Secularism as a concept died in India the day Rajiv married Sonia ....

Admittedly history could have taken many different paths. Rahul's grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did not have to get killed in the hands of militants. Rahul's father "jeetenge ya loosenge" Rajivji would not have to leave his flying career and subsequently get killed by who we now know to be terrorists of another hue. But history took the course it had to and now we have Rahul snitching about "Hindu terrorists" to the US ambassador - according to leaked cables.

So, massaging and lazy explanations aside, the leaked cable confirms what we knew to be true for a while now - the Prince does not consider himself as one of us or more accurately, he does not consider us to be one of his. His vision for a future India solidly excludes us or at best reduces us to a body of cheap labor and clerical work. We have already seen from the Radia tapes how much collusion has taken place at the top. The exclusive officers' club has been built and its gate is being shut on our faces. If you want to pass through the strict face control, make sure you carry your Youth Congress card.

It is important to understand where the Prince derives his world view from. Obviously the biggest influence had to be the Queen, who after decades in India still remains ill at ease with Hindi. According to another leaked cable, the usually reticent and aloof Queen poured her heart out to California first lady Maria Shriver to such an extent that they titled the cable - "A garrulous Sonia Gandhi opens up to Maria Shriver". So here we have Italian Mama gabbing to her Germanic cousin. History may not repeat itself but it sure does flirt with memory.

In her conversation Sonia clearly comes off as a person on a civilizing mission. But we digress.

Sonal Shah was the Indian American woman who made news for becoming one of the first persons of South Asian extract to be made part of President Obama's transition team. Soon she was to find out blood is thicker than water. We all know who was behind the ghastly, nefarious and apocryphal campaign against Sonal Shah, as also against The Times of India reporter Balakrishna.

The idea is very simple and alluring. The vast millions of soft office jobs that so many of us covet (and upon landing such a job think the world of ourselves) - you can easily take out a large part of competition in one fell sweep. All you need to do is create a demand for an absurd and nearly impossible to prove moral requirement. Then either you are the right color (figuratively speaking), or you must show the Youth Congress card.

The worldly contact of the Prince largely comprise of the people behind that campaign. What might they be telling the Prince?

Like most political parties in the World, the Congress party realizes the mortal danger "free agent" voters present to them. The first most visible of these were rather absurdly the so called NRIs. Congress and its minions went hammer and tongs at them. Old issues of The Outlook magazine still carries those articles - they provide good comic relief. The second source of free agent voters are produced by the Education system. Having received a drubbing once from the NDA dispensation, UPA realized the dire need to squeeze these obstinate types. They launched a multi-pronged approach.

- The first consists of completely destroying the primary education sector so that - (a) Missionary schools flourish (b) Changing the curriculum so that the "right" values are inculcated from an early age. The RTE act was designed to bring about this change.

- The second consists of destroying the Entrance test based system and gradually replacing it with a strong secular filter such as an interview. Efforts are on in this area but currently suspended due to the unfortunate portfolio reallocation due to the 2G scam.

- The third is to formally introduce religious quotas in education. Already we have minority institutions. Conversion, where possible, is underway - for instance a century old Agricultural institute suddenly got renamed and its students even took out a religious procession!

Already top posts in Government and bureaucracy are being strictly face controlled (eg CVC). In the Indian Administrative Services interviews for instance, the only right answer to "who was the all time great ruler of India" - is Akbar the great.

Free agent voter reduction program, aside from achieving the demographic rengineering goals has the extra advantage - 2G, CWG etc are much easier to pull. Everything stays in one happy extended family.

The biggest obstacle to pushing through special privileges for the community proved to be raw data. There was no way to massage this to manufacture a "deprived" victim status for the community. Call it Sachar envy. Soon this was largely mitigated - large number of poor people, like cattle was head counted and factored into stats. Even this proved inadequate. This is why the Kandhamal incident was engineered. Now we have a new victim category with refugees and dead people to show for! Take that, Kashmiri Pandits!

Then of course we always have the UN route - if you do not let us rule, we will complain to the UN. Already the High Court in Gujarat has taken strong exception to certain Human Rights groups making unwarranted complains to the UN. The leaked cable proves this strategy can be and will be extended if UPA loses a national poll in the future.

In other words, in one sense, Rahul Gandhi might have simply been preparing a hedge against future election defeat when a quasi-legal internationally supported maneuver could still help retain power.

If the above sounds too conspiratorial to you, we have two points to make. First, just because you can not see a glacier move does not mean it is not moving. The signs are too ominous to ignore. Second, when Digvijay Singh with his wild conspiracy theories becomes the leading mentor of India's future PM and consequently his conspiracy theories are all but tacitly approved by the High Command, it is no longer a conspiracy theory. The fact that they sanction such views is reason enough for alarm and caution.

Secular Hindus must make a hard call at this juncture. If they do not want to end up like Buddhists in South Korea or Hong Kong, the time to act has arrived. A few generations later it might be too late. Remember that "I am not very religious" "I am an atheist" etc. cuts mustard only with Hindus.

We refuse to succumb to fashionable concepts. We refuse to accept ANY absurd moral requirement dictated to us by people with vested interests or otherwise hostile to us. We reserve the right to act as we please within the Indian legal and constitutional framework and ... TO HELL WITH YOUR SECULARISM!