Defence Minister Rajnath Singh performed Shastra pooja, a ritual in which weapons are worshiped, on a Rafale jet in the French port city of Bordeaux on the festive occasion of Vijayadashami.
Rajnath wrote "Om" and offered flowers and a coconut on the fighter jet in France's Merignac before going on a sortie of the jet.
The ritual invited huge criticism from the Left brigade and Lutyens media, besides the Congress party.
Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge has dubbed the pooja derisively as a 'tamasha', insisting that they never resorted to such theatrics when they bought weapons like the Bofors gun.
This statement was nothing, but a deliberate and malicious act of insulting one's religion or religious beliefs, under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code.
In any real secular country, a person, who is under the oath office and insults a religion and acts as a source of misunderstanding between communities, would have been prosecuted.
Much problem lies in the absence of definition of word "secularism" in the Indian constitution. The founding fathers of the constitution did not feel necessary for including the word "secularism" because of the ingrained secular traditions of this great nation, but was included in the 42nd amendment to the Indian constitution in 1976.
So, in the absence of a definition of secularism, some interpret it as a concept which envisions separation of religion and state, which is akin to the Western concept. And, some others envisions treating all religions equal.
If the Indian secularism is equal to that of western secular concept, there should not be three lions and eternal message of Satyamev Jaytev (Truth Always Triumphs) of the Mundkoupanishad on India’s National Emblem.
There should also not be Ashoka Chakra on the Tricolour and Dharmachakra Pravartanay inscribed behind Lok Sabha Speaker's seat, besides original copies of the Constitution having images of Hindu deities like Ram, Laxman, Sita, Lord Krishna and Nataraj.
India has always been a sect-neutral country (Panthnirpeksh).
Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shakht, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism have flourished, but there has never been any discrimination with any of the sects.
To make this sect-neutral country into a religion-neutral nation is a deplorable attempt to destroy its actual consciousness.
SEVERAL left-leaning Twitter users also mocked Rajnath with hashtag Rafale Puja Politics.
Many argued that performing rituals of a specific religion on the induction of a national asset is disrespecting the secular spirit of the nation and showing intolerance and disrespect towards other religions.
From Shah Bano to Salman Rushdie to Taslima Nasreen, the psuedo-secularists always respected the sentiments of minorities even at the risk of making mockery of the word "secular" that they themselves had inserted in the Constitution.
They hardly criticise CN Annadurai, the founder of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, for abusing Madurai Meenakshi asking why the goddess needs a diamond nose stud and Lord Rama asking where did he get his engineering degree to have built Ram Setu bridge.
This brigade hardly criticized former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 2006 communal statement that minorities, particularly Muslims, must have the first claim on resources, which was in gross violation of the spirit of secularism.
They also remained silent when he tried to create a sectarian divide in the armed forces by bringing in the Sachar Committee to make an assessment of socio-economic conditions of Muslims in government, bureaucracy and in army.
Also, they never speak when the so-called secularist rulers use state funds to subsidize the Haj pilgrimage and madrassas.
In contrast, they make hell of a noise and disrespect sentiments of Hindus by criticizing nationalistic party like BJP, which is making all efforts to showcase India's soft power on the world stage.
Like the previous Indian governments, these psuedo-secularists hardly recognize the value of soft power, which helps meet the country's foreign policy goals.
Under Modi, India has been using its soft-power assets to enhance the nation's image abroad very successfully.
Consider these: Late External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke in Sanskrit to more than 600 experts from 60 nations in Bangkok and urged them to propagate the language, as she described it to be modern and universal in nature.
Sushma had argued that proficiency in Sanskrit could go a long way in finding solutions to contemporary problems like global warming, unsustainable consumption, civilization clash, poverty and terrorism.
Modi lobbied the United Nations and won the support of 175 member states at the General Assembly for the resolution setting an international day of yoga. On this day, yoga events are held across continents with nearly 200 countries participating.
The performance of Shastra pooja also is yet another age-old soft-power tools of India to improve its image abroad. It should be celebrated as this ritual has a deep philosophical meaning.
Unlike Abrahamic traditions, Hinduism sees divinity in all of creation and God as both immanent and transcendent.
Since the Hindus see manifestation of the divine in weapons also, they clean, decorate and worship the implements that sustain their lives, on the ninth day of Navaratri.
It perhaps will be very interesting for the world to know how a society, which worships weapons, approaches questions of war, violence and non-violence.
For Hindus, dharmic conduct is the basis upon which all the other goals of life are to be attained. So, they also use weapons as per strict dharmic code of conduct.
Hence, wars those days were fought between soldiers only, which is in stark contrast to the total war approach of the Islamic and Christian invasions, where plunder, destruction of cities and large-scale rape, murder and forced conversion of the general populace, are norms of the day.
The tradition that sees divinity in weapons also prizes non-violence. Arthashastra lays out war as the last option, but lays emphasis on conciliation, gifts, dissension and force as a way to deal with other kingdoms.
The projection of these democratic values on to the global stage certainly should be celebrated when the global order is in dire need of positive exemplars.
Unfortunately, the left brigade and Lutyens media cannot perceive events beyond their hate-Hindu rants and divisive concepts, which hovers around beef ban, RSS, lynching, church attacks, MeToo, Sachar and many more.
They continue to rant about these trash topics, despite people of the country had dumped their anti-India, anti-Hindu campaigns in last general elections.
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