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Some liberal Hindus and Muslims have been highly critical
of what I have written on the demolition of the Babri
structure and related issues since 6 December 1992. They
expect me to define my position on the question of the
place of Muslims in India. Even if I ignore the implicit
insinuation (and in some cases explicit) in it, the
suggestion is misplaced. I see myself as an analyst of
developments and not as a grand architect, or an
ideologue, of an ideal India. Indeed, I distrust
ideologies and ideologues.
My main difficulty, however,
is with the idiom in which the public discourse has been
conducted in our country for over seven decades, that is,
since the ascendancy of the Gandhi-Nehru leadership in
the freedom movement. I would describe it as the
liberal-Marxist Gandhian idiom. Pandit Nehru has been
the foremost expression and user of this idiom and
continues to dominate our discourse even in death.
Author : Shri Girilal Jain
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