Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 24, 2011
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/50734-thwart-congress’s-deceitful-deed.html

Say no to sleight-of-hand communal quota

Nothing about what the Congress does is accidental; no two actions of this party are coincidental. Dishonesty, deceit and deception are the three strands of the Congress’s DNA; the gene of this party has mutated over the past six decades into that of a creature whose natural instinct is to be duplicitous and inflict damage to the very nation which it once led from the front and whose destiny its stalwarts helped shape in the Constituent Assembly while setting India on the path of admirable secularism. Since then, especially after the Congress began trading in votes by pandering to crass minorityism in the years of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s rudely interrupted rule, the party has sought to repeatedly undermine the Constitution by striking at the secular principles enshrined in that document and rendering it meaningless.

Rajiv Gandhi’s subversion of the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement in the Shah Bano case through a regressive Act of Parliament, using the brute majority of the Congress to push through the mockingly named Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Bill in 1986 was as deliberate a deed as Mrs Indira Gandhi allowing mullahs who place the shari’ah over the Constitution to triumph over the executive and the legislature in 1972. Had she stood firm on the Adoption Bill and had the Congress refused to pander to the Deobandis, India and its Muslims would not have been living in fear of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, a wholly illegitimate body that has been allowed to gain legitimacy. Under the tutelage of the National Advisory Council headed by his party’s supreme leader Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has meekly elected to uphold the tradition set by Mrs Indira Gandhi and reinforced by Rajiv Gandhi.

Last Thursday’s choreographed demand, led by Lalu Prasad Yadav, who still remains a prime accused in the fodder scandal and who made the loot of Bihar the primary objective of his Government, for a minority quota in the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, is an example of the Congress’s dishonesty. Had the Congress been honest, it would have incorporated the clause in the version of the Bill the Government circulated among MPs before tabling it in Parliament, but it chose not to do so. Making a great show of conceding to what the party would want to portray as ‘popular demand’, it brought it in as part of a 46-point ‘Corrigendum’. This was no error; it was deliberate mischief. In any event, if the purpose is to give representation to minority communities, it is shameful that it should be reduced to a ‘corrigendum’ instead of coming as a proposal or an amendment. Such, then, is the Congress’s concern for minority communities, which really is an euphemism for Muslims: For the party, they deserve no more than scraps from the high table.

The same evening the Union Cabinet cleared the ‘proposal’ for creating a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minority communities within the 27 per cent quota meant for the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, popularly known as OBCs. A notification was issued almost immediately, and this was publicised as a great favour being done to the minority communities, most notably Muslims. That’s where the Congress’s deceit comes into play. This sub-quota, contrary to popular perception, is open to neither all minority communities as defined under Section 2 (c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, nor all Muslims. In other words, it is not a minority qua minority quota nor is it a Muslim qua Muslim quota.

This is what the operative portion of the notification issued by the Department of Personnel and Training says: “The Government of India had set up the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities to suggest criteria for the identification of the socially and economically backward sections amongst religious and linguistic minorities and to recommend measures for their welfare, including reservation in Government employment. The Commission submitted its report to the Government on 10th May, 2007, wherein it had, inter alia, recommended creation of a sub-quota for minorities from within the reservation of 27 per cent available to OBCs, in Government employment... The Government have carefully considered the above recommendation and it has been decided to carve out a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minorities, as defined under Section 2 (c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, from within the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs as notified by the aforesaid OM. The castes / communities of the said minorities which are included in the Central list of OBCs, notified State-wise from time to time by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, shall be covered by the said sub-quota...”

What has been done is to fix a share within the OBC quota for ‘backward caste’ Muslims who were already listed as beneficiaries of this particular reservation. Till now, the listed Muslim “castes / communities” — an absurdity if ever there was one because Islam does not allow for such divisions within the ummah; Muslims who have welcomed the sub-quota are frankly guilty of repudiating one of the fundamental tenets of their faith. But these details are inconsequential to the Congress whose leaders shall now go forth and seek to deceive the Muslim underclass by posing as their saviours. In this they will receive more than a little help from those Muslim leaders, many of them either mullahs or their patrons, who shamelessly trade in Muslim votes in return of token gestures packaged as ‘safeguards’. This time the token gesture could prove to be the starting point for conceding the demand for communal quotas which would ring the death knell for secular India. A beginning has been made with the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill.

Speaking in the Constituent Assembly, Jawaharlal Nehru had slammed the idea of communal quotas as an insidious proposal: “A safeguard of this kind would have some point where there was autocratic or foreign rule; it would enable the monarch to play one community off against the other.” A politically licentious Congress can afford to forget those words, but India would pay an enormous price for ignoring them. This deceitful act of deception by a dishonest Congress must be thwarted.