The Government of India has done justice to Islam by withdrawing Haj pilgrimage subsidy, former Supreme Court judge KT Thomas has said.
According to Islam, a person undertook Haj pilgrimage with hard-earned money after clearing all debts and observing Zakat but what had so far been done was the un-Islamic practice of doing pilgrimage on public money, he pointed out. The Government had now set right this un-Islamic practice, he said while delivering the keynote address at the National Youth Day celebration at SD College in Alappuzha, Kerala.
“India has down the centuries been the abode of all faiths which lived in fraternity. That our nation was accommodative to all sects is proved in many areas of our national life. It is indeed a matter of pride that its army had General Sam Manekshaw, a Parsi at its head and many persons from the community decked the chairs of India’s Supreme Court,” Thomas observed.
He said, “People hailing from different communities occupied high positions at governmental level, including the presidential chair. Indian democratic idea is so sublime, it being the product of no frenzy, because while in all the countries kingship gave way to peoples’ rule through bloody revolutions India proved an exception.”
The transition of India to democracy was not fraught with any bloodshed, and this formed a glorious chapter in the entire world history and the subsequent forming of the Indian Constitution fully fell in with truly democratic principles “because it was “we” who gave to ourselves the constitution,” he pointed out.
The former judge said that even as many religious bodies work transparently with governmental control over them, some religious organizations still fell outside the public scanner and it was high time that an Act was passed to ensure transparency in the working of all religious institutions and groups.
“If only this too is achieved we can do justice to the makers of our Constitution which continues to stand as a testimony to our democracy while many of the world’s constitutions failed within no time they were framed,” he said.
“It is this general national will that keeps us together on the lines of secularism, giving respect to all the religions making India a congregation of the world religions – Sarvamatharashtra – as visualized by Swami Vivekananda,” he added. The meeting was presided over by college manager P Krishna Kumar.