May  2003 
Year 9    No.87

Editorial


‘Licence Raj’ must go

Since last year, the VHP’s working president Ashok Singhal has gone around publicly declaring he is proud of the fact that, thanks to the sangh parivar, entire villages in Gujarat are now ‘Muslim–free’. "The jihadi philosophy of all Muslims is the same, whether they are from Bosnia or Kashmir or Mumbai or Coimbatore. It is the same intolerant, uncivilised, anti–democratic, anti–pluralistic, jihadi policy that is creating problems for humanity," declares Praveen Togadia in an interview to Mid–Day, a day before he spits further venom at a public meeting in the metropolis (March 16, 2003). In early April, the same cancer surgeon thunders from New Delhi, "In the coming days, each and every village in the country will be turned into an Ayodhya. I do not know what will happen then". And on April 16, yet another luminary from parivar’s pantheon, Acharya Dharmendra, virtually unveils Hindutva’s ‘Final Solution’ at a ‘dharma sabha’ in Alibag near Mumbai: "Hamein Mussalmaanon ko khatam karna hain" ("We have to finish off the Muslims").

The law of the land is very clear on where it stands vis-ŕ-vis the spreading of communal poison and churning up of undiluted hatred against any particular class of citizens. According to Sections 153–A, 153–B, 295–A, 298 and 505, the proper place for Singhal, Togadia, Dharmendra and their ilk is in jail, and for several years at that. Were the law-keepers true to their Constitutional calling, all these hate–mongers would be slapped with criminal charges and vigorously prosecuted. But here lies the problem: a police force groomed to simply watch when innocents are massacred openly on the streets cannot be expected to get unduly perturbed at the mere incitement to kill. The Constitution, who cares; the police take their cue from politicians.

The BJP’s de facto numero uno and the country’s home minister, LK Advani sees no need to act when Togadiaji threatens, from within hearing distance quite likely of the Union home ministry, a civil war in every village of India. Nor do the Congress Party’s Sushil Kumar Shinde and the Nationalist Congress Party’s Chhagan Bhujbal, the chief minister and home minister of Maharashtra respectively, feel any differently about Togadia and Dharmendra’s invitation to ‘dharam yudh’ from Mumbai and neighbouring Alibag.

Sadly, the courts, too, don’t seem to think it imperative for judicial activism to get into suo motu gear and check this License Raj that is so indulgent towards hate crimes. It is a matter of small consolation that in the last two months or so, the chief ministers of MP and Gujarat, Digvijay Singh and Ashok Gehlot have taken the first steps to stem the growing communal cancer. But it is now left to concerned citizens and civil society organisations to flood police stations with FIRs and the courts with PILs against hate.

Even as the sangh parivar tightens the noose around Muslims and Christians across the country, the plight of the few thousand Kashmiri Pundits, who have chosen or are forced to stay behind in the Valley, is no better. A few weeks ago, 24 of them — men, women and children — were mercilessly butchered in Nadimarg village, throwing the rest in a state of acute insecurity and uncertainty. And a Muslim fundamentalist outfit demonstrated through its murderous misdeed in Marad in Kozhikode district of Kerala that perpetrators of violence could function in the name of any faith. The most disturbing aspect of the latest killing in Kerala is the shameless courting of Hindu and Muslim communal outfits by parties that still chant the secularism mantra. And in Modi’s Gujarat, the siege of the minorities continues.

This issue of Communalism Combat has all these disturbing reports. Plus an investigative report by a monitoring team put together by the Delhi-based Sahmat group, that exposes the plaint Archaeological Survey of India’s team to twist its report on the excavations in Ayodhya in a manner that will please the sangh parivar. Even as Ayodhya continues to simmer, we are publishing in this issue the first instalment of a list of thousands of Muslim places of worships across the country that await ‘liberation’ a la Ayodhya. Secularists will hopefully treat it as advance warning and act instead of being overtaken by events, again and again, and compelled to react.

— EDITORS.

 

 


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