Secularism in India: What should be the form of it?

One of my earliest posts was on a war of religions. "The Judgment Day" Those who read it all said it seemed to be a sci-fi story. My intention was not to write a sci-fi story but to highlight the dangers of a war fought for one's faith or religion.
Though it was a doomsday story, I have a feeling that we are gradually moving towards such an environment, where major wars will be fought in the name of religion. It has happened in the past and one would have thought with passage of time and better education, wars would truly become a thing of past. But today its a different story. I will take just two examples, both biggest democracies in the world. The USA and India.

On USA, I would only say, racism is not much of a problem now but religion is. I have been following the US presidential elections and it seems most whites now don't have a problem in electing a black president. But they will not under any circumstances as of today will elect a Muslim president. There was so much controversy involved Barrack Obama's middle name "Hussein". All the newspapers and blogs I have read and all the comments by the readers indicate one thing, Americans will not vote for Muslim president.
There is a polarization of views on the matters of religion in the most developed country in world. Clearly education hasn't been able to change much.
Almost all the Americans are vary of Islam and consider it to be a violent religion. Some consider Hinduism as a peaceful religion but then surprisingly there are others who consider even Hinduism as violent. But then it is not surprising cause all they would have heard from India would have been attack on Christians.

That brings us to the situation in India, I myself being an Indian and a Hindu tried to analyze the things happening in India in the name of religion.

Why do all the major religious groups in India feel threatened?

There was a time when all the religions flourished in India and nobody had any problems. At least till Islam was introduced. Till then Hindus, Buddhists and Jains all lived peacefully. At least there is no history of violent clashes between religious groups. There were kings who followed either one of these religions but never made it a state religion. And people were free to follow any religion they wanted without fearing retaliation or persecution from the neighbours or society. Even the non-dharmic religion Judaism (Jews) reached India in around 500 B.C. and have lived without any fear and persecution while the rest of the world bayed for their blood. Then what happened?

The answer is proselytizing. With Islam came the culture of converting other people's faith, either forcefully or by lure of wealth and position. And this was followed by setting up of christian missionaries during British rule.

I won't go into the details of these conversions. But its a fact, everyone knows Mughals and other Islamic rulers in India forcibly converted a section of the population into Muslims. And very few people accept but it is true that Christian missionaries do induce and lure disadvantaged people to convert to Christianity. I can say that because I have seen this happening (though only once), since I have been brought up in a city which had a sizable tribal population and have studied in a missionary school.

Anyways, today these two religions have been actively proselytize in most of the places, though in case of Islam I guess it has completely stopped in India (maybe except for cases of inter-faith marriages). But then Islam in India faces the criticism of dividing the country, though I see it as a political battle between Nehru and Jinnah. Both of them are to be blamed and some blame should also lie on people who could have managed to reach a compromise between them (read: M.K.Gandhi). Still majority of the population sees Islam as the force which caused partition and thus the cause of pain arising from it. And in case of Christianity it is still going on. Though the missionaries don't want to stop conversions but ironically enough these same missionaries have a different view point on conversions when it comes to North East Christians converting to Judaism.

So because of these conversions, the majority Hindus in the country feel threatened. And as a result retaliate causing reconversion in some cases and sometimes leading to violent clashes between the respective communities. These violent clashes often lead to higher number of casualties for the minor communities, causing them to feel insecure.

(I am not against any particular religion per-se. My best friend is Christian and I don't consider Islam in a bad light either. But I don't believe that proselytizing is good for the unity of the country rather unity of any country)

So is the government at fault? Definitely Yes.

Is the Central leadership lacking or the problem is at state level? The answer is the problem lies with our politics. All the political parties despite their claims of being secular have been taking positions just to garner votes. All the so-called secular parties are inherently pseudo-secular, giving additional benefits to minorities doesn't make a government or political party secular. Why should any community based on its religion get a beneficial treatment? So when the government devises special policies for the minorities, the majority Hindus feel, why not us?
Moreover, over the years saying anything against minority religion is considered to be communal while saying anything against Hinduism is secular. For example, vilifying Jesus or Prophet is a communal act but vilifying Hindu gods is not. Parts of the government itself goes to the extent of saying some Hindu gods do not exist at all (Ram Sethu Controversy).

So my question to the government is; Is this what is secularism?

Now we come to the problem of inaction in the bureaucracy against vandalism by the majority and targeting of minorities as suspects. Here the problem lies with the demographic profile. When 80% of Indians are Hindus and when many of them feel that the political class is not doing anything for them and instead is giving benefits to the minorities, then the section of people who are supposedly protecting Hinduism from the proselytism the minorities and the discriminatory policies of the political class become the saviors for most of the Indians including those who are in bureaucracy. So they go slow in investigating attacks against minorities and are quick to round up minorities when they are at fault, often indulging in unnecessary roughness while handling them. So finally it comes to a situation when all the communities feel threatened and like frightened animals often resort to violence to basically protect themselves and their identity.

So is the situation still manageable? Can the various communities live in Harmony?
Yes the situation is not irreversible and various communities in India can still live in perfect harmony though it is very difficult to change the mindset of the masses, given the vast differences that have cropped up between them.

The next obvious question is, So what can be done now?

The answer is, the government should be pro-active in introducing policies which are fair to everyone. The first step should be to have policies to stop conversions by way of force or inducement. And strictly punish those who are involved in such activities. At the same time, the government should also take the harshest possible action against groups and people who are involved in vandalism in the name of religion.
All the parties involved should feel they are protected and all the parties should feel they are not discriminated against. There shouldn't be any special treatment for any religion, majority or minority all should have the same benefits from the government.

May be "Laïcité" (France's model of secularism) would work here perfectly minus its ill conceived notion of banning of hijabs, turbans, etc. I believe that government should keep away from religion and religion should keep away from government. The government should focus on law and order in the state and the policies should be same for all the citizens irrespective of their religious affiliations.

There will be many who will disagree with me and say this is not a perfect solution, humans by nature can not be satisfied by anything, there are critiques of democracy also.
May be this is not a perfect solution, but then what is the perfect solution?