Minister for Home Affairs Sushilkumar Shinde is playing the minority card ahead of the 2014 General Elections, while his party, the Indian National Congress, seems to be frustrated with the rise of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi By Dipin Damodharan India’s grand old party, the Indian National Congress, may have learnt the art of politics from the masters of divide and rule policy, the British. Even though the Congress is known for some hard core nationalist leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the party has always had an appeasement policy in its DNA. The minority campaign has been the trump card of the party for electoral gains many a time. In a country where “secularism” and “democracy” are the prerogatives of certain communities, what can one expect from the elected representatives who rule the country sans logic? A letter written by Minister for Home Affairs Sushilkumar Shinde to all the chief ministers questions the very foundation of the secular ethos of society and challenges the logic of an average Indian. Shinde directed all chief ministers to ensure that no innocent Muslim youth is wrongfully detained in the name of terror. “Some of the minority youth have started feeling that they are deliberately targeted and deprived of their basic rights,” he wrote. There’s nothing wrong in his concern for the minority community. It’s just that innocent youths of other communities too have been victimised in Indian prisons for no fault of theirs? Don’t they have basic rights? Or are they the prerogative of a particular community? Prima facie, this letter violates the Constitution of the world’s largest democracy. Sushil Kumar Modi, a regional leader of India’s main opposition party BJP, rightly puts it, “Shinde’s statement is ‘minority youth wrongfully detained to be released’. Then what about other innocents detained? Should they be kept illegally?” The letter has evoked a political debate in the country and many called for the resignation of the minister. No doubt, the innocent Muslim youth in the jails have to be released. But why is Shinde silent about other innocent youths in jails across India. That’s the question his political detractors are asking. “I hope Shinde has given this statement as a pseudo-secular Congressman and not as a Home Minister of a billion-plus nation. His motive of giving this statement is vote bank politics that the Congress is known for. Any secular person would have said that no innocent youth should be wrongfully detained in the name of terror. But he purposefully brought the word ‘Muslim’ into his statement of appeasement,” Swadesh Katoch, chief executive officer at Atlanta-based Beyond Infotech & Solutions Inc, tells Money Indices. Earlier Shinde has drawn strong criticism from the BJP for his controversial statement on Hindu terror. He accused the BJP and its ideological mentor RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or National Volunteer Organisation) of promoting Hindu terrorism through their training camps. His statements were condemned by the BJP and many leaders from his own party. With the new letter, the Home Minister is once again playing the minority card to win the hearts of religious groups. “The Indian Home Minister is trying to divide the country on communal lines. Secular Indians should come forward to react on this. The Minister should withdraw his statement,” says Arun Bhaskar, a Mumbai-based social activist. The Congress leaders should remind Shinde that he is the Home Minister of India, not the Minister of a particular community or religion. Islamic terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa of Pakistan have congratulated Shinde for his earlier remarks on Hindu terror. After all, it’s another chance for these anti-India hooligans to play one Indian against the other. But isn’t the Congress also trying to communalise the political atmosphere before the 2014 General Elections? moneyindices/detail_news.php?id=762
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 07:35:31 +0000
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