By Amba Charan Vashishth
Can a slap on my face by one friend be an injurious insult to me and the same given by another is something like an affectionate pampering of a flower on my cheek?
Appears, it is being made to look so by the Congress, the United Progressive Alliance and the Left parties.
Last week, our Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee was an official visit to Moscow on the invitation of Russian government. On his arrival, he was made to be frisked and searched like any ordinary visitor to that country. But the gravest insult hurled at him was the refusal of Russian foreign minister to see him on the plea that he was too busy with his US counterpart, Secretary of State Miss Condella Rice.
Official visits of high dignitaries are planned well-in-advance to suit the convenience of both the host and the guest countries. If something untoward, extraordinary happens in between, the visit is either politely sought to be postponed or even cancelled, but no offence to any of the two countries is intended.
But the refusal to meet Indian Minister on official visit on the invitation of Russia is a great affront and insult to the guest country at the hands of the host.
Russia is, no doubt, a great friend of India since the day we won our independence. But no country, least of all, a great friend like Russia, has a right to what clearly amounts to be an insult to the Indian nation because in Russia Mr. Pranab Mukherjee did not represent his own self alone but the whole Indian nation. He had gone there as a representative of the Indian people. Whatever innuendoes on the pretext of his being too busy with Miss Rice may have been showered on the Indian Foreign Minister, have not been done to him individually but to the nation as a whole.
The UPA government has silently gloated over this slight from Russia, how shall we feel when any other country does so – big or small, friend or foe? That publicly the Indian government does not seem to have conveyed its displeasure to the Russian government at the treatment meted out to our Foreign Minister is all the more intriguing. In fact, efforts are being made to push the matter under the carpet. Should India do so? Doing so, would only encourage other countries to follow the example set by Russia vis-à-vis India.
And we should also not forget that diplomatic courtesies and niceties are always reciprocal, never one sided. We have to return the compliment or otherwise in the same coin and manner. Otherwise, it looks like India being too soft, too immune to such offence.
It is worth recalling that when the then Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes had visited USA and was made to be body frisked and searched, a great hue and cry was made both by the Congress and the Left parties of USA having insulted India. But this time the Left remains silent, understandably because for the Left parties whatever Russia does is always right and whatever USA does is always wrong. And since Manmohan Government is subsisting on the outside support provided by the Left parties, its mouth stands sealed to speak, lest it annoys the Left and puts the government in jeopardy, as had the Indo-US nuclear deal done.
But should we compromise with the nation’s honour on account of this? ***
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
NEEDLEPOINT: Himachal election announcement flawed, constitutionally
By Amba Charan Vashishth
It is immaterial whether the Election Commission announcement for holding elections about five months earlier than due has been welcomed or not by the people and political parties in Himachal Pradesh. The point at issue is whether it is as per the word and spirit of the law and the Constitution.
It is true that three tribal assembly constituencies are very vital to the formation of a government with just a 68-member house. Results in these constituencies could make or break a government that generally takes precedence to the poll in these constituencies because for the last over 39 years elections have, perhaps, been held together with the rest of the State only once in 1977, because these constituencies remain snowbound in February-March when polling generally takes place in the rest of the State.
Equally true is the fact that declaration of results in the rest of the State and formation of a government prior to polling in these three tribal seats influences the free will of the voters who later turn to vote, with just a few exceptions, for the party in power. But that is too trivial a ground to prepone elections in the whole State.
The present Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha was constituted on March 6, 2003 and as such a new Vidhan Sabha has to be in position on or before March 5, 2008. Similarly, the elections to these three tribal constituencies were completed in the end of May 2003 and their term was co-terminus with the life of the HP assembly. Now, as a result of EC announcement, the term of these three tribal constituencies will stand further curtailed by five months.
Normally, elections to Parliament or State assemblies can be preponed only on the recommendation of the government in power by dissolving the present House. This is because the house of the people is elected by the electors for a term of five years and no authority other than the President or the State governor is empowered to order elections earlier than due without dissolving the existing house.
It is not understood what interpretation has the Election Commission made of Section 15 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 which provides: (1) A general election shall be held for the purpose of constituting a new Legislative Assembly on the expiration of the duration of the existing Assembly or on its dissolution….
Provided that where a general election is held otherwise than on the dissolution of the existing Legislative Assembly, no such notification shall be issued at any time earlier than six months prior to the date on which the duration of that Assembly would expire under the provisions of clause (1), of article 172 3 …(which provides: Every Legislative Assembly of every State, unless sooner dissolved, shall continue for five years from the date appointed for the first meeting and no longer and the expiration of the said period of five years shall operative as a dissolution of the Assembly”.)
