undermined: Advani

>Sun, 1 May 2005 08:30:59 -0700

>

>No secular India if Hindu ethos undermined: Advani

>Apr. 30, 2005

>India Daily

>

>

>Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L.K. Advani Saturday warned that India

>would not remain secular and would even cease to be India if its Hindu identity

>was undermined. Making a pitch for next year's Tamil Nadu elections while

>addressing a seminar in the state capital, Advani gave a strong call for

>protecting Hindu ethos while deploring what he described as a penchant for

>running down Hindus. "The BJP will raise its powerful voice against any

>attempts to dilute or erase the essentially Hindu identity and personality of

>Tamil Nadu - indeed, of India as a whole," he said. "We believe firmly and

>unreservedly in secularism but, equally, we hold that India is secular because

>of her Hindu ethos. In other words, India will not remain secular - indeed,

>India will not remain India as we know it and Tamil Nadu will not remain Tamil

>Nadu as the people of this great state know it - if this essential Hindu ethos

>and identity are undermined." Advani said the BJP had decided to go it alone in

>the state because one of the two main regional parties chose to part ways with

>it while the other "has conducted itself in such a manner that it became

>impossible to continue our alliance with it". "We believe that Tamil Nadu is

>waiting for, and fully deserves, liberation from the politics of vendetta,

>confrontation and negativism that has marked the alternating regimes of the two

>main parties in the state," he said. Stating that his party was proud of its

>ideology, Advani asserted that when the BJP spoke of cultural nationalism, it

>was not only about the construction of a Hindu temple at the site of the razed

>Babri mosque in Ayodhya. The BJP would not allow Hindus to be divided on caste

>lines by "pseudo-secular" parties with an eye on votes, he said, appealing to

>people of the state to embrace a new political culture. This, he said, entailed

>protecting and celebrating the hallowed Hindu history, spirituality, art and

>culture, and personality of Tamil Nadu. Advani said he was "distressed" to see

>how certain parties in Tamil Nadu had propagated atheism as their credo. "What

>is especially disturbing is their penchant to deride Hinduism and Hindu

>society. I wonder why they don''t preach atheism to Muslims and Christians, and

>why they don''t ever raise issues of social reform and social justice among

>non-Hindu communities. "The time has come for the people of Tamil Nadu to

>boldly question those who think that, it is alright if someone says ''I am

>proud to be a Muslim'' or ''I am proud to be a Christian'', but it is downright

>communal and obscurantist if a Hindu says ''I am proud to be a Hindu''." The

>BJP's ideology had three salient points, said Advani: commitment to

>nationalism, healthy regional pride and a belief that religion is the soul of

>India.

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