Opposition parties have joined hands with intellectuals, academicians and artists among others to launch a People’s Integration Council here tomorrow. To be inaugurated by former President K R Narayanan, the Council will play the role the National Integration Council (NIC) has failed to fulfil for a decade. It will have 113 co-convenors.The underlying theme, however, seems to be to help create a broad opposition unity on issues for meeting the challenge posed by an aggressive BJP. The parties represented on it include the Congress, RJD, Janata Dal, CPI, CPM, Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Jan Shakti and Udit Raj’s new Dalit group.The Samajwadi Party is also expected to join. ‘‘Amar Singh has told me that he will be coming to the inauguration of the Council on Saturday,’’ Arjun Singh said. Singh is one of the co-convenors.Both the RJD and Paswan’s Lok Janshakti, who are antagonists in Bihar, are represented on the body. Though many of the NDA allies were also invited to join the group, they have not responded so far.The Secretary of the Peoples Integration Council, Navaid Hamid, told The Indian Express that he had written to BJP and Sangh leaders like Nanaji Deshmukh, Seshadri Chari, Editor of the Sangh mouthpiece, Organiser, and Arun Jaitley but they had not responded. He had also written to leaders of the NDA allies — like Chandrababu Naidu, Mamata Bannerji, Naveen Patnaik — with no results. ‘‘We shall engage them in the next round,’’ he said.Arjun Singh said the country today faced a ‘‘divisive challenge’’, avoiding use of the world ‘‘communal’’. He lamented that there was no common thinking on any issue. The last time the NIC met was in December 1992, a couple of days after the demolition of Babri Masjid. No government since then has found it necessary to convene a meeting of this body.‘‘In the past whenever a situation arose in the country which could lead to confusion, the NIC used to be convened and everything would be discussed and the situation would be defused. When the NIC had last met on Dec 8, 1992, the entire range of opinion had assured Narsinghraoji that he should go ahead and take whatever steps were necessary to deal with the situation,’’ recalled Arjun Singh.Among the co-convenors of the new body are Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande, Sitaram Yechury (CPM), A B Bardhan (CPI), Laloo Yadav (RJD), Arif Mohammed Khan (Lok Janshakti), Surendra Mohan (JD), Fali Nariman, Kuldip Nayar, R K Anand, K S Duggal — all MPs — Romesh Bhandari, film-makers Mrinal Sen and Mahesh Bhatt, author Bhishma Sahni, former Cabinet Secretary B G Deshmukh, journalists Dileep Padgaonkar, Prabhash Joshi, George Verghese and Sumit Chakravarty and Dr J K Jain, who was expelled from the BJP. The concept note of the Council states: ‘‘The major objective of the People’s Integration Council is to ensure the unity and integrity of our culture and communities.to build a democratic, egalitarian and plural Indian social and political order.’’The political establishment, the note says, had ‘‘cold-shouldered the very objectives and functions of the NIC. While crisis after crisis engulfs the country, the ruling class remains impervious to all these.’’ The note also refers to the ‘‘deplorable’’ manner in which a ‘‘minority has taken the entire population to ransom’’ and to ‘‘the spread of venom through such methods as the re-writing of history books in particular’’.