An interpretation of these provisions of the Constitution and Section 15 the Representation of the People Act, 1951 clearly means that although the Commission is within its rights to issue a notification for election at any time not earlier than six months prior to the date on which the duration of that Assembly is to expire, yet completion of election ”before 31.12.2007” will mean that the tenure of the existing Vidhan Sabha which, under the provisions of Article 172, was to” continue for five years from the date appointed for the first meeting” has been curtailed by more than two months. The Election Commission under no authority of law has the power to reduce the tenure of Parliament or a State assembly by even a single day.
That the Commission was aware of its infirmity and that is why it fixed the date of counting of votes as 28.12.07, nine days after the polling was to be over in the State on 19-12-2007. There is no justification for putting off the counting in a State for no justifiable reason, except that the Commission was trying not to further curtail the term of the present Vidhan by another week.
It will be a great travesty of law and the Constitution, if the present Vidhan Sabha was allowed to function beyond 31-12-2007 because once the new Vidhan Sabha is constituted, the old one automatically stands dissolved.
The Election Commission needs to ponder. ***
It is immaterial whether the Election Commission announcement for holding elections about five months earlier than due has been welcomed or not by the people and political parties in Himachal Pradesh. The point at issue is whether it is as per the word and spirit of the law and the Constitution.
It is true that three tribal assembly constituencies are very vital to the formation of a government with just a 68-member house. Results in these constituencies could make or break a government that generally takes precedence to the poll in these constituencies because for the last over 39 years elections have, perhaps, been held together with the rest of the State only once in 1977, because these constituencies remain snowbound in February-March when polling generally takes place in the rest of the State.
Equally true is the fact that declaration of results in the rest of the State and formation of a government prior to polling in these three tribal seats influences the free will of the voters who later turn to vote, with just a few exceptions, for the party in power. But that is too trivial a ground to prepone elections in the whole State.
The present Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha was constituted on March 6, 2003 and as such a new Vidhan Sabha has to be in position on or before March 5, 2008. Similarly, the elections to these three tribal constituencies were completed in the end of May 2003 and their term was co-terminus with the life of the HP assembly. Now, as a result of EC announcement, the term of these three tribal constituencies will stand further curtailed by five months.
Normally, elections to Parliament or State assemblies can be preponed only on the recommendation of the government in power by dissolving the present House. This is because the house of the people is elected by the electors for a term of five years and no authority other than the President or the State governor is empowered to order elections earlier than due without dissolving the existing house.
It is not understood what interpretation has the Election Commission made of Section 15 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 which provides: (1) A general election shall be held for the purpose of constituting a new Legislative Assembly on the expiration of the duration of the existing Assembly or on its dissolution….
Provided that where a general election is held otherwise than on the dissolution of the existing Legislative Assembly, no such notification shall be issued at any time earlier than six months prior to the date on which the duration of that Assembly would expire under the provisions of clause (1), of article 172 3 …(which provides: Every Legislative Assembly of every State, unless sooner dissolved, shall continue for five years from the date appointed for the first meeting and no longer and the expiration of the said period of five years shall operative as a dissolution of the Assembly”.)
An interpretation of these provisions of the Constitution and Section 15 the Representation of the People Act, 1951 clearly means that although the Commission is within its rights to issue a notification for election at any time not earlier than six months prior to the date on which the duration of that Assembly is to expire, yet completion of election ”before 31.12.2007” will mean that the tenure of the existing Vidhan Sabha which, under the provisions of Article 172, was to” continue for five years from the date appointed for the first meeting” has been curtailed by more than two months. The Election Commission under no authority of law has the power to reduce the tenure of Parliament or a State assembly by even a single day.
That the Commission was aware of its infirmity and that is why it fixed the date of counting of votes as 28.12.07, nine days after the polling was to be over in the State on 19-12-2007. There is no justification for putting off the counting in a State for no justifiable reason, except that the Commission was trying not to further curtail the term of the present Vidhan by another week.
It will be a great travesty of law and the Constitution, if the present Vidhan Sabha was allowed to function beyond 31-12-2007 because once the new Vidhan Sabha is constituted, the old one automatically stands dissolved.
The Election Commission needs to ponder. ***
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Me secular, you communal
By Amba Charan Vashishth
In India actually, nobody knows what ‘secularism’ exactly means. The word ‘secular’, inserted in the Constitution in 1976, was never defined, deliberately perhaps. This has provided every political party and politician the right and freedom to accuse the other of defying secularism and indulging in communalism. In common parlance and practice it is ‘secularism’ what a political party claims itself to be doing while it is ‘communalism’ what its opponents indulge in. It is like every person finding fault with the other man’s looks, obviously because one cannot see one’s own face. In the looking glass, everybody appears pretty smiling seeing one’s own reflection.
