Leaders of political parties are within their rights to believe and state that their party is a secular party. This is exactly what Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has stated in his recent reply to Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrao’s exhortation to the Christian community to vote for a secular candidate, even though there was no mention of the word ‘secular party’.
The problem, however, lies with some fundamentalist elements in some political parties who believe that secularism as practised in India is only ‘pseudo-secularism’, as it makes allowances and concessions for minorities.
Minority communities are allowed to run their own institutions with minority rights, which are considered to be ‘appeasement’ of minorities and a violation of universal rights. As a result, what is witnessed today is the gradual erosion of values and safeguards in the Constitution taking place with frequent false cases of religious conversions being levelled against the minorities.
