ex-l wrote:They believe it will bring bad luck, if to vote for an Anti-superstition bill? And yet in their personal and public lives, they break just about every law or moral there is. How hypocrital.
Unfortunately, this is how the situation is. Somehow, in-spite of being dubbed as the largest Democracy in the world, people in India support Dynastic politics and caste based politics to a large extent leading to massive polarization.
Situation is way too complex, interwoven into strategies-counter strategies involving everybody.
"It's OK to break the law, or cheat on my wife ... as long as I go to the temple and give the priest some money to get rid of my bad karma".
Looks like this is what is followed by many politicians cutting across the parties.
Of course, it was largely the same in the West until the last Century. At least with Catholicism. It's a terrible curse, a ball and chain holding India back.
The very fact that Catholicism has lost its sheen in the West is totally censored in India. General public is not aware of this aspect at all. Earlier, there was more harmony between people from different religions. Nowadays, there is a simmering distrust comparatively. Quite a good number of poor Hindus are lured to convert to Christianity by giving lot of money which flows from the West. Muslim leaders are implementing stricter Wahabism among Muslims again due to heavy funding by the Middle East. Right Wing party like BJP is trying to magnify these aspects and polarizing Hindu votes in their favor. Like I mentioned earlier, it is too complex.
To give you a perspective, there are 2 main parties in India at national level. Congress and its allies (Left/Liberal/Socialist) constitute UPA and BJP and its allies form the NDA (they project to be Nationalists/Centrist with a Right leaning, but they are branded as Right Wing, especially by the international media houses).
~95% of Muslims and Christians side with Congress party. This congress party with like minded parties was able to form an alliance called UPA and ruled India for between 2004 to 2014 (2 terms of 5 years each). They have encouraged en masse conversion of poor, lower caste Hindus to Christianity. It was a thriving industry during their regime. According to the census, ~79% are Hindus, 14% Muslims and 2.5% Christians and others being Sikhs, Jains, Bhuddhists etc., This is a flawed data purposefully done to give a wrong picture by the Congress led UPA. Because Congress knows if Hindus see their percentage is dwindling at alarming rates, they will lean towards BJP led NDA.
BJP led NDA returned to power with a brute majority in 2014 and will stay in office till next elections by first half of 2019. Coming back to 80% Hindus, 17%, 9% & 41% belong to Schedule Caste (SC), Schedule Tribe(ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) respectively with 15%, 9% and 27% reservation respectively in Government jobs, educational seats etc., Congress is mostly in power since India got independence in 1947. A big chunk of these groups always favor Congress because they believe the reservation benefit is provided by Congress and they should remain loyal to them.
Now Congress and its allies leave no stone unturned to try and separate Hindus as separate and SC, ST & OBC as separate. Congress has a good grip on Indian media houses, both print and TV and has been frequently devising plans to implement their agenda in dividing Hindus. Constant supply of a flood of money is involved here.
Frequent pull and push from both Congress-UPA & BJP-NDA has given raise to a lot of chaotic situations. If you follow India specific tweets for a fortnight or a month, you will get a fair idea. In between all these, anti-superstition bill is just a pawn to the political parties. In Some states, watered down versions have been implemented. If it helps them win elections, they will go for it, if not, they will not dare to touch it. As simple as that.
There has been brutal murders of people who stood for these kind of movements and against government corruption in the past. Law enforcement agencies do their bit to protect these kind of people, but in the end, too many equations are involved.