Aurobindo, Vivekananda and Gandhi too oxymorons ?

 
Preface :
I am nationalist. I’m patriotic. Nothing is wrong. I am born Hindu. Nothing is wrong. So I’m a Hindu nationalist. So yes, you can say I’m a Hindu nationalist because I’m a born Hindu,” The moment Narendra Modi said this in his interview to Reuters last week, the secular hounds set upon him.

One of the secular hounds is Salman Kurshid, India’s External Affairs Minister. First, Khurshid being a Muslim, his secular credential is presumed. But, he has more claims to be secular. In the Indian political theatre just as hounding Modi is sufficient to prove one’s secular credential, admiring him is adequate to prove the lack of it. When Khurshid was chief of the Congress in UP, he defended the Islamic terrorist outfit Students Islamic Movement of India [SIMI] - reincarnated later as Indian Mujhahideen - as peace-loving lads, arguing as its counsel in courts. This was in 2001.

Some ultra-secularists might even feel that, by defending the ‘innocent’ SIMI, Khurshid qualifies for Padma Vibhushan, one notch less than Bharat Ratna. But they may not know that long back, in 1986 itself, he had qualified for Bharat Ratna for his book At Home In India; A Statement of Indian Muslims, expounding secular Muslim views. In that book, Khurshid wrote that in 1984, when the Sikhs were massacred in Delhi, “there was terrible satisfaction among the Muslims, who have not completely forgotten the Partition’s unpleasant aftermath. Hindus and Sikhs were alike paying for their sins. They were paying for the blood they had drawn in 1947”.

It is with such high credentials Khurshid says Modi’s claim of being Hindu Nationalist is oxymoron. The dictionary meaning of oxymoron is ‘a speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas are combined like thunderous silence or sweet sorrow’. That is, according to Khurshid, ‘Hindu’ and ‘Nationalism’ are opposites. If his poor prose is excused, he may have only intended to say that religion and nationalism contradict. But is ‘Hindu nationalism’ oxymoron? Test this on those who had laid the foundation for Indian freedom for contemporary India.

For complete article, please read from the link  : http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Aurobindo-Vivekananda-and-Gandhi-too-oxymorons/2013/07/16/article1685661.ece.