ABSTRACT
The way the British tried to disrupt the Hindu-Muslim unity, the Yahya Khan-led Pakistani junta did exactly the same. In multi-religious Third World societies, where state formation tends to precede nation formation, secularism is a difficult ambition to achieve. The cumulative effect of these processes is that both India and Bangladesh have become semi-secular/semi-communal. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is exuberant. And she has reasons. By any standard her victory is extraordinary. In response to questions by foreign journalists as to how come the opposition fared so miserably in the elections she made a superficial comparison with what happened in India. The seventeenth parliamentary election of India is underway. Modi himself ridiculed Amartya Sen and his ilk on several occasions. Any article on elections must end with a forecast. Indians are obsessed with religion and nationalism these days as never before. Secularism as an ethos of Indian polity was seldom audible during the entire campaign.
