HVK Archives: Under our secular governments
Under our secular governments - The Daily
M V Kamath
()
23 April 1997
Title : Under our secular governments
Author : M V Kamath
Publication : The Daily
Date : April 23, 1997
How nice it is to know from Sitaram Kesri that prime minister HD
Deve Gowda is trot only inefficient but also a communalist? That
may not come as news to anyone in Bangalore but it is heartening to
hear Kesri's assessment of. Gowda. Wasn't it Gowda who led the
'secular' brigade all these months under the watchful eye, of the
Congress President? Poor Gowda. When his position came under
threat he had no compunction to send on S.O.S. to the BJP he had
loved to shun. For a captain, presumably, any port is welcome when
his ship is in a storm. Only the other day there were strong
rumours that that other secular champion, Laloo Prasad Yaday was
seeking Ramakrishna Hegde's help for extricating him out of the
fodder seam mire. And it was Laloo Prasad who was responsible for
driving Hegde out of the Janata Dal. But even more interesting
developments have taken place to make the untouchable BJP very much
'touchable'. An accidental leak revealed the plan of a meeting
between PV Narasimha Rao and BJP veteran Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Surely they were not discussing the effect on mango prices as a
result of the truckers' strike? If nothing else recent events have
shown how bogus are the pretensions of the non-BJP parties. These
parties are worse than communal. They are not only casteists to the
core but inefficient and corrupt as well. In the first place
Sitaram Kesri has been implicated in the JMM. seam: According to
Shailendra Mahato, Kesri as Congress Party treasurer was party to
the Rs. 40 lakh bribery. Then consider this: While the Income Tax
rules debar political parties from receiving foreign contributions,
on-going investigations have revealed that the Congress Party
received funds to the tune of Rs. 3.5 crore from abroad between
1993-1995. When the assessments of four political parties were
completed by the Income Tax Department on March 31, the Congress
was the only one found to have received foreign donations Three
Singapore-based donations were made by three separate companies
that sound as it they are front companies for one individual
judging by their names: Dominion Trading, Decor Trading and Diera
Trading. In 1994 one donation came from unnamed NRIs from, of all
places, Jakarta is Indonesia. Can this be another case of money
laundering? Some forty odd Congressmen are under CBI
investigation, including Sitaram Kesri himself - the Congress
president for murder! flow's that for the morality of our secular
leaders?
Consider how the Leftists led by the CPM run West Bengal. Lynching
claimed 63 lives in West Bengal between 1982 and 1984. From June
1988 to May 1990, 53 persons were lynched. Fifty were battered to
death in the West Bengal countryside between October 1994 and March
1995. There is no official confirmation yet, but it is believed
that more than 50 have been lunched already this year and 1997 is
hardly four months old. "Cases of lynching" former CPM Politburo
member and Tripura Chief Minister Nripen Chakraborty alleged in an
interview two years ago "reveal that the common people in West
Bengal no longer enjoy the right to life and justice". The veteran
communist leader's observation that "the perpetrators of the, crime
remain at large, because they belonged to the CPM" raised a
political storm. Truth always hurts.
Then take the other paragon of "secular" virtue, Laloo Prasad Yaday
who is also chairman of the Janata Dal, under whose regime 218
blocks in 34 districts of Bihar are. run by a parallel government.
The Janata Dal 'government' keeps mum as private armies are taking
revenge on lower caste workers organised by the CPM. The
protagonists in Bihar are Laloo Prasad's Janata Dal versus Jyoti
Basu's CPM. Both, if nobody knows, are in the United Front kichidi
government in Delhi but in Bihar they are cutting each other's
throats. Haibaspur village became the scene of manslaughter on
March 23 when ten dalits were murdered in cold blood which is not
much of a record considering that on July 11 1996, some 21 dalits,
mostly women and children were slain by Ranvir Sena CPM, of course,
denies any, hand in the killings attributing them to CPI
(Marxist-Leninist) which is the same as, the right hand denying
knowledge of what the left hand is doing. The Ranvir Sena has the
support of the OBCs. The Janata Dal candidate in Ara Loka Sabha
constituency, Chandradev Prasad Verma, now a Union minister, wanted
the ban on the Ranvir Sena lifted. Ban or no ban, the Ranvir Sena
continues on its murderous activity. Meanwhile, CBI sleuths who
are framing a. charge-sheet against Laloo Prasad Yadav have found
out how the Bihar Chief Minister, his family and his henchmen have
been using slush funds for their frequent visits to Delhi by air.
The story was revealed by one JP Verma and his son Rajesh Verma on
oath before senior officials of the Income Tax Directorate, Patna.
This father-and-son team was asked to submit fake bills for alleged
medicines supplied to the Animal Husbandry Department. Between 1993
and 1995 they were paid Rs. 1.5 crore. But they couldn't keep it.
They had to fork out 80 per cent of this to Shyam Behari Sinha,
joint regional Director of the Animal Husbandry Department. The
father-and-son got only 20 per cent (Rs. 30 lakh) but even this
they could not keep because they, had to buy: air tickets out of
that amount for nine family members of the chief minister and also
invest what was left in movable and immovable properties, allegedly
for the chief minister again. All this has been reported by The
Statesman of Calcutta but most papers have chosen not to report
these incidents.
Corruption, Caste war and carnage seem to he the hall-mark of the
"secular" governments, in Bihar and West Bengal. Reported The Asian
Age on April: 6 "The ruling Janata Dal In the Interest of electoral
politics made no serious effort to curb the blood-letting. This can
he gauged from the fact that the Ranvir Sena after being banned In
1995, is still continuing. The government has failed to disarm or
arrest its members. The riding Janata Dal, in fact, sided with the
upper castes, since it knew very well that the lower caste poor
people were with the CPI (ML)". That is "secularism" in the style
of Laloo Prasad. Compared to Bihar, the BJP-led state of Rajasthan
and the BJP-SS led state of Maharashtra seem to he paradise. But
who backs Laloo Prasad? Another paragon of virtue, Deve Gowda. It
is to farce that our politics has been reduced. With 'secularism'
as their friend and protector, the, poor do not need enemies.
But when will our 'intellectuals' understand this?
(The author is former Editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India.)
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