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September     Last updated: September 16, 5:00 p.m.

But for Mian Kuldip Nayar, where would secularism be? Nowhere, Satiricus is sure. As it is, it is perpetually khatre mein hai from the RSS ogre, but with this knight in shining armour routinely riding to its rescue, there is hope that secularism will triumph not only in India but also (or even) in Pakistan. This is the comfort Satiricus has drawn from Nayar's recent pious piece on how "secularism is indispensable" for the "ethos of independence". He opens it with a momentous revelation: "Partition has, in fact, debunked the two-nation theory." Oh, my! How ignorant of Satiricus not to have known it! But even in the midst of his ignoble ignorance Satiricus wonders what this "in fact" business is all about.

For if the two-nation theory is not a fact, how can the Partition based on it be a fact? So far as Satiricus knows, Pakistan is a fact, but of course our learned Non Resident Pakistani is better qualified to say if that, "in fact", is so. He goes on to say : "Even the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had stated that Hindus and Muslims were two nations, came round to say after the creation of the new state : 'We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste, creed and another'." How noble of Jinnah! In fact that nobility of the original Pakistani makes Satiricus feel ashamed of his lowly Indianness.

For now it is clear to him that Jinnah set up a separate secular Pakistan simply because India was not secular enough. Why otherwise would Janab Kuldip Nayar so nostalgically recall those glorious "starting" days of Pakistan? At the same time, if he is blessed with 'total recall', will he please tell us communalists when those starting days came to an equally glorious end? Or were they a non-starter? From Jinnah, Nayar shifts to Gandhi and says : "Mahatma Gandhi never accepted the thesis that religion formed the basis of nationhood. He announced his decision to spend the rest of his life in Pakistan looking after the minorities." Well, now, Satiricus knows that Gandhiji had said Partition would take place over his dead body—and he also knows that Partition had taken place over lakhs of Hindu dead bodies. What he does not know is what happened to Gandhiji's decision.

Did he later decide not to go because the minorities in Pakistan were enjoying the bliss of Jinnah's non-discriminatory jannat? Or because there were no minorities left in Pakistan to look after? Satiricus is not sure, but he is sure Nayar knows which of the two is in fact the fact. For a hopeless Hindu like Satiricus "minorities" means Hindus, so he would like to be enlightened by an enlightened secularist like Nayar why in today's Pakistan Hindus are hiding under Christian names to save themselves from getting killed. From here this secular fundamentalist proceeds with his magnificent obsession with Pakistan, and delves into the fundamental question "who is a Muslim?" which, he says, was vociferously debated in Pakistan.

Satiricus quite agrees that this question is fundamentally important, but he is surprised to see that it should be debatable in Pakistan of all places. In fact, if newspaper reports are to be believed, Pakistan is quite clear about the answer—rather answers—to this question. If you are a man and if you keep your beard to a certain length, you are a Muslim. That is answer No. 1. If you are a woman and if you wear sleeves of a certain length, you are a Muslim. That is answer No. 2. And if you are a family and if you smash your television set because it is anti-Islamic, you are Muslim. That is answer No. 3. Are so many answers to one single question not enough? Curiously enough they are not, if Mian Nayar could believe a little story Satiricus could tell him : A few decades back a certain Muslim lived in Delhi's Jama Masjid.

He was a devout Muslim, as all Muslims are. He offered namaz with religious regularity, observed all Muslim customs and rituals without fail—and even ate beef. In fact, he was the perfect answer to the question "who is a Muslim?" But was he? Our esteemed Islamic secularist would be as- tounded to know that he was not. He was not only a devout Hindu, he was something much worse—he was a committed RSS swayamsevak by name Ramdas—of all names!—specially charged with the dangerous mission of ferreting out the Muslim League's conspiracy to slaughter the capital's Hindus during the days of the Partition. To make confusion worse confounded in Kuldip's anti-communal consciousness, Satiricus could tell him that there were many select Sangh swayamsevaks in Punjab and Rajasthan during the Partition holocaust who had been directed to become Muslims for such missions.

They dressed like Muslims, they spoke Pashto fluently, they knew the Koran by heart, and they even had their sunnat performed by Hindu doctors. That was Hindutva in action—the same dangerous Hindutva into which Nayar fears India might still slip. By the way, if the question "who is a Muslim?" is of supreme secular significance, how about the question "who is not"? Nayar has not said anything about it, but a certain Pakistani has. This Pakistani scholar left Pakistan in disgust, disillusion and disenchantment, and wrote a book titled Why I am not a Muslim under an assumed name, Ibn Warraq.

Answering the question "who is a Muslim?" for himself this self-exiled Pakistani Muslim says he is not a Muslim because (to sample a few reasons) : 1. Allah is the greatest dictator that the human mind can imagine; 2. Islam staunchly advocates divine dictatorship, and forbids law-making by declaring the Koran an eternal and unchangeable code of law; 3. The high-sounding Islamic slogan of human equality is nothing but an unfounded boast. But of course secularists like Kuldip Nayar, who are more in Pakistan than in India, must know more about Pakistan than Pakistanis out of Pakistan like Ibn Warraq. So Satiricus will without doubt accept Nayar's revelation of truth when he says, "No doubt Pakistan will one day become a tolerant, pluralistic society" ... "will be able to establish democracy" ... and "will realise the futility of insisting on making religion the basis of nationality". In short, one golden day Pakistan will become a secular democracy instead of a religious dictatorship that commends jehad as a holy war on infidels. It is said the human being's capacity to delude himself is infinite. Mian Kuldip Nayar is very, very human.