Erudite secularists’ sage understanding

India that is Bharat

SATIRICUS has been feeling dizzy for the last some days,‒ since May 16, to be precise. In fact, he has been feeling faint to the point of fainting. Not that he did not know the dangers of changing from a simple communal cuss to a secular intellectual, but then he thought, when secularism was so much in fashion, why should Satiricus unfashionably lag behind? Alas, he failed miserably. He found that what passes for his intellect is pitifully inadequate for the intellectual acrobatics required of a respected secularist. Had he been an accomplished acrobat like seasoned secularists, he would have understood and applauded the thrilling twists and turns they have been performing since that disastrous day.

For instance, he would have learnt that the people of India fall into two classes – the wise and the idiots. Those who voted the BJP to power with a stunning majority were the idiots, and those who are “sorry” that this happened are the wise – like Javed Anand, the Muslim intellectual with a half-Hindu name. Digging up some little-known American parallel, the anguished Anand virtually called the voters idiots in a profound piece he wrote in The Indian Express (where else?)

sorrowfully titled Sorry, World, We tried. “We”? Who are these “we”? Why, “we” the wise, of course. But if the Indian world is so overwhelmingly full of idiots, why apologize to them? Satiricus does not know, because he cannot know – how can he, when he is one of the idiots?

Unhappy Anand’s agony apart, there are two other shining lights of sacred secularism who taxed Satiricus’s bird-brain – Shahi Imam and Abu Azami. The Shahi Imam sadly said communal forces have won, but diametrically differing with him Azami said, the Muslims voted for the BJP, which proved they are secular. What does this mean, if it means anything? As per the idiotic understanding of Satiricus, it actually means secular Muslims helped communal forces to win. This is truly terrible. For it means in turn that they approve of Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar’s official plan to massacre 22,000 Muslims, as accurately estimated by statistitian Rahul Gandhi.

Fortunately enough, there are eminent secular intellectuals willing and able to prevent Modi from degenerating into a demonic Hindu. One of them is The Indian Express editor, who has issued a signed front-page warning to Modi, threateningly titled Your time starts now. In it he has sternly told Modi that there is “no time for majority triumphalism”….”if so many of our minorities feel insecure, excluded and unrepresented”. Oh, my ! What a dire warning ! But isn’t there a mix-up here? As per Satiricus’s idiotic understanding, when the erudite editor talks of “majority triumphalism” he is talking of the voting majority, but when he talks of “insecure minorities” he is talking of religious minorities. Isn’t that comparing an apple with a banana? As if this is not enough to cause confusion worse confounded is Satiricus’s infantile intellect, the erudite editor talks of “so many minorities”. So many? Isn’t that an extraordinary exaggeration? For according to an immutable dogma of Indian secularism, there is only one minority, and the favourite media term ‘minorities’ is only a polite plural. Oh, well, Satiricus is a journalist, so his knowledge of English is too poor for him to be able to distinguish between semantics and secularism.

Anyway, as there are no Hindus and Muslims in secular India but only the minority and consequently the majority, Satiricus was not so surprised to see celeb writer Chetan Bhagat sagely advising BJP, “Don’t make majoritarian mistake” but use its “Hindu power” “wisely”. And what is the wise way to use Hindu power? Of course the secular way. And what is the secular way? It is for religions to exist “like milk and sugar”. Ah, truly wise words, but stupid Satiricus has a silly question – is the BJP the milk or is it the sugar in this metaphor? When the persecuted Persians of yore arrived on the shore of Gujarat for safe asylum their leader did exactly that – he put a pinch of sugar in a cup of milk to show how they would live. But then, that is history – the history of communal Bharat, not of secular India. So Satiricus, being an illiterate journalist, should not be surprised if for this illustrious man of letters Indian secularism means 85 per cent Indians should behave like a pinch of sugar in the cup of 12 per cent minority milk. That can be the only reasonable reason why the said celebrity should wisely warn “Hindus in power”. But there may also be a more satisfying, because more secular, explanation. It is that this piece of advice is not meant for Bharat’s 85 per cent Hindus, it is meant for India’s 85 per cent majoritarians; for it is axiomatic among our intellectual acrobats that anything good for the majority must be bad for secularism. Amen! Ameen! Blessed are bird-brains like Satiricus!