There is no place in India for those who live off the country and still want to destroy it.

by Rishi Mon Oct 21, 2013 9:53 pm

Minority appeasement is a blot on secularism

Monday, 21 October 2013 | Joginder Singh

Instead of feeding the bogey of victimisation, for instance, by insinuating that Muslims are unlawfully detained, the Government will do well to include the minority community in its fight against terror

Articles 14 and 15(1) of the Constitution enjoin that the state shall not discriminate against any person on grounds of religion, caste, race or such other issues. Ours is a secular country. Yet, last year on April 9, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced monthly allowances of Rs 2,500 for imams and Rs 1,500 for muezzins and got a budgetary allocation of Rs 660 crore passed by the State Assembly. The payments were eventually stayed by the High Court earlier this year.

Similarly, the Indian Government continues with its Haj subsidy, even when Pakistan, a constitutionally theocratic Muslim country, had abolished it back in 1997. As of 2011, an estimated 1,00,000 Indian Muslims make use of the subsidy every year. In May 2012, the Supreme Court ordered the Government to end the Haj subsidy by 2022. This is only fair, as no such subsidy is offered to any other religious community in India.

As the 2014 parliamentary election nears, politicians are vying with one another to promise the moon to the voters. It comes as no surprise that a politician in Karnataka has said that it is all right for the Muslims to cheat the Government by not repaying loans taken from various state agencies.

Also, is any Government official or politician willing to give orders in writing that the minorities (read Muslims) need not repay loans? Some politicians are good at giving ex gratis advice as long as they are not called upon to shoulder the liability or, as in this case, pay for the loan from their own pockets.

On the advice of the Union Minister for Minority Affairs, the Union Minister for Home Affairs sent a letter to Chief Ministers saying that no innocent Muslim should be detained. This pre-supposes that the police is detaining innocent Muslims.

Most Muslims are loyal to India and only the anti-state elements are eventually punished by a court of law. It is also true that almost all terror attacks, be it the 2008 carnage in Mumbai or the 2001 attack on Parliament or other terror cases in Varanasi, Lucknow and Bangalore or Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Assam, were perpetrated by terrorists aided, supported or funded by indigenous Muslim organisations.

Following an outrage, the Home Minister has now said that the letter he wrote includes all minorities, but still that doesn’t take away from the core issue. Also, if the Home Minister feels that the police is harassing innocent civilians, he needs to review and revamp the police force. In other words, he needs to put his own house in order.

But then again, India is one of those countries where the laws are slanted in favour of criminals. The Supreme Court noted on April 12, 2012: “We can only observe that our legal system has made life too easy for criminals and too difficult for law-abiding citizens”. Incidentally, we have few laws against terrorism in the country. The onus lies on the investigating agencies to gather proof against the accused.

The laws given to us by the British have rarely been updated by independent India. And so we are in a situation wherein the presumption is that for every crime, there will be a witness hiding at the crime scene and he will jump at the opportunity to come to court and depose against the criminals, without caring for his life or limb.

Worse still, we have no witness protection mechanism nor any law against witnesses turning hostile, after confessing before a magistrate. Confessions made even before the highest police officer in the country have no value. Instead of improving the police force and helping State Governments train and sensitise it, the Government is working at cross-purposes. But politicians will be politicians, and they will even sup with the devil for votes. As the 2014 general election approaches, there will surely be more such cases of blatant appeasement of the minorities.

For instance, some police officers have alleged that an Uttar Pradesh Minister asked them to go slow on rioters during the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar in September. The Minister has vehemently denied the accusation and blamed rivals for the ‘mud-slinging’. As George Orwell said, “Political language is often designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

The Government of Uttar Pradesh takes the cake when it comes to vote-bank politics. It was even willing to withdraw cases against convicted terrorists. When this was challenged through a Public Interest Litigation, the Allahabad High Court stayed such releases.

Having been in the Indian Police Service for nearly four decades, I can say from my experience that no police officer of any rank will ever willingly put his neck on the block to harass or prosecute anybody on the basis of religion.

Let us not forget that the Sikh separatists were eradicated from Punjab, not only by the bullet-for-bullet policy that was openly and rightly followed by Mr Julio Ribeiro, an outstanding and bold IPS officer from Maharashtra, who was appointed Director-General of Punjab Police, but also because the average Sikh in the State was fed up with the excesses committed by the anti-state elements. It was the Punjab Police and the Sikh peasantry which stood by the Government as it sough to eliminate the terrorists.

Writing silly letters, promising laptops and marriage grants, giving salaries to priests and doling out subsidies for religious pilgrimages are meant for show only. Such measures do not help any community in the long run. In a secular country, while all religions should be treated equally, obscurantism and interpretation of scriptures to suit terrorists are dangerous things.

I am all for improving the lot of the minorities, but that should be done by giving them robust educational facilities and loans (which should be repayed!) for studies, or by helping them set up new business enterprises and promoting skill development.

Also, the Government will do well to involve the Muslim community in its fight against terrorists from across the border or even of indigenous origin, as was done successfully in Punjab. There is no place in India for those who live off the country and still want to destroy it. The United Kingdom has recently stripped top terrorists of their British citizenship, without mincing any words or being apologetic. The Government of India should not be on the defensive when dealing with terrorists — Muslims or others, from India or abroad.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/minority-appeasement-is-a-blot-on-secularism.html