By Shyam Khosla
The UPA gover-nment'sdecision last week to set up a national commission to recommend res-ervations in government jobs and educational institutions for religious and linguistic minorities is yet another example of the concept of distorted secularism in vogue in the country. Obviously the ruling alliance has been irked by the Andhra High Court judgement throwing out the state government'sordinance on reservation of jobs for Muslims and wants to overcome it through legislative measures. Whether or not the government'sproposal will meet with judicial approval, the damage has been done. The decision will deepen the Hindu-Muslim divide and cause acute dissatisfaction among the Hindus. Sections of Hindu society too are economically and educationally backward. Why then resort to reservations on religious grounds? Will this not lead to the demand for a separate electorate on the premise that Muslims don'tget fair representations in elected bodies? There is no guarantee that the followers of distorted version of secularism would not fall for it to consolidate their hold on the Muslim community.
The Congress and the communist parties were against POTA on the false premise that it was largely misused against minorities. No one can deny that POTA, like other laws of the land, was misused by certain state governments but only a rabid communalist can say that only Muslims were targeted. Many who were put behind the bars under POTA were Hindus. While annulling POTA through an ordinance, the Congress-led government issued another ordinance to graft bulk of POTA provisions into the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) of 1967. Legal experts say that amended UAPA is more draconian than POTA proving the charge that Congress-communist combine'scriticism of POTA was more rhetorical than real. One of the provisions of UAPA empowers the government to ban organisation spreading communal hatred. Since in the eyes of the ruling alliance, all minorities are secular, this provision is likely to be used only against Hindu outfits. RSS and VHP have been mentioned in media reports as the potential targets. The Congress refuses to learn any lesson. It ought to know that any attempt to ban the RSS or any other Hindu outfit will generate mass aversion to the ruling alliance. Any attempt to silence nationalist outfits is bound to boomerang on the most communal party of the land- Indian National Congress.
Besides the communists that are born enemies of nationalists and patriots, HRD Minister Arjun Singh is one of the most vicious spreader of hate campaign. After hurting the school education system to no end by his rhetoric of detoxification of textbooks, he indulged in his old hobby- RSS-bashing. He revived the canard that had been buried in the deep sea by more than one judicial authority; namely, it was the RSS that created a situation that led to the Mahatma'sassassination. The Congress suffers from a guilty conscience. It agreed to Partition of the country after having won the election on the promise of keeping the country united. Those who have taken the trouble of going through Nathu Ram Godse'spassionate statement in the Punjab High Court will know why he killed Gandhi. His didn'tshare RSS'sthought process and policies and had penned extremely critical articles in his newspaper against the Sangh for not taking to violent means to silence anti-Hindu forces. Arjun Singh knows this and much more. He revived the canard in an obvious bid to prove that he was more loyal than the queen and thereby provoked a confrontation with the Sangh. RSS is loath to involve itself in any confronta-tion that may divert its attention from its man-making mission but had no option than to wage a legal battle against the aging Congressman. Communists have pushed the party hopping Arjun Singh into a fight with the formidable nationalist organisa-tion that has millions and millions of cadres and supporters. He will regret at leisure for picking up the fight in haste for an hour'sglory at 10, Janpath.
?Father? Cedric Prakash, Ahmedabad-based Christian missionary, runs his anti-Hindi tirade under the banner of half a dozen fake banners, including Prashant. He is the man funded by foreign missionaries, that projected Christian-tribal clashes in Dang district of Gujarat-in which fortunately not a single person lost his life-as ?attacks on churches? by ?Hindu fundamentalists?. His canards were accepted as gospel truth by the liberal rabble in India and the Christian West. He had nowhere to hide when his lies were exposed by a scientific and objective study conducted by the Chandigarh-based Panchnad Research Institute. He has now joined communist historians in decrying NCERT books and is making the totally unfounded charge that these books contain 100 ?blunders?. Let him prove his charge. Hindus, beware of foreign-funded propagandists who are out to defame the Hindu society to pave the way for conversions through fraud and allurements.
Pseudo-secularists and liberal rabble are persisting with their relentless tirade against nationalists in general and Hindus in particular. They never miss half an opportunity to paint Hindus black with the sole purpose of consolidating their hold on the Muslims that have been fed for more than half a century on anti-Hindu sentiments. A massive chunk of Muslims, who stayed back in India after Partition of the country on religious lines, suffered from the guilt of having voted for the Muslim League'sdemand for Pakistan. The dawn of Independence offered a grand opportunity to persuade the Muslims to join the national mainstream. However, the Congress that ruled the country without a break between 1947 and 1977 had other ideas. It let the opportunity pass.
It had, and still has, a vested interest in persisting with the communal divide. It took a conscious decision to frighten the Muslim community by focussing on the spectre of ?communal? forces that were out to eliminate the minorities. The Congress and other ?secular? parties converted the minorities into a committed vote bank by indulging in appeasement of Muslims even while accusing Hindu outfits of ?communalism? and anti-Muslim policies. It succeeded in widening the gulf between the two major communities by creating a fear complex among the Muslims. Not surprisingly, the largest religious minority developed a ghetto mentality. Islamists did the rest. Slogans like, ?Hans ke liya hai Pakistan, larh ke lenge Hindustan? were coined to put the Muslims against the Hindus and to recruit an army of Jehadis to dominate the kafirs.
