Over six decades, 62 years to be exact, have passed since we resolved to make India a secular democratic republic. This was the culmination of the wishes long cherished by the people of India to make the country a citadel of peace ‘where the mind is without fear and head is held high’. But when we cast a glance on the ground realities vis-à-vis minorities, we come to realise that we have achieved little. As the politicians sitting in contrived corridors would have it, post-Independence history of India is writ in the blood and tears of minorities. Neither their mind is without fear nor can they walk with the head held high.
Time is said to be the best healer but when the scar is deep enough, even time fails to heal it. This is true at least in the context of the second largest majority of India. They haven’t forgotten the periodic, planned and targeted riots and shudder to think of them. They are also concerned about the not-so-new phenomenon of selective detention and torture, and in some cases killing in fake encounter, of their youth in the name of curbing terrorism even though most of these youth are proved innocent by fact finding teams and citizens’ tribunals as well as in courts of law.
This is the result of unleashing discrimination and hate-mongering and compromising with the hate-and-terror agenda of Hindutva outfits. It is a mockery of justice that serving and retired army personnel Lt. Col. Srikant Prasad Purohit and Maj. Ramesh Upadhyay as well as people like Swami Dayanand Pandey, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, etc., all associated with a single organised crime syndicate Abhinav Bharat have been accused of the September 9, 2008 Malegaon blast (their hands in other blasts like Makka Masjid Hyderabad and Samjhauta Express blasts have also been well on record) but the Government seems to be in no mood to curb this organised syndicate crime.
This is not the first case that the powers-that-be have gone soft towards the Hindutva terrorism. Should we refer to the sensational disclosure Rajeshwar Dayal, then Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, made in his memoirs, A Life of Our Times revealing that soon after the partition deputy IGP of the western range BBL Jaitely produced before him two steel trunks full of “incontrovertible evidence of a dastardly conspiracy to create a communal holocaust throughout the western districts.” The evidence included accurate maps “marking out the Muslim localities and habitations”. It was the timely raid conducted on the RSS premises that brought the massive conspiracy to light. But the then powers-that-be did not take any action against the terrorists.
Our Prime Minister counts from the ramparts of the Red Fort the various achievements we have made in scientific and technological fields, and the various schemes we have for the minorities. But we cannot make real progress and cannot have peace in the real sense of the term if we continue to maintain the policy of non-implementation of legal provisions against real terrorists. This is high time the Government at the Centre took up the gauntlet and banned the terror outfits like Abhinav Bharat and subjected its members to due punishment.