CONTINUED.... The VHP, in its meeting with Muslim leaders in New Delhi on July 15, 2002, stated that if Muslims agree to resettle Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims in Gujarat would be rehabilitated. Hindus must understand that issues connected to the democratisation of Pakistan, ethical resolutions to Kashmir, or gender reforms within Islam are separate from India's commitment to upholding the rights of minorities or to reforms within Hinduism. Hindu extremism against Muslims and other minorities in India collapses distinctions that must be made to honour human rights in India. Also, Hindutva's discourse of history posits Hindus and Hinduism as under siege and preposterously asserts the idea of India as a Hindu nation. Such revisionist history strategically and hideously poses that a vengeful justice can be found for the crimes of history committed under non-Hindu rulers. Retribution is sought by attacking contemporary Indian Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others. Hinduism is critical to the fabric of India, as are all the other cultures and religions that inhabit this land and frame the imagination of this nation. It will require considerable effort on our part to conceive a secular nation where religion is indeed separate from the integrity of the state, where pluralism guarantees rights and respect to the religious and non-religious alike. Every Hindu and every citizen must denounce that to be Indian is to be Hindu, challenge assertions that a secular constitution is anti-Hindu, and refute the call for a Hindu nation in India as anti-national. Patriotism and nationalism demand that all social, political and religious groups work for an India free of disenfranchisement, institutionalised violence, corruption and rampant inequities. We cannot permit India's secular and democratic fabric to be irreparably compromised. The politics of segregation and hate cannot determine the century before us. Angana Chatterji is a professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. http://www.ciis.edu/faculty/chatterji.htm Email: Angana@aol.com