Floriano Lobo writes: "India has been unfortunate to be cursed with religious bigotry. Ram Rajya has earned us the demolition of the Babri Masjid, for which L.K. Advani has paid dearly by forfeiting his life's dream of sitting on the chair of the Prime Minister of India. And, with the demolition of the Babri Masjid , the secularity of this nation's polity has been undermined and vastly threatened. We have had Godhra, Kandamal and more in the name of Ram Rajya following this criminal act . And we are going to have much much more indicatives of this Rajya from the people who are themselves far far away from such Rajya."
----------------------------------------------------- My response: Floriano's arguments do not hold much water. In the name of secularism, we have also had the “Shah Bano” Supreme Court Judgment reversal, Governments banning books, refusing to impose a Uniform Civil Code, refusing to protect the respect, honor and safety of so many of our artists, writers and other citizens, and so on and so forth. This does not mean that "Secularism" as a concept is bad. It just means that the concept has been misused. The same principle holds true to the “Ram Rajya” expression. The misuse of a particular expression by a political party to further its own political goals cannot alter or change the meaning of a word. That is why understanding the context of the speech becomes important. What is essential to understand here is the CM did not use the expression to incite hatred against any community. The CM merely called upon the people to join hands and make Goa a model State. Hence, the mere use of the expression “Ram Rajya” in a speech should not be seen as an unsecular act. Cheers Sandeep
