Re: Why India should be Secular

["Sanjai Kukreti" <skukreti@home.com>]

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Please help make the Manifesto better, or accept it, and propagate it!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Abhijeet Pradhan <perdi420@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sam Garg wrote :
>  ""Name one muslim majority/ muslim ruled
>  country in the world which is truly secular."""
>
> TURKEY

Haha! Please note the notoriously rigorous purge conducted against Islam
by
Kemal Ataturk!

Ataturk had many religious activists executed or imprisoned. He BANNED
many
religious practices, including the wearing of the Fez and the turban,
and
only allowed Turkish men to wear western brimmed hats. Men were
certainly
not allowed to keep beards. The nationalist Ataturk of course fought
various
border wars, to defeat various border threats.

If you are in favor of a nationalist ideology that removes Islam like
that,
then I'm afraid BJP/VHP/RSS would be too tame for you.

And when we say secular, are we also talking about general pluralism
too?
What would the Kurdish community leaders have to say about pluralism in
Turkey? Or Armenians?

Please note that Constantinople was once a major religious center for
Orthodox Christianity, but is still nevertheless now turned into
Istanbul,
the seat of Turkish power.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the National Debate on System Reform.       debate@indiapolicy.org
Rules, Procedures, Archives:            ../debate/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------