“I swear in the name of God that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India… and that I will uphold the Constitution and the laws."

Those words are from the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister’s oath of office under Form V. The incumbent is sworn to uphold the Indian Constitution, not the Sharia. And on the first page of the Indian Constitution sits the Ashoka Stambh or the national emblem.

Legendary artist Nandalal Bose and his team from Santiniketan was given the task of illustrating the original manuscript of the Constitution. His student Dinanath Bhargava sketched the Ashoka Stambh, which was later adopted as the national emblem.

It is this Ashoka Stambh, placed on a plaque in Srinagar’s Hazratbal shrine and renovated recently with government funds, which has Islamists in a fit of rage. Radicals will be radicals.

But when a sitting and a former chief minister join the bigots in outraging against the very symbols of the nation which they have sworn under oath to protect, it raises the question: Are........

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