Minority appeasement has led to a deep division in society. But our ‘secular’ politicians don’t care
Politicians of the vociferous ‘secular’ clan learn their tricks as swiftly as they dump their voters and democratic values and principles. They do so unscrupulously, without any hesitation. Together, they try hard to feed the people on the dangers of ‘communal forces'. The Prime Minister has recently called upon all the ‘secular' forces to unite against ‘communal’ forces. Almost simultaneously, one of his Ministers issued a circular to all the State Chief Ministers asking them to ensure that no Muslim youth is wrongfully arrested or detained. One wonders why he is so selective on religious basis. Recall the gems of pronouncements made earlier by the Union Minister for Minority Affairs, who wanted separate tribunals for the Muslim youth. This luminary is unsure of the very existence of Indian Mujahideen. Are the two Ministers not indulging in brazen acts of communalising the Indian polityIJ Why are they creating social wedges and fuelling religious jealousies and distrustIJ
When Rashtriya Janata Dal chief lalu Prasad gets sentenced after 17 years, and Rasheed Masood after over 23 years, not much ingenuity is needed to visualise the sordid and sad state of affairs of the judicial delivery system in India. People suffer; young persons suffer for decades together. In 2011 alone, 64.7 per cent of the jail inmates were under trials. Those from economically weaker sections, arrested for minor crimes, are unable to arrange proper legal aid and suffer for no fault of theirs. A corruption-ridden system of policing has ‘standardised' its practices of harassing the weak, deficient and the deprived. It is the fear of harassment of the police that prevents people even from helping the victim of a road accident.
The minimum that the Union Minister for Home Affairs could have done was to arrange intensive training and orientation of the police force on how to deal with the suspected wrong-doers and professionally handle terror cases. In fact, after the December 16 gang-rape incident, the inadequacy of the training system in police came up for severe public scrutiny. The police continues to behave in the same atrocious manner with rape victims as earlier. Nothing substantial has been initiated to orient the police personnel on the critical concern of gender sensitivity and provide a sense of security to women and girls. People who know the system point out how training is given due weightage in the defence forces, and the best of the officers prefer posting training institutes. In the police force, no one opts to even head a police training institute. They all want to be in ‘field'; everyone knows the ‘why' of it.
The sufferings inflicted upon citizens must not be viewed through the prism of communal agenda hidden under the garb of secularism — people find it rather transparent. The most sensible query which must be answered honestly by the Union Home Minister is: If Muslim youths are being harassed, why not take to task the persons responsible for itIJ Why can you not control the systemIJ Has any officer been punished even in a single case of the harassment of any young personIJ The Home Minister is playing the old game: Create conditions that irritate and provoke opposition parties, allow them to criticise the move and then approach the Muslim community tactfully and tell them how sincerely ‘we' wanted to be of help to you — so why not vote for us one more time! This is pure and unadulterated communalism.
The list of schemes and sops for minority welfare could be a legion. These are widely publicised in the print and the electronic media. It germinates feelings of segregation amongst young impressionable minds. When young boys and girls of 15 to19-year age groups find that some of their classmates are eligible for a special stipend or a loan simply because the colleague is a Muslim, sensitivities are hurt. Why can the system not evolve schemes in a manner that the entire lot is helpedIJ The sarcasm that Muslim children face from their classmates is avoidable. It is a great folly to ignore such observations as ‘insignificant' or ‘matters of details'.
Prejudices, when deliberately created with political gains in mind, could be lasting and get transformed into hatred and exclusion. It is another folly to assume that vote-bank politics and Muslim appeasement are the creation of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These have gained ground amongst people irrespective of party affiliations. This perception is injurious to social cohesion and religious amity.
If a serious professionally-sound and academically-honest study is conducted on Muzaffarnagar riots, it would emphatically emerge that the riots were an outburst of pent-up feelings on both the sides. These were fuelled by the sustained manoeuvres of politicians of all shades. It is well understood that the British policy of initially favouring Hindus, then Muslims, and creating a lasting divide by bringing in English as the gateway to Government jobs, resulted in deep-rooted feelings of discrimination and victimhood. This often results in communal clashes on one pretext or the other.
In spite of all this, rural India has mostly sustained its tradition of acceptance of other religions and has rejected efforts to communalise the environment of brotherhood and amity.