CAB reopens Partition wounds, Amit Shah emerges out of offers BJP emotional card Modi’s shadow
Ruling party exploits divisions openly, while Congress falls back on minorities.
between us
Now, this is meant to provoke. The dewyeyed liberals-secularists notwithstanding, it will be hard for anyone other than the ruling combine to successfully sell the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill to ordinary people. And, whether you like it or not, when all is said and done it is the ordinary people who matter the most in a democracy.
What if Muslims have been singled out for exclusion from the ambit of the new citizenship law, given that the three countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are self-avowedly Islamic? If the persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians do not get citizenship in India, the original home of Hindus, where else can they go? You may ask why include Christians? The answer is simple. No country in the neighbourhood would offer shelter to them. They routinely suffered a million indignities, especially in Pakistan, even before they enacted their all-threatening anti-blasphemy law.
Besides, why shed crocodile tears over the alleged assault on the secularist character of the Republic when the Republic itself was founded upon the division of the subcontinent only on a single criterion, that is, religion? It is no use blaming Savarkar and Hindu Mahasabha for the Partition. Neither was in a position to dictate to the mighty Congress Party. The tired old Congressmen led by Jawaharlal Nehru, who pushed Jinnah into the arms of the Muslim League because he wouldn’t share power with him, agreed to the communal division with their eyes wide open—at what cost in human life and misery need not be noted here.
Granted, there would have been no need for CAB had not Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan systematically persecuted their minorities. How well they treat Hindus and other non-muslim groups can be gauged from the precipitate fall in the percentage of the six groups at the time of the Partition and at present in their populations. On the other hand, despite selfserving propaganda about Muslims living in fear in this country as second class citizens, their numbers have grown at a much faster rate than that of the majority community, as also those of all other minorities.
Besides, CAB poses no threat to the minorities and all others who already live here. And nobody in his right mind seeks to extinguish the fine line between a refugee and an asylum-seeker. The Bill eases the passage to citizenship for refugees escaping from persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, while leaving unaltered existing conditions for legitimizing residency status of asylum seekers, illegal economic migrants and agent provocateurs being another matter.
As for the protests in Assam and elsewhere in the Northeast, these stem from an unfounded fear that CAB might open the floodgates for the ingress into their lands of hordes of persecuted refugees and alter the state’s demographic profile. These fears are misplaced and need to be addressed by competent messaging. Demographic character of Assam and Tripura was altered wilfully by successive Congress governments in the region with an eye on electoral gains. This only stopped once the Assamese rose in protest in the late 1980s. The current wave of protests is ill-conceived, underlining the failure of the local and central authorities to adequately prepare the people about the real objective of CAB. Also, the CAB is an attempt to get over the Assam-nrc exercise which listed more non-muslims than Muslims in the 1.9 million undocumented people.
Last but not the least, let us ask this rhetorical question: If the persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, etc., from anywhere and everywhere are not granted shelter in India, where else will they go, whereas persecuted Ahmadiyas, Shias and, for that matter, Uyghurs have a number of Islamic countries to choose from?
The above pitch made to the people by the ruling party is bound to leave the critics speechless. As we said in the beginning, in a first-past-thepost electoral system that alone seems to matter to the rulers. However, what they find hard to fight politically, they may still resist by other means. Going to the judiciary to nix the contentious CAB is the obvious next step. Good luck to them.
ENCOUNTERS HAVE BEEN WITH US
FOR DECADES
Time for some more plain speaking. The so-called encounter killing of the four alleged rapist-murderers of the Hyderabad veterinarian the other day reminds me of the numerous past encounters. These were no less suspect than the latest one, which has led to a lot of hand-wringing over the medieval era justice administered by the police. And as in the case of the earlier encounters, the public fuss over the Hyderabad one too will soon die down without altering a wee-bit the conduct of the police, prosecutors and judiciary.
To tell the truth, such encounters have been the norm rather than an exception all along. Whenever a crime became inconvenient for the incumbent powers, they chose to look the other way while the police disposed of the perpetrators in a false encounter. That is how dacoits were eliminated in the early years following Independence in
PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab Union), now part of the larger Punjab, Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind-morena. The police officer who led the operations in PEPSU, the late Ashwani Kumar, became some sort of a folk hero in those parts, evoking admiration and fear in equal measure.
Why, under legendary cop K.P.S. Gill they resorted to the same cold-blooded killings to quell the renewed challenge of the Khalistanis. Earlier, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, idealistic youth clubbed under the rubric of Naxalites were neutralised in a similar way. In all these cases, there was prior political sanction for such cold-blooded eliminations. The cop who oversaw the anti-naxal operation in Kolkata too became famous, bagging key posts by dint of his dubious distinction. Why, one of the assassins of Indira Gandhi was shot dead in cold blood by the ITBP, even though he too had surrendered his firearm.
The point. Don’t get overly worked up over the latest encounter killings. Things will remain this way until the rulers and the ruled attain a degree of maturity. There is no need to despair. All developed countries have gone through the same phase in the early decades of their nationhood. Spread of education and economic growth will do where all else might have failed.
PRIVATE EQUALS PUBLIC FOR TV ANCHORS
A couple of months ago, the BBC disciplined one of its anchors for being “unprofessional” for expressing her sense of disbelief and surprise
now, is to be finally crowned again. He was against allying with the Shiv Sena to share power in Maharashtra (for the same old pretentious reasons of secularism, saffronism etc). However, Sonia, who now wants him back at the top, threw the so-called “ideologies” to the winds, turned down his that the US President Donald Trump would ask four Democratic Congresswomen to “go home” to the countries they had come from for protesting his gross behaviour. Trump’s tweets had caused a public furore though most Americans had by then come to expect nothing better from him. The professional standards watchdog of the public broadcaster expected its journalists to keep their private views private. Hence the ticking off of the said anchor.
