Opinion View from the RIGHT

The editorial in the RSS journal adds: “Poverty has no religion. We have no doubt that the UPA is out to create a class war in the country. Like the British,the UPA is smelling its chance in a divided,weakened and shattered India. One should not think the Ranganath Mishra Report presented in Parliament during the winter session is the last in a series of duplicitous vote bank ploys — The UPA rural development minister announced that all Muslims in India will be included in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) list. This will accrue them extra benefits,he said. The minister says this is necessary so that the automatic inclusion in the BPL list would ensure all benefits of Central and state-sponsored schemes like Indira Awas Yojna,NREGS,old-age pension,special loans etc. These are over and above Sachar and Ranganath”.

The RSS mouthpiece further adds in its editorial: “They are not interested in the progress of India or the welfare of minorities. What they want to do for the Muslims,these days they cloak under the subtitle ‘minority’,so as to camouflage and deceive the Hindus. The Muslims should be protesting for characterising all of them as living below poverty line. No self-respecting community would accept that sobriquet.”

Divisive arguments

In an opinion piece titled “There should only be one identity. That is Indian” Arif Mohammed Khan writes: “India has always nourished and cherished diversities in matters of faith,language,customs and rites to the extent that one of our great sages Swami Ramakrishna Paramhansa declared ‘yat mat tat path’ meaning: ‘There are as many ways as there are individuals’. Our civilisational heritage has declared in most emphatic terms that ‘the Reality is One and those who know it describe it variously’… If for more than hundred years of its domination,the British government pursued a policy of encouraging group identities and used them to strengthen its power,it was understandable. What is strange is that even now the political establishment has not totally jettisoned the methods of the colonial masters”.

He adds in his piece: “The past experience is that whenever the government shows some special concern towards the welfare of one group of people,particularly Muslims,then it is mostly part of a strategy of political management of a constituency rather than uplift of the community. Whether it is Sachar Committee or Ranganath Mishra Commission,these are constituted on the eve of some political event like state elections… The consequence of Mishra Commission recommendations,if accepted,shall be that the Muslim backwards who today constitute almost 30 per cent of Mandal Commission beneficiaries shall be grouped with their more advanced coreligionists and forced to compete with them. Today whatever benefits they enjoy is on the basis of backwardness applicable to all without distinction of religion. This certainly does not enhance the consciousness as a religious community. On the other hand,Mishra Commission’s recommendations are a sure recipe to enhance ‘religious community consciousness’,engendering reaction among others and opening up a new Pandora’s box of communal and divisive politics”.

He further writes: “I consider it a duty of every patriotic Indian to oppose any recommendations or measures that have divisive potential. Mishra Commission must be opposed because it will open the way to reduce India into a confederation of mutually-warring religious communities. It must be opposed because it will give impetus to the rat race where each religious community shall strive to secure for itself special secular rights and privileges which it shall deny to others. Mishra Commission must be opposed because it will once again release the Frankenstein of communal politics that has harmed India enough already”.