MADRAS, India — India's secularism has gone up in smoke along with the festival of Diwali. Weeks preceding this joyous event — which nowadays has more noise and smoke brought about by unrelenting burst of crackers rather than light and luminosity — the rape and murder of Christianity in parts of the country seriously undermined the country's much-touted concept of secularism.
The long interreligious animosity between the majority Hindus and the minority Muslims, often provoked, encouraged and kept alive by political radicals, has a new dimension now. A deep rift between Christians and Hindus has been created by hawkish political outfits that directly or indirectly owe allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
An organization that openly supports the Hindu cause citing centuries-old Islamic invasions of the nation and the destruction and death that followed as reasons for hitting back today, the BJP was responsible for the demolition of the historic Babri Mosque in 1992 and the Godhra (in the western state of Gujarat) genocide in 2002, in which hundreds of Muslims were killed.