Azam writes to UN
SP leader writes a letter to United Nations deploring minority issues in India
LUCKNOW: Senior UP minister Azam Khan has written a letter to the UN Secretary General on the brutal killing of a Muslim in Uttar Pradesh’s Bisada village on the suspicion that he had stored and consumed banned cow-meat.
Khan has also sought time from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the killing of 55-year-old Mohammad Ikhlaq which he said had instilled a sense of fear in the minds of minorities in India.
“I humbly request to the highest international body to look into our miseries and take care of us and to impress upon the union government of India to stick to international agreements and … to let secularism flourish and not to push the agenda of extra constitutional authorities within the country to turn it into theocratic, majority Hindu nation,” he wrote.
Bisada has been on edge since a mob lynched 55-year-old Ikhlaq a week ago and left his younger son, Danish, critically injured. Sectarian tensions have also been simmering with local BJP leaders stirring up passions with incendiary speeches.
Khan said fear among the minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, has increased since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
“The PM always keeps mum on the rabidity of RSS and its affiliate organizations,” he wrote in his letter. “Once he became the PM he reached out to the world leaders and assured them that India will always be secular and plural but the ground real- ity is totally different. He talks something before world leaders and UNGA but does the opposite and provides support to the RSS and its affiliate organisations to intimidate minorities in the country to convert India into a majority Hindu nation and minority-less country by 2022-23.”
Meanwhile, the BJP mocked at Azam Khan over his decision to take the Dadri lynching issue to the United Nations. “Instead of writing to the United Nations, the minister should have written to the state’s chief minister and inquired why the government was unable to check law and order. Whether it was Muzaffarnagar or Dadri, the state government cannot run away from its failure. It was the state government which was supposed to check law and order and it is busy passing the blame on to the centre,” Uttar Pradesh BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said.
Blaming Khan for playing communal politics, he said, “For sheer political gain, when he is quizzed about Dadri he remembers Muzaffarnagar and when he is asked about Muzaffarnagar he starts talking Ayodhya.”