TriptiD
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The Congress has no tenable claim to secular principles. Who overturned the Shah Bano judgement against the advice of his own Muslim ministers and who unlocked the Ram Lalla temple to appease Hindus ? Which party sponsored and propped up Bhindrawale and which party used to get the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid to issue a fatwa to Muslims to vote in its favour?She has a genuine point. However petty and shallow the decision may seem to be, we need to consider the matter from a distance and with detachment.
Iqbal was relevant as a thinker who bridged the Doomsday logic and dire forebodings of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who took the two-nation theory of the former, and clothed it in terms that could be grasped and advocated by one of the foremost legal minds of his age. It was, in other words, very specific to Pakistan and the ideation and creation of Pakistan, whether or not the final steps were forced by circumstance.
Once the Indian National Congress took a clear view against that, and, inherently, against the Hindu-first parallel scheme of Savarkar and Golwalkar, and rejected the Two Nation Theory as a founding principle, Iqbal's relevance was extinguished. What is relevant in Indian political science theory and analysis is the contestation between the secular principles of the Congress and the bigoted thinking of the Sangh Parivar. There is no longer even the shadow of a Muslim version of the Two Nation Theory extant in India, nor the possibility that it might be relevant in any conceivable future set of circumstances.
@TriptiD
Also, the Sangh Parivar is not some ideological monolith and the RSS ideology itself is often misunderstood. It is based on pan- Hinduism rather than the othering of Muslims or Christians. It has done seminal work against untouchability and the caste system, for example. Sure, there are some vocal Hindu extemists that are part of the Parivar, but the majority of Hindus, and increasing number of Muslims, do not vote for the BJP because of any bigotry towards Muslims and other minorities but because BJP governments have generally been more efficient and leas corrupt than those of the Congress and other parties that claim to be secular and socialist. Where that has not been true, for example in most of the South, Orissa, Punjab and Delhi, the BJP has been unable to reap similar electoral rewards.