In this country, the ‘secularism-communalism’ syndrome is as mysterious and unpredictable as are the ways of god. So look the ways of secularism-communalism. What one political party claims to be secularism, is communalism pure and simple to the opponent.
Take the case of Congress and the Left. They brand RSS, its sister organisations and even Bharatiya Janata Party as ‘communal’ only because they plead the cause of the majority community in general though, at the same time, they claim they stand for “appeasement of none and justice to all”. On its part, RSS and BJP charge the Congress and other political parties of indulging in “appeasement of minority/minorities”. This charge is also not entirely unfounded; something does stick on the parties charged against.
It is no exaggeration to say that ‘secularism’ has come to be linked to anything against the majority community of Hindus and Hinduism. If you are for the Ram temple at Ayodhya, you are ‘communal’; if you are for the mosque, you are secular. If you criticize the stand taken by UPA on the myth of Lord Ram and Ramsethu, you are a communal. All ‘seculars’ have taken the stand that Ram and Ramsethu are just myths. And so on.
If you champion the right to freedom of expression of the India-born writer, Salman Rushdie, or of Tasleema Nasreen, whose books have been banned in the country because these “hurt” the religious faith and sentiments of minority community, you are a ‘communal’ one and those denouncing these writers are ‘secular’.
But the situation is in the reverse gear when it comes to the paintings in the nude of Bharatmata and Hindu goddesses by M. F. Hussain. The ‘secular’ liberals beat their chests for safeguarding the constitutional right to freedom of expression for the latter. They think that the publication of Danish cartoons “hurts” the religious susceptibilities of Muslims but the Hussain’s nude paintings of Bharatmata and Hindu goddesses do not injure the sentiments of Hindus and Indian nationals.
Going by the argument of ‘secularists’, if championing the cause dear to the majority community is communalism, how is doing the same for the cause of minority community not communalism? That goes beyond logic. The only distinction one can make is that one is ‘majority’ communalism and the other is ‘minority’ communalism. The majority communalism cannot be an abominable act of sin and minority communalism something pious and sacred. Theft is a theft whether of Rs. one hundred or Rs. one crore. Murder is a murder whether of one man or of ten people. Either both the acts are crimes or pardonable acts. There could be no discrimination between the two acts.
The secularism of the Left parties too has gone through a metamorphosis and got infected with communal virus of being anti-Hindu. It has also joined the race for “minority appeasement”, another name to practise communalism in the garb of secularism. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has now launched upon its campaign for assiduously wooing the Muslim community. Till now, the faithful followers of communism, CP(M) included, had religiously followed the Karl Marx dictum: “Religion is the opium of the people”. But, for the first time, discarding atheism the CPI(M) unit in Kochi (Kerala) allowed its Muslim members to leave a party meeting for namaaz. On October 1, 2007 the Lanthaparambu branch committee of the party also served refreshments to its Muslim members to break their Ramzan fast.
The Marxist leadership has already started campaigning on issues dear to Muslims such as implementation of the Sachar Committee and Sri Krishna Commission recommendations. It also adopted a similar stand on Danish cartoons.
The Left supports the anti-Hindu stand of DMK and the Congress on Ram and Ramsethu issue. When Congress under pressure of public opinion, diluted its stand, the Left parties criticized it.
While Left is now looking to be condescending to followers of Muslim faith, it is not so with its members who are Hindus. Last year, hell broke out for West Bengal Minister Subhash Chankraborty who being a Hindu committed the “crime” of visiting a temple and offered prayers. There were demands for his dismissal from the Cabinet and expulsion from the party for violating party discipline and defying party ideology which decries religious beliefs.
So under the Left brand of secularism if a Hindu visits a temple and prays, it is an unpardonable crime, but a leftist Muslim has the unbridled freedom to leave his party function to offer namaz (prayer).
Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is the proud successor to the pre-partition Muslim League which propounded the theory that Hindus and Muslims belonged to two different nations and could not live together. This led to the partition of the country. The membership of IUML is restricted to Muslims only and it espouses the cause of this community alone. Yet, it claims itself to be a ’secular’ political organisation.
Going by the practice and precept of secularism and communalism, every political party in the country seems to be communal with the only difference that each claims itself to be secular and calls the other as communal.
This war between ‘communalism’ and ‘secularism’ has become perpetual and unending, with nobody winning, nobody losing. ***
In India actually, nobody knows what ‘secularism’ exactly means. The word ‘secular’, inserted in the Constitution in 1976, was never defined, deliberately perhaps. This has provided every political party and politician the right and freedom to accuse the other of defying secularism and indulging in communalism. In common parlance and practice it is ‘secularism’ what a political party claims itself to be doing while it is ‘communalism’ what its opponents indulge in. It is like every person finding fault with the other man’s looks, obviously because one cannot see one’s own face. In the looking glass, everybody appears pretty smiling seeing one’s own reflection.
