"ONE can make any number of statements about uplifting minorities, and the statements can create controversies galore. These may advance a political debate on minority issues and problems, but to ensure real progress one needs to see concrete programmes and actions," said former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh while addressing a small gathering at the India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi in the second week of December.
The Jan Morcha leader's reference to "statements" and "controversies" was topical. Just the day before, the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other Hindutva parties had generated a storm in Parliament over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that the "Muslim minority" should have the "first claim on resources".
The Prime Minister's statement at the National Development Council meeting was, obviously, inspired by the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee's report on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in India. The report had stated categorically that "the community exhibits deficits and deprivation in practically all dimensions of development".
For the Hindutva parties led by the BJP, which had characterised the Sachar report as a reflection of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's efforts at minority appeasement, Manmohan Singh's statement signified intent to launch administrative initiatives to "distribute the country's resources unequally and unjustly". The parties wanted the Prime Minister to "apologise" or at least to say that the "statement was a slip of the tongue".
In the absence of such apology, said many BJP leaders, the Opposition was justified in resorting to agitative measures such as the stalling of Parliament. The UPA government's response was aired by Ministers such as Ram Vilas Paswan and Priyaranjan Dasmunshi. They maintained that there was nothing in the Prime Minister's statement that warranted an apology and asserted that the government would not go on the defensive on this issue.
Such posturing, as V.P. Singh pointed out, helps advance the political debate on issues and problems relating to minorities. In the context of the impending elections to four State Assemblies, including in the most populous State of Uttar Pradesh, this debate certainly has an added value. It is clear that the BJP leadership perceives the revival of controversies on "minority appeasement" as a means to resurrect the Sangh Parivar's Hindutva agenda, which had lost popular appeal in U.P. over the past five years. On the other hand, it is clear that the Congress leadership views its "non-defensive" posturing on minority rights as a political device to recapture the Muslim votes that had drifted away from it over the last one-and-a-half decades to the Samajwadi Party (S.P.) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
The S.P.-led Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh has also contributed to the debate by passing a resolution in the State Assembly demanding that the Centre include Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians in the Scheduled Caste category by deleting Clause 3 of the Constitutional (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950. The resolution said that reservation benefits should be provided to all S.Cs irrespective of the religion to which they belonged. The All India Christian Council and the Indian Justice Party (IJP) took out a procession in Delhi to press a similar demand.
But what about taking concrete measures on the basis of the report? According to A.R. Antulay, Union Minister for Minority Affairs, plans are being formulated in various Ministries to address specific areas. Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said the government initiatives would focus on "equitable distribution of resources as well as on correcting some distorted priorities". He said the government was aware that the implementation of these programmes would not be easy, given the level of political opposition.
Such a realisation may either help the government to circumscribe the impediments on the path of their implementation or use them as tools to justify its own capitulation to hollow political debate. Which way the UPA government will go is, for the time being, in the realm of conjecture.
Venkitesh Ramakrishnan
