Author:
Publication: BJP Today
Date: September 16-30,
2000
Now we know how irrational
and unpatriotic our lawmakers can be. Ever since the Supreme Court took
cognizance of the public interest litigation filed by the All India Lawyers
Forum for Civil Liberties on the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals)
Act of 1983 by giving Parliament time until January 2001 to repeal the
Act, those responsible for the black law and those irrationally in support
of it seem to have got into a hysteria over it. They want their scheming,
but they also want their image as 'patriotic' Indians to remain unscathed.
For some, the well-laid plans of many years to carve out a fundamentalist
Muslim state in this part of the subcontinent (with Assam in it, of course)
are in a bit of unexpected danger. As for the Congress, its diabolic pretence
about the foreign infiltrators being "Indian minorities" already exposed,
there is panic right down the ranks down the ranks about what would happen
if their Bangladeshi vote-banks could not be protected. And what would
the party do at a time when they are down to only about 113 seats in the
Lok Sabha? So the Congress has doggedly stuck to its old and suicide stand
of declaring that the party would shoot down any Bill that the Centre might
table in Parliament to scrap the IM(DT) Act. The Congress leader of Assam
would rather leaves the State and move somewhere else, than admit now to
their diabolic role in starting the influx in the first place. And since
most of them have real estate outside the State, they can well afford such
a course of action, leaving the people to their fate. Accountability is
so unfashionable these days! However, it took the original Congressman
and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Mr. Purno A. Sangma to try his hand
at some rationalization over the irrational stand to oppose any move to
repeal the IM(DT) Act. According to Mr. Sangma, people should stop talking
about the Act because it divides people along communal lines. If it really
does so, would it not be the strongest reason for getting rid of the black
law once and for all'? How is anything achieved by either brushing it under
the carpet or burying our heads in the sand? But he does admit, unlike
the others who have remained Congressmen, that there is large-scale illegal
infiltration across the border. For, does he not say that the Centre should
give the entire money that it is "unnecessarily" spending on fencing the
Indo-Bangladesh border to Bangladesh, so that poverty does not drive the
Bangladeshis to this side of the fence? (Mr. Sangma is right about the
poverty part, though two successive Bangladesh High Commissioners to India
have tried to convince us that Bangladeshis do not have to sneak into Assam
for economic reasons; the wages in Bangladesh, they maintain, are better
than what they are here!) But how is this India's responsibility? And would
he also insist, by the same token, that the money spent on protecting the
Indo-Pakistan border be also given to Pakistan to improve its economy?
What is more pertinent, however, is how a democrat of his stature, so well
versed in the law and the principle of equality under the Constitution,
can argue that two separate immigration laws should be permitted to coexist
in the same country? Is he in a position to furnish even one just one example
of a similar dispensation anywhere else in the civilized, democratic world?
Can he produce one single example of the immigration law of any country
being sabotaged by the lawmakers to make it impossible for any illegal
migrants to be detected or deported from just one State of the country?
Or is he saying that all fait accomplish and collective mistakes made by
lawmakers should be allowed to continue unto perpetuity until that part
of the country is no longer its part, and when people will not have to
bother about the IM(DT) Act since it will be a law of another country?
Or has Mr. Sangma completely failed to see the fundamentalist design of
including Assam in a Muslim country in the making, which has nothing to
do with economics at all?
The other crisis arises
from the Muslim ministers of the ruling AGP threatening to quit over the
AGP's support for repealing the IM(DT) Act which, according to them, safeguards
the rights of the 'minorities'. (A clear case of using even one's false
teeth as paperweight for want of anything better.) The AGP should call
their bluff and let them do it. It will achieve two things: (a) an end
to the endless compromises that any political party would have to make
to remain in power with the Bangladeshi vote bank, and (b) it will confront
us with the reality today rather than allowing a worsening situation to
fester. A fall in the government will inevitably bring in a spell of President's
rule which may not be such a bad solution in the circumstances. It will
also show the entire country which way the loyalties of some of our 'secular'
lawmakers lie. And if we have 'minority' leaders pretending that the IM(DT)
Act alone can safeguard minority rights, they must explain to us how minority
rights are being protected in other States where the Foreigners Act is
in force. All said and done, it is a good thing that the showdown has come
now. Better now than later.
(Editorial, The Sentinel,
September 1, 2000)