I recall the above episode from the British broadcaster only to point out how our own TV news anchors have shed all pretence of neutrality. The other day when CAB was debated in the Lok Sabha, a veteran anchor was so angry, so outraged that short of physically assaulting the ruling party spokesperson he did everything else. His vicious verbal assault took away from the fairness of the debate. Given that he is probably the best of the lot we are saddled with, shouldn’t he keep his own views private instead of inflicting them on his viewers?
WANTED: A HANGMAN
Some things never change. During the 1975-77 Emergency, the Tihar jail had to wait for months for want of an executioner to hang a convict long on the death row. Four decades later, the same Tihar is waiting for a hangman to execute the Nirbhaya case convicts. Back then the hangman was sourced from the Ambala jail and paid Rs 150 for his services. This time, it seems, they are getting it from Meerut jail while his remuneration for carrying out the executions is unknown.
resistance to the Shiv Sena and joined hands with Uddhav.
One conspicuous point in both Houses of Parliament during the long drawn out debate on the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) was the meticulous manner in which Union Home Minister Amit Shah stood his ground, taking headon top Opposition leaders. There is little doubt that the new law would be challenged in the Supreme Court, given that it appears to have violated the basic structure of the Constitution, and therefore, would be the subject matter of judicial scrutiny in the immediate future.
However, regardless of what the outcome be in the Apex Court, Amit Shah has clearly demonstrated that he is no run-ofthe-mill politician, but a leader who argues his case, after having done fine-combed homework on the topic of discussion. He, in the process, has the propensity of provoking his opponents by his strong defence of the government and minces no words in putting across the political agenda of his party. In the current context, the Opposition opposed the introduction of the bill due to the question of its constitutional discrepancy, while the BJP pushed its proposal for reaping essentially political dividends for the further consolidation of its Hindu majority vote bank.
Shah outdid everyone else who participated in the debate, mainly because he came fully prepared to meet the challenge. He referred to Nehru’s position, both in 1947 and 1950, and went into thoroughgoing historical details to drive home his point. It was a satisfying experience to see that the minister cared to respond individually to those who were against the motion. In fact, Parliament, for a long time, has not witnessed such a spirited and vibrant defence by a Cabinet member.
In the past three decades, there have been only two leaders who have not required any aid or assistance to speak on multiple matters; the two being former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar and former Deputy PM, L.K. Advani. Chandra Shekhar could talk on the most contentious issues with ready ease that those listening to him would be totally enraptured by his oration and the simplicity of content. Advani’s comprehension of Parliamentary procedures and conventions set him in an altogether different class. Despite being a distinguished speaker, even his senior colleague, Atal Bihari Vajpayee could not match the thesis and logic, which was the backbone of Advani’s discourse in Parliament.
Prior to them, there were a number of luminaries who would leave audiences spell-bound by their interventions in both houses. The incomparable Madhu Limaye—who had inherited the skills of his senior socialist colleagues, Nath Pai, H.V. Kamath and Ram Manohar Lohia—was an exceptional parliamentarian. Besides him, there were several Left stalwarts, such as Inderjit Gupta and Jyotirmoy Basu, who took Parliamentary debates to an all new level. From the treasury benches, Indira Gandhi, Babu Jagjivan Ram and to some degree Y.B. Chavan were a class apart.
However, in the post Rajiv Gandhi era, very few Congress leaders came up to the mark. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Kamal Nath, who is an extremely structured politician, always made it to the House well-prepared, as did both Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram. Their performances were never highlighted since the focus remained on the Prime Minister and the Congress high command.
Parliament has always been the arena where the competence of leaders is tested. Firstly each speaker addresses an informed audience, and therefore, is vulnerable to heckling, if there is faltering on facts. Secondly, the holdover procedures and processes make it relatively easy for a politician to put across his viewpoint, while blocking out a counter view. It is a combination of many factors that goes into the making of a Parliamentarian, who always has to keep his ears to the ground. Unfortunately, in the present Parliament, only a handful of leaders present a realistic scenario. Most of them are in the dark regarding any background information, thereby their tunnel vision responses.
This problem is most obvious in the treasury benches where several members appear overawed by the enormity of the platform. This is understandable since it takes time for ordinary politicians to grasp the subject matter and the course of discussion. In fact, in both Houses, the quality of speakers has been on the decline, and it is a rare show that some interest is kindled if the argument is presented with the zeal and the gusto befitting it.
In the Upper House, the Congress has many fine orators who seldom are provided an opportunity to participate in a discussion. The issue with the grand old party is that the speakers’ list is decided not according to the core competence of the leader but due to his proximity to the high command. In the latest instance, the Congress continued with its regular list and its primary leader in Rajya Sabha mixed up prosecution with persecution.
On the other hand, Amit Shah took it upon himself to confront the combined Opposition; he did so, in either House, without the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi has his own style of driving home his point, but Shah seems to have evolved exceptionally both as a leader and a Parliamentarian. One may not agree with his reasoning, yet he had done adequate research before piloting the bill. The Congress should understand that the current BJP leadership plans its political moves with careful diligence. They are not so much into the legality of an issue, but aim to put across a message to the core Hindu constituency. Shah, apparently, has emerged from the shadows of Modi, his mentor. Between us.