Author: Editorial
Publication: Organiser
Date: January 22, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=114&page=6
The UPA often reminds us of the Muslim League
of the pre-Independent India. And Arjun Singh of the despicable communalist
Maulana Mohammad Ali. The only difference is that the Muslim League then did
not enjoy absolute power. It rather existed on British patronage.
But the UPA is different in that sense. It
is not accidental that the Muslim League, which Jawaharlal Nehru once characterized
as dead horse, is sitting in the central cabinet for the first time in Independent
India. League as such has only one member in the Lok Sabha but, it is practically
running the foreign office.
The policies of the UPA give the impression
that it is working to make true the recent assertion of the Lashkar-e-Toiba
chief Hafiz Saeed that three more Pakistans would be created in India. Otherwise,
how does one explain the UPA's latest move over-riding objections by the Union
Law Ministry to introduce a system of allocating funds for key social sector
programmes on communal lines?
Every attempt of the UPA to communalise the
polity met with judicial reproach. Twice the Allahabad High Court, the Andhra
Pradesh High Court and the Supreme Court have struck down the policy of reservation
on communal lines. The apex court had cautioned the central government to
work for the creation of an egalitarian society and not to play caste, communal
politics in the name of disbursing social justice.
The UPA's latest step is to look at the communal
profile of the beneficiaries depending on their numerical strength and to
reserve 18.4 per cent of the total central spending for religious minorities.
Thus the UPA plans to fracture the population in every state on religious
lines as mutually suspicious, antagonistic and competing groupings quarreling
for share of the meagre allocation.
The Law Ministry reportedly warned the government
that this patent bias in central policy is violative of Article 14 and negates
the spirit of Article 38 of the Constitution. The UPA is also pushing for
a separate plan allocation for minority communities. These are over and above
the other outrageous actions of this government in pandering to minorityism.
Clearly, the UPA is bent on cynically undermining
the Constitution and the secular fabric of the country. By encouraging Muslim,
Christian communalism and dividing the polity on religious and caste lines
the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi is obviously hoping to create a conducive
atmosphere for her evangelical mission and balkanisation of India. No word
of condemnation is sufficient to emphasise the damage this foreigner by her
proxy regime is inflicting on this ancient nation and its tolerant tradition.
Arjun Singh is acting only as her vicar apostolic.
Power for family
The UPA's other mission is to empower the
family. No other regime in recent democratic history has done so much to perpetuate
and insulate a family from the law of the land. Take the latest instance of
the central plea before the British crown prosecution service that there is
no evidence directly linking Mr Ottavio Quattrocchi to the Bofors payoffs.
The government has no plans to appeal against the Delhi High Court order,
which had earlier let off the Hindujas in the case. The present move is meant
also to defreeze Quattrocchi's two accounts in London.
It has become obvious that Quattrocchi is
someone very special for the Congress and its leader. This is baffling, for
there is a charge-sheet pending against him in India.
This is not an isolated instance of absolving
family members and retainers of the family, after the UPA assumed office.
The first act as mentioned earlier was to clear the family's name from the
Bofors scandal with the CBI stating lack of evidence in the court, leading
to the dismissal of the case. Then came the exoneration of V. George in disproportionate
wealth accumulation and Income Tax case. This was followed by the clean chit
given to former Petroleum Minister Satish Sharma. Even people loyal to the
Congress first family like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mayawati, Rabri Devi and Shibu
Soren benefited from this doctoring the course of the law. The Janata Dal(U)
leader George Fernandes and Dr Subramanian Swamy had filed a number of well-documented
charges on false affidavits exposing the Congress leader. Though on the face
of it the allegations were sound there was no further investigation to these
charges and they were summarily rejected by the court. The same alacrity was
in display in dealing with the recent Volcker report and Mitrokhin Archives
findings concerning the evidences against the family. Recently we heard a
lot of dissertations on probity in public life from the UPA benches. But it
seems some persons in the Congress are more than equal before the law. They
always manage an easy escape route with full and indulgent facilitation by
the pliable government.
