All this hullabaloo about public outcry on what one should or should not include in one’s daily palate going on in every nook and corner of the land appears to be revolving around the declaration of the nation as a secular democracy. Prima facie, such a declaration was not part of the nation’s Constitution at the time the guiding manual was formally adopted on Jan.26, 1950, but rather surreptitiously introduced in 1976 by you-know-who which has been criticised by some keen observers of such measures taken at different times as sheer expediency, if not motivated. The glitch in that landmark step is that people at large were not taken into confidence as required in a true (and not phony) democracy. The episodes being reported every day in the media featuring different sections in the population mutually hurting the sentiments based on beliefs and ideologies of different faiths have taken off from the point of requiring India’s diaspora to adhere to secular principle. This fallout was perhaps not visualised by the powers that be before modifying the country’s Constitution. Now, the clock cannot be put back.

Religion and politics (as practised by the players in the field) are separately keeping the land’s masses on their toes. The two — religion and politics— together have made life of people into a mess that it is today. Rights of people to lead their life as they wish in matters of worship, attire, food habits, customs and taboos, forgetting their responsibilities in the matter of respecting the ways of others is the main undoing of people at large in this functioning anarchy.

Clamouring for restoration of sanatana dharma in our times, going by the voices from well-marked sources sounds a bit incongruous, the country having been subjected to infiltration by aliens over centuries with two among them pitching their tent in the land and ruling for decades, resulting in the spread of alien faiths. History’s pages can be rewritten but history cannot be changed. At the end of the day, it is far too late to question the ways of people of those faiths that go along with their ideologies, at variance with  those of indigenous populations. The choice before the masses of the land now and hereafter is between accepting the differences to live in harmony or practice vigilantism to prattle and rattle mutually, with cattle coming on centre-stage.

Some may take umbrage at raising an interesting point on worshipping the cow and not accepting its slaughter for food. In this context, do the exotic breeds such as Red Dane, Holstein, Jersey and others as against desi breeds such as Hallikar, Amrit Mahal and others, merit exclusion from the ban on slaughter. Fortunately, buffalo is outside the radar of the vigilantes for now.