In this country, the ‘secularism-communalism’ syndrome is as mysterious and unpredictable as are the ways of god. So look the ways of secularism-communalism. What one political party claims to be secularism, is communalism pure and simple to the opponent.
Take the case of Congress and the Left. They brand RSS, its sister organisations and even Bharatiya Janata Party as ‘communal’ only because they plead the cause of the majority community in general though, at the same time, they claim they stand for “appeasement of none and justice to all”. On its part, RSS and BJP charge the Congress and other political parties of indulging in “appeasement of minority/minorities”. This charge is also not entirely unfounded; something does stick on the parties charged against.
It is no exaggeration to say that ‘secularism’ has come to be linked to anything against the majority community of Hindus and Hinduism. If you are for the Ram temple at Ayodhya, you are ‘communal’; if you are for the mosque, you are secular. If you criticize the stand taken by UPA on the myth of Lord Ram and Ramsethu, you are a communal. All ‘seculars’ have taken the stand that Ram and Ramsethu are just myths. And so on.
If you champion the right to freedom of expression of the India-born writer, Salman Rushdie, or of Tasleema Nasreen, whose books have been banned in the country because these “hurt” the religious faith and sentiments of minority community, you are a ‘communal’ one and those denouncing these writers are ‘secular’.
But the situation is in the reverse gear when it comes to the paintings in the nude of Bharatmata and Hindu goddesses by M. F. Hussain. The ‘secular’ liberals beat their chests for safeguarding the constitutional right to freedom of expression for the latter. They think that the publication of Danish cartoons “hurts” the religious susceptibilities of Muslims but the Hussain’s nude paintings of Bharatmata and Hindu goddesses do not injure the sentiments of Hindus and Indian nationals.
Going by the argument of ‘secularists’, if championing the cause dear to the majority community is communalism, how is doing the same for the cause of minority community not communalism? That goes beyond logic. The only distinction one can make is that one is ‘majority’ communalism and the other is ‘minority’ communalism. The majority communalism cannot be an abominable act of sin and minority communalism something pious and sacred. Theft is a theft whether of Rs. one hundred or Rs. one crore. Murder is a murder whether of one man or of ten people. Either both the acts are crimes or pardonable acts. There could be no discrimination between the two acts.
The secularism of the Left parties too has gone through a metamorphosis and got infected with communal virus of being anti-Hindu. It has also joined the race for “minority appeasement”, another name to practise communalism in the garb of secularism. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has now launched upon its campaign for assiduously wooing the Muslim community. Till now, the faithful followers of communism, CP(M) included, had religiously followed the Karl Marx dictum: “Religion is the opium of the people”. But, for the first time, discarding atheism the CPI(M) unit in Kochi (Kerala) allowed its Muslim members to leave a party meeting for namaaz. On October 1, 2007 the Lanthaparambu branch committee of the party also served refreshments to its Muslim members to break their Ramzan fast.
The Marxist leadership has already started campaigning on issues dear to Muslims such as implementation of the Sachar Committee and Sri Krishna Commission recommendations. It also adopted a similar stand on Danish cartoons.
The Left supports the anti-Hindu stand of DMK and the Congress on Ram and Ramsethu issue. When Congress under pressure of public opinion, diluted its stand, the Left parties criticized it.
While Left is now looking to be condescending to followers of Muslim faith, it is not so with its members who are Hindus. Last year, hell broke out for West Bengal Minister Subhash Chankraborty who being a Hindu committed the “crime” of visiting a temple and offered prayers. There were demands for his dismissal from the Cabinet and expulsion from the party for violating party discipline and defying party ideology which decries religious beliefs.
So under the Left brand of secularism if a Hindu visits a temple and prays, it is an unpardonable crime, but a leftist Muslim has the unbridled freedom to leave his party function to offer namaz (prayer).
Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is the proud successor to the pre-partition Muslim League which propounded the theory that Hindus and Muslims belonged to two different nations and could not live together. This led to the partition of the country. The membership of IUML is restricted to Muslims only and it espouses the cause of this community alone. Yet, it claims itself to be a ’secular’ political organisation.
Going by the practice and precept of secularism and communalism, every political party in the country seems to be communal with the only difference that each claims itself to be secular and calls the other as communal.
This war between ‘communalism’ and ‘secularism’ has become perpetual and unending, with nobody winning, nobody losing. ***
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