New Delhi, April 10 (IANS) Indians are becoming increasingly intolerant because of lack of a liberal and secular framework in the country, says veteran journalist, television presenter and writer Gautam Adhikari.

"We are living in an illiberal democracy in which we have forgotten about the importance of surviving with multiple identities and the liberal concept of pluralism. The lack of a secular and liberal framework is making Indians intolerant," Adhikari told IANS.

His book, "The Intolerant Indian: Why We Must Rediscover A Liberal Space", published by HarperCollins-India was released in the capital Friday. A discussion, 'The Peculiar Nature of Indian Secularism' featuring panellists former Times of India editor Dileep Padgaonkar, sociologist Dipankar Gupta and political commentator Swapan Dasgupta, followed the release of the book.

The book, written in the form of an investigative essay under seven heads, probes how fanatic religious ideologies, radical politics and conflicting forces - exerting diverse pulls on both the Right and the Left - have usurped the "concept of a liberal democratic society and pluralism" that India prides itself on. Far too many Indians feel that pluralism is a myth irrelevant to a society fractured by tensions and parochial agendas stemming from regionalism and ethnicity.

Adhikari, the former dean of the Times School of Journalism and the founding editor of DNA, said "a provocative article by one of the world's foremost social thinkers, Ashis Nandy, published by the Times of India", inspired him to write the book.

"Amit Jain (of The Times of India) suggested that I expand on the idea for a book," Adhikari said.

"What I have tried to argue in the book is that the structure of India as laid out by the constitution is extremely tolerant. All those who went about writing the constitution came from a certain background. Is there any other example in history that brought together under one umbrella so many identities - all contending for attention," Adhikari said.

Voting in favour of democracy, the writer said: "The great thing about democracy is the celebration of imperfections. It is like Sparta verses Athens in ancient Greece. The Spartans wanted perfection, whereas Athens was a celebration of differences," he said.

India started celebrating diversity in 1991, the writer said.

"There is no other nation which has so much diversity. We actually have a prime minister (Manmohan Singh) from the minority community. My understanding of India at an early age comes from a Muslim. When I was a little boy, we grew up in a joint family. During the Durga Puja, our driver used to tell us astounding stories how the goddess Durga killed the demon and drank his blood to prevent other demons from coming. He told about the dacoit Ratnakar who wrote 'Ramayana'. The man's (driver's) name was Khaleq Mohammed," Adhikari said.

Secularism was a framework for allowing tolerance which had to be built at an individual level, he said.

Liberalism and secular pluralism form the framework drawn from the principle of "unity in diversity", which two of the nation's intellectual leaders, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, took as a starting point for the idea of India, Adhikari says.

"To paraphrase Tagore, from that well-known, oft-quoted and under-appreciated poem in Gitanjali, it (India) would be a place where the citizens' mind would be without fear, everyone would be able to hold their heads high... In the sixty (64 years) years of its existence as an Independent democratic republic, has India been able to live up to the dream? Yes, by and large, but not every citizen's mind is without fear," Adhikari writes in his book.

The partition of India in 1947 did not end the debate in the republic called India over what exactly the personality of the nation should be, he said.

According to Adhikari, "the essay was a plea for restoration of liberalism in public life written from the point of view of a liberal secular democrat, who happens to be an agnostic".

Secularism is a framework for allowing tolerance which has to be built at an individual level, he said.