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By:
V. Sundaram vsundaram@newstodaynet.com |
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Wednesday, 04 November, 2009 ,
02:26 PM
Union Home Minister’s infatuation for the Muslims of India was clearly brought out when he visited the Jamlat Ulema-i:Hind at Deoband yesterday to participate in their 30th general session. His effete speech paying his tribute to this Darul Uloom for having passed a cosmetic political fatwa against terror was marked by the usual pseudo-secular and known anti-Hindu claptrap. He deplored violence in the name of religion and made a fervent appeal that more voices be raised against terrorism and all forms of violence, mainly communal strife. He said the Babri Masjid demolition at Ayodhya in 1992 was a manifestation of religious fanaticism. Communalism negated pluralism and apposed political freedom to people. The irrefutable fact of multiple attacks on Hindu temples during the last 10 years (forget the fully documented Islamic record of large –scale destruction of innumerable temples in India since 712 AD till date!), resulting in sudden deaths and grievous injuries to thousands of Hindu devotees, seems to have been completely and deliberately glossed over by Chidambaram.  | UNION HOME MINISTER CHIDAMBARAM
AT DEOBAND |
What is even more shocking to note is that Jamlat Ulema-i:Hind at Deoband passed a patently illegal and unconstitutional resolution to this effect: “ We direct all the members of our community not to recite Vande Mataram. They should not participate in any prayer involving this anti-Islamic song”.
This anti-national resolution was passed in the very presence of the Union Home Minister Chidambaram and Union Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot.
As a former civil servant belonging to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), I am pained to see as to how the two Union Ministers can choose to remain silent when a patently anti national and unconstitutional resolution is passed in their very presence by the Jamlat Ulema-i:Hind at Deoband against our constitutionally approved National song of Vande Mataram. Are the members of the Darul Uloom at Deoband citizens of India or Pakistan? They may find it convenient to be ignorant of Law because of the Minority Rights guaranteed to them under the Indian Constitution. But these two Union Ministers, one of whom claims himself to be a legal luminary of immortal glory and fame, cannot politically and pseudo-secularly choose to remain in a state of ignorance about the following solid facts of modern history of post-independent India.
Dr Rajendra Prasad, while presiding over the Constituent Assembly on 24 January, 1950, made the following statement which was also adopted as the basis for the final decision on the issue:
‘The composition consisting of words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations as the Government may authorise as occasion arises, and the song VANDE MATARAM, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honored equally with Jana Gana Mana and SHALL HAVE EQUAL STATUS WITH IT. (Applause) I hope this will satisfy members.’ (Constituent Assembly of India, Vol. XII, 24-1-1950)
It will be clear from Dr Rajendra Prasad’s declaration in the Constituent Assembly cited above that that Vande Mataram is equal in status to our National Anthem of Jana Gana Mana.. When he made this declaration on 24 January, 1950, all the Muslim Members of the Constituent Assembly including Maulana Abul Kalam Azad also gave their full approval to the proposal. It is not now open to anyone in India to question the constitutional or the legal status of this great National Song of Bankim Chandra Chaterjee. If they are given that freedom or latitude, that means they are questioning the Constitution of India.
The philosophy of the Congress Party on this sacred issue of singing of Vande Mataram, can be summed up in a laconic limerick:
Vande Mataram is not mandatory
Even Jana Gana Mana need not be involuntary
Vande Mataram can be secularly mandatory
Vande Mataram can be communally non-mandatory
In our official Non-Government of zero performance
Sacred things often become sacrilegious
And sacrilegious things become sacred
Things sublime will be viewed as subversive
Things subversive will shine as jewels sublime
Pray don’t dismiss us as dubiously dilatory
By temperament and training, we are suavely soaked in sophistry
We are not steeped in ‘communal’ stupidity
Is it not almost a pity?
Nobody understands our poor pseudo-secular ditty
With such non-constitutional clarity
And with known and authentic Anti-Hindu acerbity!!
With total dedication to absolute communal minority!!!
The problems we are facing from some of the leading anti-national Muslims today started with Gandhiji’s unconditional support for the Khilafat Movement in 1920-21. Achyuth Patwardhan, one of the Socialist stalwarts in the Congress, has given a remarkably candid and self critical analysis of the Congress Party vis-a-vis Khilafat: ‘It is, however, useful to recognise our share of this error of misdirection. To begin with, I am convinced that looking back upon the course of development of the freedom movement, THE ‘HIMALAYAN ERROR’ of Gandhiji’s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to the Khilafat Movement at the end of the World War I. This has proved to be a disastrous error which has brought in its wake a series of harmful consequences. On merits, it was a thoroughly reactionary step. The Khilafat was totally unworthy of support of the Progressive Muslims. Kemel Pasha established this solid fact by abolition of the Khilafat. The abolition of the Khilafat was widely welcomed by enlightened Muslim opinion the world over and Kemel was an undoubted hero of all young Muslims straining against Imperialist domination. But apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim Leadership of clerics and maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secular, modernist leadership among the Muslims of India and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of the Maulvis. Maulana Mohammed Ali’s speeches read today appear strangely incoherent and out of tune with the spirit of secular political freedom. The Congress Movement which released the forces of religious liberalism and reform among the Hindus, and evoked a rational scientific outlook, placed the Muslims of India under the spell of orthodoxy and religious superstition by their support to the Khilafat leadership. Rationalist leaders like Jinnah were rebuffed by this attitude of Congress and Gandhi. This is the background of the psychological rift between Congress and the Muslim League’.
A few months ago when French President Nicholas Sarkozy announced that burqas were not welcome in France, I had a feeling that it was just a small step in France’s battle with Islam.
I understand France is going to adopt a series of measures to ‘reaffirm pride’ in the country and combat Islamic fundamentalism. They include everybody receiving lessons in the nation’s Christian history and children singing the national anthem.
About 2 years ago, the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard told the Muslims of Australia: ‘ If you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you....If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option.’
Unlike the Muslim Clerics of India, the ‘Radical’ Muslims have pledged their loyalty to Australia’. On the contrary, our Pan-Islamic clerics are pledging their disloyalty to the sacred National Song of Vande Mataram!! I hope that learned Muslim Clerics will not issue a fatwa against the Australian Muslims for their declared loyalty to their duly constituted government!!! (The writer is a retired IAS officer)
e-mail the writer at
vsundaram@newstodaynet.com |
