After 56 years of sometimes tortured independence, our country has finally begun to forge an identity for modern times. While the face of India’s future is visible as it has embarked on its new journey with pride, its detractors and doubting Thomases, within the country and outside, have started a new chorus.

Can India handle its Muslim minority? The rise of Hindu right is giving a chilling message to the country’s huge Muslim population which has stayed nearly invisible on the global stage. But now resentments and dangers are simmering. Muslim population is being pushed deeper into the ghetto. As unpalatable as it may be to contemplate, Nehru’s secular dream is being endangered. These are a few screaming headlines in a section of our English media which provides spicy copy to foreign papers and magazines as well, without doubt by denigrating our own country in the press. We prompt and prod the English media abroad to replicate the same with double the energy who are past masters in crying wolf.

There is no secret that if Muslim population in India has fallen behind the mainstream it is because of the selfish politicians who cruelly utilised them as vote banks by creating in them a sense of isolation. The glittering dream of Indian democracy nursed by Nehru as a secular state, turned into a nightmare by politicians. The most obvious culprit was the Congress which generated false hopes by appeasing them more to create distance than to doing anything substantial for them. They created a bug-bear of Hindu extremism with an eye on their votes. They remained directionless and their leadership unfortunately passed into the hands of extremist elements of their community. The result was that Muslim community has not given sufficient attention to education, entrepreneurship and reforms. Over last fifteen years as our country has tried to hitch its fortunes to the global economy, Muslims have fallen farther behind the Hindu mainstream. If Muslims are retreating more deeply into their religious identity, choosing a more conservative brand of Islam, the politicians of secular-breed as well as their own isolationist, backward looking religious leaders are responsible. Nobody studies why they are turning away from modern world or to be specific their anti-Americanism is surfacing quite often with a streak of feeling beneath that the entire Christian and Jewish world is against them. The upsurge of Hindu nationalist sentiments is also tailing them, that is what is dinned in their ears by a section of our English media.

On a cool analysis one can observe that this rising influence of conservative mullahs and the so-called secular type of politicians are frightening a common Muslim. Besides, madarsas which are anchor of the Muslim community, are a milestone around the neck of the nation. The real difference or conflict is never between Hindus and Muslims but between the moderate, sane voice of Muslim and the fundamentalist, rabid voice. When Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Imam of Jama Masjid in New Delhi, encouraged Indian Muslims to join the Jehad in Afghanistan, Shabana Azmi, M.P. and noted actress had retorted publicly that Bukhari should be airdropped into Kandahar to wage the Jehad himself.

The high profile economic progress in certain sectors like IT etc., is pushing many Muslims to confront the dangers of being left behind and the failures of their own community. Indeed some critics say that country’s Muslims, led by unrepentant secularists, have focussed too much on grievances and too little on achievements. Unfortunately it happens to be an ugly truth that the so-called secularist politicians have always been adept in creating circles and ripples of hatred in society.

When we celebrate 15^th August, a nation may have a birthday. This anniversary of the nation, using that world as the legal manifestation of statehood, is merely a ritual. For a culture and a people, with the background of indeed thousands of years, it is not a birthday. India did not come to life at midnight on the 15^th August 1947. It had already lived through about forty centuries, filled with grandeur of success and failures. There were triumphs and wounds in our civilisation and in any definition of a nation. Being an Indian represents merely our citizenship; being part of the Hindu fold defines our nationality. Pakistan which found its own freedom at the same midnight never had a nationhood because, unlike India, it rarely tasted vibrant democracy.

India has become more like the rest of the world as it sets out into the sunlight, it is changing fast. Its vibrant diaspora, a gift without price to other nations, brims with creativity and ingenuity. As the country steps off the road to prosperity, despite its petty and ugly politics, it is forging a new identity for modern times. It is largely due to the pride and ambition instilled in the majority community. Today’s secularists, however, make every effort to humiliate majority community. They have a tendency of self-flagellation and a terrible inferiority complex calling religious leaning of majority community a return to dark ages. It is because of this pervasive complex that India’s road to global power is full of uncertainty which is the result of self-doubt of some of the politicians and intellectuals.

It is pertinent to quote noted economic historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam who is Director of Studies at the prestigious Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He had challenged the long-cherished notion of official secularism. “To be a defender of official Indian secularism means that one has to be a part of a sort of mishmash of Stalinism, Indira Gandhi camp followers, a diffuse category which is everything other than Hindu.”

In 1997 Subrahmanyam debunked Indian historians like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib and in “The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama” he stripped the myth built around the 16^th century Portuguese explorer, traditionally viewed as the first European imperialist in India. Legend has cast da Gama as a sort of cross between Christ and Alexander the Great. Subrahmanyam blasted this legend: “The Indian history establishment is linked to official institutions and an official line on Indian history”, he says, “I haven’t played the game”.

It is clear that 56 years after independence, socialism and secularism are in retreat. These changes were overdue in India. It is, however, worrisome that in proportion to their number leftist scribes are able to make more noise in the country. This makes them more irrelevant. India has been rediscovering itself and it is unstoppable. As the nation has reached well past  21^st century we are less socialist, less secular, less centralised and slowly learned to respect our roots. In the last decade or so, the conception of Indian nationalism as spelt out by Congress party has been steadily eroded by what Nobel Laureate V S Naipaul has called “a million little mutinies”; Hindu pride, regional assertiveness and empowerment of poor people – these are country’s assets. Perhaps the most powerful of these forces are economic reforms and a rediscovery of religion. It is a strange and unlikely combination, many bewildered politicians feel but they cannot say any thing as it is inexorable process. Just as India’s socialist basis of nationalism is challenged and dwarfed, so is its secularism. More than that it has become acceptable to articulate a Hindu view unthinkable twenty years ago. The old order has yielded giving place to new. Unfortunately many politicians hardly know how to build a modern country upon an ancient civilization; that is India’s challenge for the 21^st century.