The opposition moved swiftly and forced Murli Manohar Joshi to backtrack. Though ostensibly "embarrassed",a defensive BJP is desperately looking for issues to flog and thinks it has found one in the election season -- that the "secularist" opposition cannot even stomach a Saraswati Vandana!

The opposition's walkout over the Saraswati Vandana at the start of the Education Ministers' Conference may not have been a reaction to the invocation per se. It could be a response to what they perceived to be the hidden agenda ofthe BJP. Had P.D.Chitlangia of the Vidya Bharati not been associated with the RSS,and running a chain of schools influenced by the Sangh philosophy, or had his private paper not been attached to the government agenda, or had this not come against the backdrop of the rewriting of history by people in the BJP-ruled state, the Vandana might have gone by unnoticed.

After all, President K.R. Narayanan and I.K. Gujral, when he was prime minister, had attended an official function last December which started off with Saraswati Vandana. And there was not even a whimper of protest, as BJP people are quick to point out. There have been other official fun-ctions in the past kicked off with this kind of invocation.

But the opposition made a tactical mistake and walked into what could have been a well-laid trap. It focussed on the issue by staging a walkout on the Vandana. It was the wrong symbol to choose.

Today Saraswati Vandana is more a cultural and spiritual symbol than a religious one, thoughcultural symbols often have their roots in religious practices. In a multicultural society like India, one community has adopted the practice of another by living alongside each other.

If you oppose the Vandana today, tomorrow it will be the lighting of a lamp. The day after it will be the breaking of a coconut or the use of mango leaves, considered auspicious to decorate a place.

What then is to stop people demanding that the shlokas from the Gita or the Vedas that are inscribed on walls and domes of official buildings like the South Block be removed? As it is, Sanskrit is being viewed as a language of the Hindus, even though it is the basis of many an Indian language. Muslims in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh speak Tamil and Telugu more than Urdu.

Some Muslim leaders have already objected to the rendering of the national song "Vande Matram" in Parliament because it is written as an invocation to a goddess. Tomorrow the song Saare jehan se accha may become suspect.

Thereis no end to this process, if we fall prey to the petty interpretations to suit politicians' games. It is only going to divide the country. Practices and rituals which have been taken naturally as Indian because of a long tradition of give-and-take will come to be dubbed as Hindu or Muslim or Christian.

India has been held together in the last 50 years by the principle of unity in diversity. The authors of our constitution were farsighted, and decided not to go in for a state religion, though it must have been tempting to do so in the wake of the formation of Pakistan.

Suggestions that the preamble to the Constitution should start with "In the name of God, we the people of India..." were turned down. Even though an overwhelming majority of Indians believe in God, members of the Constituent Assembly felt that even a collective view should not be forced on a minority.

There is nothing to stop privately set up schools to teach Vedas, Upanishads, the techniques of havans and yagnas. It is clear that thestate has to stay scrupulously clear of anything which can be construed as religious instruction because it could lead to a denominational conflict.

But the time has come for a serious, non-partisan and sober debate on what constitutes spirituality, which has sustained India over centuries, as distinct from religion. These are complex issues. The trouble, however, is that a dialogue becomes difficult because the motives of the BJP are suspect amongst the minorities and a large section of liberal Hindus.

It is doubtful that Saraswati Vandana by itself will become an emotive issue. Nor is it likely that it will give the opposition the advantage it may be looking for among its constituents. But such issues, if repeated, will further divide an already fragmented society. This is not the time for them, particularly as the country is now coming out of the community violence which rocked India after the demolition of the Babri mosque and the riots which followed.