The former Congress spokesperson, Rashid Alvi, shot off a letter to party president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday, expressing his unhappiness with the UPA government’s recent decision to extend reservation to Jats.
He said it had sent a “wrong signal” to Muslims, who had been at the receiving end of violence, perpetrated by the Jats during the Muzaffarnagar riots last year, resulting in a massive exodus.
Officially, the Congress said an entire community could not be blamed for the acts of a few rioters.
“To award reservation to a particular community after massive riots in Muzaffarnagar has given a wrong signal to the people at large and the Muslim community in particular,” Mr. Alvi wrote in his letter. He stressed that Muslims believed the Jats were the “perpetrators” of the violence. The Muslims, he underscored, had not only lost their family members but also their livelihoods and land, with more than 50,000 of them forced to live in camps after the riots.
Answering a question at a briefing on Thursday, party spokesperson and Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor said: “We do not believe that crimes are committed by an entire community or caste. I do not think you can ascribe such conduct to an entire community.”
Expanding on this, he said: “We cannot blame all Jats or all Hindus for what happened in Muzaffarnagar just as we do not blame all Gujaratis for the 2002 riots.”
Mr. Alvi, who is from western Uttar Pradesh, pointed out that the State is “highly polarised…at this juncture. The decision to award reservation to Jats not only hurts the sentiments of the Muslims but also other backward castes.” He, however, clarified that he was not opposed to reservation for any community per se.
He was also critical of the party’s failure to legislate the Prevention of Communal Violence Bill. “Passage of the Bill would have showcased our commitment to our core values.”
If Mr. Alvi has openly criticised the Cabinet’s approval on Monday for the inclusion of Jats in the Central list of OBCs in nine States, including Uttar Pradesh — a decision the party hopes will benefit about nine crore people from the community — other Uttar Pradesh Muslims in the Congress, too, are disturbed by the decision.
However, the fact that Mr. Alvi, who was dropped as party spokesperson last year and was not re-nominated to the Rajya Sabha, has chosen to go public with his criticism is being read as a prelude to his departure from the Congress at a time when some others have left — or are in the process of — leaving the party.
He joined the Congress in April 2004, when he was expelled from the Bahujan Samaj Party for accusing its president Mayawati of working under BJP pressure and taking bribes for ticket allotment.
Earlier in the day, the issue of reservation came up at meeting of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), affiliated to the Congress, when a member asked why reservation should not based on economic criteria.
Coming as this does in the wake of party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi making a similar proposal — which was rejected by Ms. Gandhi, who described the current policy as “an article of faith” for the Congress — a question on it was posed to Mr. Tharoor.
Mr. Tharoor clarified that though the issue was interesting, it was not possible to rethink or discuss it “in the heat and dust of elections” and that the Congress had no intention of re-opening this issue at this stage.
It had been “raised too late in the political calendar,” he said. However, “if these are important issues for the young people, there is a legitimate ground for discussing this, after the elections, inside party forums. There is a political constituency behind this, and if the issue is to be reopened, the time will come after the elections for calm reflection within the party.”
