Minority-appeasing Manmohan shames Indian Constitution
by
Ram Kumar Ohri
25 Sep 2013
In no other democracy across the world, the Constitution of the nation is violated with such impunity as it is done in India. Time has come to analyse how and why the political leadership of the country is able to trample upon the Constitution in such an ugly manner.
Like every democratic country, the Indian Constitution enjoins that the Prime Minister, including every Minister of his Cabinet and Ministers of State of the Union will take an Oath of Office on appointment to his/her august office. The oath prescribed in the Third Schedule of the Constitution is mandatory and inviolable. Similarly, every Chief Minister and Minister of a State Government appointed to his/her office is required to take an Oath of Office which binds him or her to abide by the Constitution while discharging his or her duties.
Surprisingly, neither any political analyst, nor any member of the media commentariat has cared to highlight that the solemn oath prescribed in the Third Schedule of the Constitution, which has been blatantly violated by the current Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh and quite a few Chief Ministers. Many brazen violations have been done in the name of secularism and on the pretext of the holy grail of inclusive growth.
The most notorious violation of the Oath of Office was made by Manmohan Singh, on December 9, 2006, while addressing the National Development Council saying, "Minorities, particularly Muslims, must have the first claim" on the country's resources. It is indeed a tribute to the pliability of the mainstream media that no one dared to question the Constitutional validity of the Prime Minister's communal policy statement. No one, neither any columnist, nor media anchor of the 24X7 television channels raised finger at him over his unprecedented willful violation of the Oath of Office taken by him in 2009. Among other things, the Oath of Office prescribed in the Third Schedule, Part I of the Constitution specifically enjoins that the Prime Minister should discharge his duties towards all Indian nationals, "without fear or favour, affection or will" and in accordance with the Constitution.
For facility of ready reference, the oath taken by the Prime Minister of India is reproduced below verbatim: "I swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, that I will discharge my duties as the Prime Minister for the Union and I will do right to all in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will." In sharp contrast to his Oath of Office, the Prime Minister's historic policy statement of December 9, 2006, clearly express an unmistakable 'affection' for the minorities, 'especially the Muslims'. This public announcement was a gross violation of the Oath of Office taken by the Prime Minister. Most importantly, the violation was a deliberate one.
The second intent of the Prime Minister, inherent in the wonky pronouncement, was an open expression of bias and ill-will towards the Hindus who constitute 80 per cent of the country's population by denying to them an equitable share in the country's resources. It further indicated that the ruling political dispensation, headed by Dr Manmohan Singh, considered all members of the majority community (read Hindus) to be reduced to the status of second class citizens of India. Briefly, the implications of the policy statement of Dr Manmohan Singh were as follows:
It was publicly made clear by the Prime Minister that in future the Hindus would be entitled merely to the left-over crumbs – after the Muslims and other minorities had partaken of the lion's share of the national resources.
The pronouncement was also a public expression of his "ill-will" towards the majority community – specifically prohibited by the Indian Constitution. It was also a flagrant violation of the Constitutional commitment to secularism, as enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution. Additionally, the announcement of the Prime Minister on December 9, 2006, favouring the Muslims and other minorities extinguished the Right to Equality of the Majority community. Such indeed is the pusillanimity of the Hindu leadership and elitist secularism-doped middle class that no one had the guts to stand up in the meeting of the National Development Council and advise the Prime Minister to withdraw the communally divisive statement and point out that he was violating the solemn oath of the august office held by him.
Amazingly, there were no protest marches in any city or town, nor any stinging criticism of the Prime Minister's partisan and communal-coloured policy statement by our ever-ebullient media. The marginalisation of the majority community by the Indian State, publicly and stoutly announced by Dr Manmohan Singh, was thus timidly accepted by leaders of the Hindu community virtually unchallenged. The result was that the Central Government and many votebank besotted chieftains of State Governments like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal went into overdrive of showering millions of free scholarships and financial largesse of crores of rupees in the shape of dirt-cheap educational and entrepreneurial loans on the super-citizens belonging to five privileged minorities, namely the Muslims, the Christians, the Buddhists, the Parsis and the Sikhs – together constituting 20 per cent of India's population. All this was done on the basis of Sachar Committee Report – an untruthful document full of suppressio veri, suggestion falsi.
On May 29, 2012, the then Minister for Minority Affairs, Salman Khurshid, listed the achievements of his four-pronged strategy for the welfare of minorities. He claimed that his Ministry had implemented the following six schemes for educational empowerment of minorities:
i) Pre-matric scholarship scheme,
ii) Post-matric scholarship scheme,
iii ) Merit-cum-Means scholarship scheme,
iv) Maulana Azad National Fellowships scheme,
v) Free coaching and allied scheme, and
vi) Maulana Azad Educational Foundation Scholarship scheme for meritorious minority girls of class XI and XII.
The only religious community excluded from two million scholarships and financial concessions amounting to several lakh crore rupees was the politically-pariahed majority community, namely the poorest sections of Hindus who remained ignorant of the discrimination practiced by the so-called secular political dispensation ruling India – albeit deviously and unconstitutionally. Subsequently, several schemes worth lakhs crore of Rupees were announced and implemented by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, with due approval of the Prime Minister. The lead given by the Prime Minister to his 'Muslims First' policy was followed with vengeance by the votebank-besotted chieftains of several State Governments like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. They, too, like our Muslim-oriented Prime Minister showered multiple financial goodies on the five minority communities by trampling upon their Oath of Office.
The Prime Minister and his pro-Muslim Chief Ministers are aware that the Christians, the Buddhists, the Parsis and the Sikhs have much higher literacy ratio than the Hindus. More importantly, all the five minorities are economically better placed than the Hindus!
Mera Bharat Mahan!
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