Needlepoint: Country's curse -- Ignoramus Union Ministers

Country's curse – ignoramus Union Ministers

By Amba Charan Vashishth
Words: 1042

"Can Advani be called a Pakistani infiltrator because he's from Sindh? Most chief ministers of West Bengal were from erstwhile East Bengal. Can they be called infiltrators?"

These are the words and arguments not of an ordinary Congress worker in the street but of India's Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee while addressing a seminar organized by a Muslim NGO on June 15 at Kolkata. His message was obviously and deliberately targeted at the peculiar audience before him.

Such arguments only betray desperate frustration giving credence to an old saying that when a person falls short of arguments, he starts calling names and comes to blows.

By comparing Advani with infiltrators Mr Mukherjee has repeated the same blunder which his veteran colleague Home Minister Shivraj Patil committed by comparing Afzal Guru with Sarabjit Singh. The former is an Indian held guilty of conspiring a terrorist attack in which about 9 innocent securitymen were killed defending the Parliament building where the top leadership of the country was holed up at that time. He was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court (SC). On the contrary Sarabjit Singh is an Indian pronounced guilty of terrorism and espionage by a Pakistani court. The former is a traitor, the latter a hero, a patriot. Our great home minister fails to distinguish between the two.

And contrast what Sarbjit’s wife Mrs. Sukhpreet Kaur says, “I and my daughters would never like Sarabjit freed in exchange for any hardcore Pakistani terrorist lodged in Indian jails. Nothing is above the nation and we can’t go against the interests of the motherland”. Who should feel ashamed is obvious.

And now our venerable Minister for Foreign Affairs fails to distinguish between an Indian citizen and a Bangladeshi infiltrator. He appears ignorant of the law of the land and the Constitution. According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, an infiltrator is “a person who secretly becomes a member of a group (in our case India) or goes to a place to get information or to influence the group”.

Article 6 of the Constitution, as applicable to the case of Mr. Advani, says “:….a person who has migrated to the territory of India from the territory now included in Pakistan shall be deemed to be a citizen of India at the commencement of this Constitution if (a) he or either of his parents or any of his grandparents was born in India as defined in the Government of India Act, 1935 …”

One can only pity Mr. Mukherjee's understanding. The only saving grace however is that he spared his party and the country by not saying that Pakistan President General Musharraf is more “Indian” than is Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh because Musharraf was born in Delhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh in what now forms part of Pakistan.

Lakhs of Indians migrated (and in the process more than 10 lakhs were killed) to this side of the border from those parts which are now in Pakistan and Bangladesh to an uncertain future leaving their ancestral homes and hearths for their love of India. By equating refugees from Pakistan with infiltrators from Bangladesh Mr. Mukherjee has only put salt on the wounds of these Indians and insulted their patriotism.

And he goes on, “…it was not unusual for people from a smaller economy like Bangladesh to move into a bigger economy like India…this happens all over the world”. Here again he fails to make distinction between people of one country moving to the other as per law and those doing it in a clandestine manner, illegally.

If there were no infiltrator, why did the Congress government enact the Illegal Migrants (Detection by Tribunals) Act, 1983? Setting aside this Act as “unconstitutional” the Supreme Court said: "This IMDT Act, 1983 has created the biggest hurdle and is the main impediment or barrier in the identification and deportation of illegal migrants.”

That UPA was playing politics was evident from the fact that instead of acting as per the judicial verdict, on the eve of last assembly elections it clandestinely amended the Foreigners’ Act as applicable to Assam. SC was once again constrained to strike down this amendment too as "unconstitutional" calling it a crude attempt to bring in the IMDT Act from the backdoor.

Mr. Mukherjee's logic only repudiates Congress' supreme leader, late Mrs. Indira Gandhi who, way back in 1971, raised a great hue and cry the world over, over the exodus of about 80-90 lakh people from the then East Pakistan into India.

Mr. Mukherjee is again playing politics when he says “there is no reason to believe that lakhs of Bangladeshi are infiltrating into India”. As a Union Minister he should have the exact figures with him to buttress his argument. He is deliberately indulging in selective memory/amnesia and selective beliefs. The Congress Chief Minister of Assam, late Mr. Hiteshwar Saikia had admitted in the Assembly of more than one crore Bangladeshis having infiltrated into Assam. But under pressure, for obvious political reasons, he was later made to withdraw this statement.

On May 6, 1997 Mr Inderjit Gupta, Union Home Minister in the United Front government supported by Congress from outside, in reply to a question informed the Lok Sabha that the number of illegal infiltrators in the country is estimated to be about one crore.

Mr. Mukherjee does not wish to remember or believe what doesn’t suit his party's political and electoral purposes. The former Assam Governor, General S. K. Sinha, in a report to the President of India, had warned that "the unabated influx of migrants from Bangladesh to Assam and the consequent perceptible change in the demographic pattern of the State….threatens to reduce the Assamese people to a minority in their own State".

Mr. Mukherjee is oblivious of the fact that Indians legally living for generations together in Kenya, Uganda, Thailand, South Africa, Fiji, etc. were mercilessly thrown out although they were not infiltrators, as Bangladeshis are, whom UPA wishes to provide shelter and extend every facility that is available to native Indians.

The problem is that people like Mr. Pranab Mukherjee and Mr. Shivraj Patil are playing politics with the interests of the nation for obvious electoral gains. Does India deserve such ignoramus government leaders? That remains the question. ***