Francois Gautier asks Why do Indians put religion before nationality?. He does not restrict himself to this question only as he puts forth arguments that are valid and that beg to be answered by the pseudo-secularists. He fisks the press - both western as well as Indian, for being selectively secular.

I remember a few days after Graham Staines was killed, 14 Hindu labourers were murdered in Himachal Pradesh by Muslims separatists. The entire English speaking Indian press devoted page after page of outrage on the killing of Staines, but the murder of the Hindus in HP only warranted a few lines in most newspapers without condemnation. I can understand that Western correspondents based in India show such a slant – even if it does not speak much for their fairness – but Indian journalists, most of them Hindus at that!

What to do?! ... we're like this only!! Hindu killings are not news. Simply because they cannot be painted as communal, can they?!.

Recently, French President Jacques Chirac asked every Frenchman, specially the French Muslims, ‘to be French first and Muslims second’. In India, one often finds that people put their religion before their nationality, particularly the Muslims and to a lesser degree the Christians.

Ohh! ... just imagine Vajpayee making such an announcement!! He would be slaughtered... in the media... in the parliament... in the streets!! And every "secular" politician worth his salt would start rubbing his hands in glee and start dreaming of laughing his way to the [vote] bank!!
And by the way, whatever may be his faults (and he has many of them!), Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has been trying to say the same thing for years... Be an Indian first... and then a muslim... or a hindu... or a christian... whatever!