The Hindu : `Conceptual flaw in Antony's stand'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 14, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

`Conceptual flaw in Antony's stand'

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM July 13. Prof. Ninan Koshy today said the Chief Minister, A.K. Antony's recent comments about minority communities had "serious conceptual flaws" and tended to "buttress the arguments and perspectives of the Hindutva ideologues".

In a statement issued here today, Prof. Koshy said Mr. Antony's discourse on minorities was in the framework of majoritarianism and not that of a secular democracy.

For Mr. Antony, there was a permanent majority in the country with reference to which only political issues could be decided. "This distortion of the concept of majority is blatantly anti-democratic and anti-secular," he said.

Referring to Mr. Antony's comment that the minorities had gained undue benefits from the Government, Prof. Koshy said the elites of minority communities and of other communities might have made undue gains by pressure on the Government.

``But the lot of the ordinary people in the minority communities who constitute a vast majority is the same as that of all the ordinary people in the State, including lower level Government employees, labourers, farmers and the unemployed who are facing mounting economic problems as a result of the policies pursued by this Government," he said.

He said there was also no truth in the Chief Minister's statement that more benefits had gone to the minority communities through migration to the Gulf and Europe. A big majority of those who worked in the Gulf belonged to the middle class and the weakest section of society.

"In the volatile communal situation in the State, it is highly irresponsible for the Chief Minister to suggest that the disparity is caused by the organised power of the minority communities.

Mr. Antony is making a futile attempt to hide the fact that the disparity between the rich and the poor is widening in the State due to the policies of economic globalisation, which his Government is enthusiastically promoting," Prof. Koshy said.

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