I came across this article by Soumitro Das in a recent issue of Hindustan Times.  The author deserves to be commended for stating the truth about our so called democracy. In the same article the author also goes on to demolish the myth about India's secularism. Let me quoute a few lines from a remarkably candid article. "Secularism,  says the author is not appeasement of all religious groups, rather keeping a distance from them." "Equal respect for all religions has turned out to be equal appeasement of all religions, whereas true secularism of the European variety, means exactly the opposite - equal distance from all religions. So unless we have people who are willing to risk their lives and demonstrate to the religionwallas that there are things more important than God, we are going to slide towards authoritarianism of the Asian kind."

 Mr. Das is wrong when he talks about equal appeasement of all religions. It is Islam which actually calls the shots in the country, the rest are just thrown crumbs by the secular dispensation. The Islamic street can dictate to the secular government and the government caves in. It happened in the case of Salman Rushdie, it happened to Taslima Nasrin. It keeps on happening all the time, only we are either not told about it by the Islamic Indian media or the whole issue it cleverly distorted to suit the Islamists. For obvious reasons Mr Das stops at stating the equal distance paradigm; he does not explore the corollary - a nation that is closer to Islam than to the secular ideals is not a secular nation, it is an Islamic nation.

 The author's contention regarding telling the religionwallas reminds me of the question "but who will bell the cat?' Our secular liberals would rather charge the windmills of Hindutva rather than take on the Islamic fat cats who are bent imposing sharia in the country.

I have always maintained on this board that India is an Islamic country in secular veil. The veil seems to be lifting but do we have the eyes to look truth in the face?