New Delhi, Feb. 23: To him, God’s many names in many languages may be equally valid. But the secularist draws the line when it comes to his own credo.

So, just a hint of hanky-panky in the translation of “secular” had Sitaram Yechury cocking his ears in Parliament today.

The President had just finished his rather routine address to a joint sitting, and the Hindi translation was being read out — a job that to everyone’s relief is confined to the first and last paragraphs.

The demon lurked in the last line of the first paragraph that spoke of the country’s “commitment to building a strong, modern, inclusive, secular and dynamic India.”

Only, someone in the cabinet secretariat had translated “secular” as panthnirapeksh instead of the more common dharmnirapeksh.

“Panth means sect. This is the language the RSS uses to underline that Hinduism is a religion and the rest like Christianity and Islam are sects,” Yechury said.

Here’s where one might have quoted Shakespeare -- but “secular” is not like any other name. It’s the benchmark that divides Indian politics into two camps. More crucially, it’s the call to arms that hinges Yechury’s party to the Congress, allowing the government in Delhi to survive.

Kalam

“We are supporting the government to keep the communal forces out, but the President in his Hindi translation uses panthnirapeksh,” Yechury shook his head.

Yechury may not have known, but even the Constitution uses panthnirapeksh, experts said. In the mid-1970s, when Indira Gandhi was amending the Constitution to include “socialist” and “secular” in the Preamble, there was a debate over the right translation of the second word. Panthanirapeksh beat sampradaynirapeksh to the honour, with dharmnirapeksh not even in the picture.

But the RSS has given panthnirapeksh a twist, implying all religions with one founder and one holy book are panths on a par with the various Hindu sects while Hinduism alone is dharm (religion).

The Hindi translation, though, would have been cleared by the cabinet.

Communists such as Yechury are atheists, but the realities of Indian politics have forced them to learn the nuances of language in a field they would normally have been dismissive about. China, the sole surviving communist superpower, doesn’t even have an expression for secularism. The closest is “fei zhong jiao”.

“It means non-religion,” said Manoranjan Mohanty, expert in Chinese studies.

France has laicite which — like the original English — refers to the separation of state and religion.

The ’70s debate had arisen because Sanskrit doesn’t have a word for the concept that wasn’t born when it was a living language in India. Anandoram Borooah’s authoritative 1877 Sanskrit dictionary translates secular as loukik (this-worldly).

Yechury may not have time for such hair-splitting, but his hands are tied. The CPM leader today acknowledged that amendments cannot be moved to a translation.