NRIS, Multiculturalism, and Pathankot

When NRIs from Canada arrive in India for various reasons: to avoid Canadian winter or family matters, they are sure they are leaving one seasoned democratic country to step into another one. In Canada, we have basic freedoms based on four fundamental principles: individual liberty, faith equality, gender equality and economic equity. Said differently, Canada is now a real multicultural democratic nation. That is our totemic reality, says Prime Minister Trudeau.
India of to-day, says MJ Akbar, is another vibrant multicultural democratic society, embodying and practicing the four principles noted above. In fact, says Mr. Akbar, India is the most democratic, multicultural nation in the world.For instance, In Delhialone youarise at dawn with aazan, then the temple bells peal and the recitation of the Granth Sahibis heard, as wellasthe church music is audible. No such multicultural fare is available anywhere else in the world: London, Washington, Toronto, Moscow or Beijing.
Of course, in the two hundred years of our subjugation during the Raj, economic huge exploitation was persistent. It is the hallmark of colonialism.Thus, in 1947, the British left India as one of the poorest nations in the world.Yet India is progressing fast: China, India and the US are nowrated the top economies. Inquisitive NRIs who talk to young Indian couples, saythat invariablythe young are highly educated, broad-minded, often employed, and say they would have much smaller families, unlike the previous generation. These are portents of a modern democratic nation.
But when this optimistic picture is getting familiar in the India, there comes the almost disaster, known as the Pathankot Episode. This had the potential of an armed contest with Pakistan.Luckily, that tragedy verging on a full-fledged war didn’t happen.
MJ Akbar notes that anyone religion-based country, claiming to be a democracy, is a farce. An accepted democracy has to be multicultural!In the Middle East, only one-religionnationsexist. They can festoon themselves in wordy self-praising phrases, pretending to be democratic. But in reality, it is an autocracy everywhere, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to Afghanistan, with some democratic content, ruled directly or with the blessings of the Mullah.Pakistan is a peculiar anomaly: It holds elections but only recognizes the Sharia.
India, say MJ Akbar and Ms. J Singh, has to be at its guard perpetually about Pakistan. It is a nation ruled by the Colonels, laced with Islamic fanaticism, puffed up with a stockpile of atomic bombs, and a horde of fancy flying machines donated by the USA. It is one nation where the Middle Class, normally the mouth piece of the nation, is gaged and cowed down by the Army.
All economic progress now happening in India will come to naught, if India fails to be vigilant along the Indo-Pak borders now and forever!

PREM KUMAR IS A FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR.