Many things in life happen by accident. My purchase of Arun Shourie’s, “A Secular Agenda” is one such (delightful) accident. My many searches on the internet led to the same result: the book was out of print. Yet, by a queer twist of fate, I found this book in one of the bookstores in Bangalore.

Arun Shourie never fails to amaze me. His depth of reading and knowledge astounds me. Wonder where he has the time to do all that reading and thinking. “A Secular Agenda” is about 10 years old, yet very, very relevant to the contemporary state of affairs. Its relevance is compounded by events–changing social, economic, religious and political mores–occurring at a dizzying pace in the world of today.

The book is, as they say, simply “unputdownable.” Briefly, Shourie talks about these topics (I havent’ had the time to make notes, so no extracts. I plan to add an update to this review, so watch this space). He examines each topic in the larger scheme of things and distills them in the context of India.

A question of Nation

Where he delves in depth starting with the very definition of a nation. What constitutes a nation–people, shared values, geographical boundaries, common ideologies, etc. Specifically, he takes on the various hues of people who declaim that India was never a nation and can never be one and cuts their “logical” arguments to shreds. Further, he talks about the dangers this mode of thinking engenders to the national unity and integrity, and how a large part of what he says has already occurred.

Uniform Civil Code

My earlier blog on Uniform Civil Code pales in comparison with this wonderful examination. Arun Shourie traces the Shariat as was known in India. Among other things, he says that majority of the Muslims did not adhere to it since the Islamic onslaught on India. Rather, the custom was to follow the locally-accepted law–Hindu or otherwise. He then follows it up with the Shariat Bill (not the exact name) that many proponents during the British regime pressed for vociferously and its disastrous outcome during those times. This he follows up again with the inevitable conclusion that the anti-UCC secularists know nothing about the subject they talk about. A must-read section for one other reason: it opens our eyes to the urgency of enacting the UCC.

Infiltration

This forms the biggest chunk of the entire book. Complete with facts and figures, this section presents a very scary picture of the danger of infiltration and the heedlessness of our politicians who have sought to legitimise the infiltrators by granting them “citizenship” but for one reason: votes. And the compromise they effect for this? the very security of India; which seems to me a very steep price to pay for securing votes. The author has been very meticulous, presenting exact figures (as secured from records of the Home and other government departments) of infiltration in various states–West Bengal, UP, Delhi, and Assam among other states. This neatly fits in with a report I read recently–prostitution has suddenly boomed in Bangalore and a host of the girls are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants–as many as 130 were rounded up by the cops in a single campagin.

The Hindu-Muslim/Ayodhya Question

It’s too…ahem…juicy, so I won’t surmise anything here. Read it. Just sufficient to say that he lays down some concrete proposals for resolving the issue. But given the nature of our polity, I doubt anything will be done at least in the near future.

The Secular Press/Secularists

He takes on the Secularists, their modes of operation, their Goebbelisian tactics, their falsehoods and deception, and shows how it is time for them to pack up. These, our “intellectuals,” according to the author, have harmed our nation in manifold ways. Their unashamed support for the likes of Mulayam Singh, their servitude to the Imam Bukhari and Syed Shahbuddin and in particular, their role in the Ayodhya crisis come in for special treatment. Again, I’ll leave you to read this and form your thoughts.

This apart, Arun Shourie has also detailed on other issues such as Nehru’s double-standards, Patel’s patriotism, and the Kashmir problem. In all, a very worthy read, all the more relevant today because we have the benefit of hindsight–we’ve been witness to history unfolding over the past 10 years before which this book was written. Some of the stuff he writes is almost prophetic (all right, I may exaggerate, but in many ways this is true)–for instance, the escalation of the Kashmir problem, the repeated attacks by Jihadis, the recent UCC debate, and the infiltration problem that is compounding every day.

I highly recommend it.