INDIA’S Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde has taken the Hindu-bashing policy of the UPA government to a new low. He has carelessly accused the main opposition party BJP and one of the most nationalist organisations in the country—the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—of running training camps for terrorists. Only because they are both viewed as Hindu.
It is understandable but not forgivable. Shinde was making the speech at the Chintan Shivir of the Congress party at Jaipur last week for only one person in the audience. His party supremo Sonia Gandhi, who unabashedly promotes all that is non and anti-Hindu. Going by the record of his cabinet colleagues, Shinde knew that foul-mouthing Hindu forces would earn easy, quick and definite brownie points with Sonia Gandhi. Witness the way she has filled the party and the government with non-Hindus. In these very columns we have given the lists of constitutional positions that have been filled by persons of minority communities by superseding several other deserving candidates. The appointment of IB head is the latest instance. As of today, of the top thirty positions in the government, only a handful are held by Hindus in a nation where over eighty per cent of the population is Hindu. This is an unprecedented situation. Even under the British rule this may not have been the scene.
What Shinde said was not a vague or political allegation. He was very specific. He said the BJP and the RSS were running camps for training in terror activities. His statement was backed up by the upstart Home Secretary R K Singh that he has at least ten names of people who were involved in terror activities who were linked with these two organisations. Why was he quiet all this while and decided to make the revelation now? Was his job at stake?
Serious questions arise. Shinde is under oath not to reveal official matters in the public domain. If he is indeed in possession of such information, why has he not informed the Parliament and approached the BJP leaders with evidence? Why did he choose a purely party occasion to disclose such a serious national issue? And was not he and the Home Secretary prejudicing the investigations by already declaring those people culprits who are awaiting trial? This cowardly government has kept such persons as Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Col Purohit under terror act for over six years without even filing the chargesheet. Swami Aseemanand has already told the court that the police was coercing and threatening him into making ‘confessions.’ According to people in touch with Pragya Thakur, she has been physically and mentally tortured and is a wreck. Though the government has been arresting people in the name of Hindu terror, it has not been able to produce even a shred of evidence to support its case.
The Congress party has forwarded its loose cannons like Digvijay Singh and Renuka Chowdhury to rub salt into the wound caused by Shinde. Digvijay Singh is posing questions to L K Advani and Uma Bharti on why they visited Pragya Thakur in prison. He is probably not aware that the Sadhvi is only an accused and not been convicted. The natural process of justice believes one is innocent till proven guilty. Even that basic sense of fairness would not be allowed to Hindu leaders though the convicted and established terrorists receive respectful treatment from the likes of Digvijay Singh, who nauseatingly brought the caste of the home minister into this discussion.
The Congress Chief Minister of Kerala and the Communist leaders visited Abdul Nasser Madani in jail who was serving a sentence for the Coimbatore blast case. Digvijay Singh and Rahul Gandhi routinely visit the terror centres like Deoband, espcially before the elections in UP to console them and assure them of help and support.
Shinde only reflects the attitude of the Congress party and the UPA government—to unequivocally kowtow to the Muslim community. Shinde was rewarded with immediate approval and support from several terror groups and Muslim organisations, including the banned LeT. Shinde, in his eagerness to please Sonia Gandhi, has seriously harmed the resolve of those fighting terrorism and are involved in handling these cases. He has given a cue to them to fix Hindus and let the real offenders off the hook. Shinde deserves to be tried for treason and punished by the nation. Whether it is the law which is going to mete this out to him or the people of India is the question. While the law takes long to deliver justice, the anger of the people may not.
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