Towards A Meaningless Polity:

Political FATWAs & Apolitical Agents

The debate regarding the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind's FATWA against Vande Mataram is showing the extreme plight of Indian national polity. This represents the repeated trend of un-contextual issues taking the center stage of national debates from time to time. It helps none but the divisive forces who want to fish in the muddy waters of irrational topics. This is no way related to the real aspects of cultural pluralism which is rooted in the fabrics of secular polity. National song is a historic symbol of Independence struggle, not a symbol to be reinterpreted in contemporary politics. Hence we should suspect the interests behind cooking a debate on these lines. When Indian economy is facing plethora of confusing signals from international trade and domestic market, this kind of a dispute is rather premature as well as a concocted attempt to divert the national attention. Stirring this debate sectarian parties are trying to re-emerge from their electoral trauma. Fringe groups from minority communities will in turn benefit from these discussions as well. Only by inflating sectarianism among the minorities , their leaders can pursue the economic interests and political bargains.

This is the usual methodology of parties and leaders who need no nerve to think about the burning issues of the real public. They invest their time in making fictitious arguments and volatile aspects in their bandwagon. But with the growing importance of real economy, we see the diminishing space for these divisive politics. The concerns of unemployment and food prices have started capturing the daily news titles. The electoral fragmentation of religious political formations in the recent times show that it is no longer the days of injected jingoism and religious patriotism.'

The inherent nature of Indian market economy provides ample fertile grounds for these seeds to grow. Their segmentations and consumer channels have made Indian mind a better playground of all divisive ideologies. Here religion, ethnicity, tirades of anti-nationalism and sectarianism all will gain momentum in this atmosphere. Thus the net average of all this equations is the further deterioration of political debates. This vacuum is occupied by the market economists who favor only the winds of trade. The irrational polity is a boon to their economic agendas. The market economy will never bridge this divides but can only divide nation into smaller segments of purchasing power. Thus disparity will breed disunity and hence all kinds of divisiveness will be vitalized in this atmosphere. By giving bandwidth to these meaningless discussions we will gain nothing but further divisive factors. Only by connecting the national debates with peoples issues we can interpret past and present in a transparent and objective manner. The stretching imaginations of these twisted topics should be set aside for this goal.