"Now that the Chief Minister of Bihar has dragged 'succularism' into the political discourse, it is time to deconstruct it so that we can end this pointless debate once and for all. I have deliberately misspelt the word because when said in Hindi that is how it is usually pronounced. It is a hard word to write in devnagri and the Hindi and Urdu equivalents do not quite mean what secularism has come to mean in the Indian political context. It is a foreign word that evolved in a European context when the powers of the church and the state were separated. In India, since none of our religions were led by pontiffs who controlled armies, or had vast temporal powers, we had no need to make this separation. But, the word secularism is used in India more than almost any other country. Why? Well, because when we entered our current era of coalition governments, political parties of leftist disposition found it convenient to keep the BJP out of power by saying they would only ally with 'succular phorces'. The BJP became a pariah after the Babri Masjid came down and so whenever someone like Nitish Kumar wants to hurl abuse at the party he is in alliance with in Bihar, or one of its leaders, the 'secularism' debate gets revived."

“The 2014 general election marked the beginning of the end of India’s ruling elite. The election whose results came last week marked the end. As someone born and bred in this group of privileged Indians, I speak as an insider. So believe me when I tell you that we controlled everything. Politics, government, business, foreign policy, the police, the military and the media. All this was possible because we were to some degree all courtiers in the court of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty since the British left. We knew that their ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ were as fake as their ‘idea of India’.... If they have spent the past five years targeting Modi, often wrongly, for what they perceive as attempts to crush democracy, it is possibly because they know how easily this can be done. The truth is that the traditional ruling elite believes in an idea of India in which there are privileges and not rights. This was always a bad idea. Now it is dead.”

“Dynasty, a political tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the catalyst for a new colonization of a country whose soul has already been deeply scarred by centuries of it.”

“Last week I went to see Arun Jaitley. He is one of the few politicians whom I respect. I have known him from the time I was a junior reporter and can say honestly that he is one of a handful of politicians who is not in politics for personal gain but for public service. He is in the process of moving out of the house in Lutyens’ Delhi that was allotted to him as a senior minister. While waiting to see him I noticed blank spaces on the walls where pictures have been taken down. His decision to surrender his government house as soon as he demitted office is remarkable in itself. I know millionaires and maharajahs who have to be physically evicted.”

“When I heard Aung San Suu Kyi's address to both houses of Britian's Parliament in Westminster hall last week, what impressed me was the clarity with which she spelt out her vision for her country. But, throughout her speech, something kept bothering me and by the time she finished, I discovered what it was. What bothered me was that I could not think of a single Indian leader who could make such a speech. The Indian political landscape today has become a desert in which only the stunted progeny of stunted political leaders bloom. We need our political parties to throw up real leaders and we need a political discourse in which real political problems are discussed. So can we stop fishing 'secularism' out of the dustbin of history and holding it up as a shining ideal? Its relevance faded a long time ago.”

“This is why it has been so astonishingly easy for the Gandhi dynasty to turn India’s oldest political party into a family firm. And once dynastic succession became acceptable at the highest levels of political power, it became impossible to prevent dynastic democracy spreading like a slow poison into the very soul of India. It spread horizontally at higher levels of leadership in every political party and vertically down to the lowest levels of grassroots democracy. It has now become almost impossible to find a village council that is free of this debilitating disease. ... India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ could more appropriately have been called India’s tryst with dynasty.”

“It was the first time an Indian prime minister had been so open about his religion and a tremor of fear went up the ‘secular’ spine of Lutyens’ Delhi. Friends who had never see the Ganga puja or Benares said that they loved the ceremony but they were worried about the message this would send to Muslims and Christians. So they readied their ammunition for the attack on Modi’s secular credentials that began within months of his becoming prime minister.”