Atrocities against minorities, Dalits on the rise: Manmohan
CHANDIGARH: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said atrocities against Dalits and minorities are increasing, and called for rejection of “divisive politics and policies”. Without mentioning the Modi government in his speech, Singh delivered a stinging critique of the ruling dispensation at the SB Rangnekar Memorial Oration at the Panjab University, his alma mater.
Singh said that a “dangerous and false binary” of choosing between freedom and development was surfacing in the country’s political discourse and that it must be rejected.
The former Prime Minister started by underlining the importance of “equality, freedom and fraternity” for a robust democracy before proceeding to analyse their health in the present. The marginalised, he said, may have demanded and received concessions by the power of their votes, but their battle is far from over.
Singh asserted that freedom of a country did not mean the freedom of just its government. “It is the freedom of people, which, in turn is not the freedom only of its privileged and powerful, but the freedom of every Indian.”
“Freedom is, the freedom to question, the freedom to express one’s views, howsoever troubling they may be for others. The only constraint to freedom must be the freedom of others. In other words, the freedom of one person or a group should not be used to constrain the freedom of other individuals or groups,” he said. He stressed that without a firm commitment to this idea of freedom, democracy would not survive.
Invoking B R Ambedkar, he said there was a need to reassert commitment to maintain India’s freedom and Independence.
“We must preserve strategic autonomy in decision-making processes and resist the temptation of rich rewards gained by becoming a tool in the great games of big powers in the pursuit of their imperial ambitions. We need to rebuild our commitment to maintaining India’s freedom, based on individual freedom and independence of every Indian citizen,” Singh said.