The Hindu : 'NCM should ensure that Govt. behaves'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 08, 2003

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'NCM should ensure that Govt. behaves'

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD JUNE 7. Representatives of minority institutions in Gujarat today urged the National Commission for Minorities to take steps to ensure that the BJP Government in the State "behaved".

They said that ever since the party came to power in 1998, it had been following a one-point "hidden agenda" — to terrorise the minorities and deny them their constitutional rights of freedom to preach, practise and propagate their religion.

While Muslim representatives of the All-Gujarat Madrassa Education Council told the NCM chairman, Tarlochan Singh, during his day's visit to the State today, that they would "torch" the madrassas if the Government proved that any of these preached and propagated terrorism or anti-national sentiments, the Christian representatives demanded repeal of the Freedom of Religion Bill to which the Governor had given his assent but was yet to be notified in the Government gazette to become an Act.

The All-India Christian Council and other Christian organisations which had earlier threatened to boycott the NCM chairman's visit in view of his reported remarks supporting the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's "trishul diksha" programme, however, changed their stand after Mr. Singh blamed the media for the controversy.

The AICC joint secretary, Samson Christian, said that he and other leaders were summoned by Mr. Singh immediately after his arrival here from Delhi on Friday night and were told that his views on the VHP programme had been misrepresented in the media.

Mr. Singh, however, told some minority delegations that it was as much the responsibility of the minorities to maintain peace and law order in the country as it was of the majority community. The "fear-psychosis" among the minorities would not help the cause of peace and tranquillity. The minorities on their part should also not take any such step that could disrupt law and order.

Mr. Singh — who also had a meeting with the first Muslim woman mayor of Ahmedabad, Aneesa Mirza, and other officials of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and, later, the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, in Gandhinagar — said he received several complaints from the minorities against the Government about its "failure" to rein in the Hindu fundamentalist organisations threatening their lives and property.

He said Mr. Modi denied that his Government had launched any "survey" of the Christians and advised the minorities to register complaints if police or other Government officials harassed them.

Later talking to presspersons, Mr. Singh said the overall communal situation in the State had improved but all the communities would have to act together to re-establish a cordial atmosphere. He said he was told by officials that more than Rs. 16.19 crores had been disbursed as compensation to 897 riot victims.

The "illegal and offensive survey" of the Christian families was the focal point of the memoranda submitted to Mr. Singh by the AICC and the Gujarat United Christian Forum for Human Rights while both the Muslim and Christian organisations also complained of indiscriminate use of Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) against the Muslim youths "under one pretext or the other". They claimed that many innocent Muslim youths had been held under POTA and the entire community was being terrorised and harassed by police at the behest of the Government.

Both the Forum and the AICC said the Government had been deliberately ignoring the suggestions and recommendations made by the NCM since 1998 on the cases of attacks against the Christians. "They have remained on paper and practically none of them have been implemented" despite the Government giving assurances in the past both to the NCM and from time to time to the Gujarat High Court.

The Forum also reminded the NCM chairman about the textbooks with offensive passages "demonising" Christians and other minorities and urged him to direct the Government to expunge such "one-sided" paragraphs.

It claimed that violence and law and order problems had cropped up in Gujarat only when the Hindu extremists had taken the law into their own hands and maintained that the "trishuls'' had been used to "intimidate and even kill innocent people".

The meeting of the Madrassa Education Council held in Mr. Singh's presence decided to "modernise" the education system in madrassas by introducing computers and other equipment. Mr. Singh said the Government had promised to provide whatever help the council needed to achieve the objective.

On Mr. Modi's pleading helplessness over allocation of Government funds for repairing religious shrines, he said at his suggestion the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation had agreed to take up the responsibility of repairing Muslim religious places damaged in last year's communal riots.

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'NCM should ensure that Govt. behaves'