Dear freinds, As I enter eighty, my mobility has been reduced considerably but the way the country is going is very disturbing as I like every one of you woud like better world for posterity. I do know many people had a biased understanding of ny role as a human rights activist , now for the best part of my life. I fought against atrocities against the rural poor as they were perceived as NAXALITE SUSPECTS , I also held the view that imponity should not be permitted to contain the political movement and that it has to be politically defeated. I have always been holding the view that impunity permitted in one area will spread to the other. I also felt and firmly beleive that if the Government creates liveable conditions for the rural poor adherence to the politics that engenders violence will disappear. Otherwise it will get entrenched and will become intractable. It is wrong to think Maoists have no following. They are sheltered by the poor.
According to me Communal violence, inter-religious belligerence canot be wished away such ridiculous rgetoric as Hindu Muslim bhai and such other putrid homilies. WE must recognise that our Constitution is for the governance of a plural Society. We always had at state levels and the centre Hindu Malority Governments wo seldom represented the minorities. You cannot expect them to. Any dominant community would feel thaat the rest of the communities are subordinsted to them and that they should make attempts and adjust themselves to the majority' wishes . When th Britishers handed over he reins to us we thought amauslimd alone were the in a minority omin the country. When we defined a Hindu in a statute it included all rebeling faiths and that is this homogeising process began and uniform civil code is part of the same agenda and quite a few Hindu judges epressed concern about the delaying the enactment of a Uniform Civil Code! Coming to Communal violence terrorist attacks will be there and are inevitable unless we recognise minorities and accord them and respect their identities. It will be their until we accord them "equality of status and equal oppurtunities ; to bring about tolerence as between the various communities fraternity was prescribed with a you to promote integrity.. In fact there was a National Integration Council . In fact The National Integration Council appointed a Comiteeon National Integratin and Regionalism to examine the belligerence of linguistic violence andthe measures to toprevent such violence and at tat time it was felt that such violence will abate when Indianness soreads. Thart led to the 16th. Constitutional Amendment in 1963 and as result of the Amendment the Unlawful Activities (Prevention ) Act 1967 was passed. At that time we all felt Muslims alone are a minority we have to contend with. In 1984 find Sikhs challenged the suzerinity of the Hindu Majority.and the later mowed down in Delhi thousands of the and quite a few were consigned to the flamesalive. Then we had a massacr of few thousands of Muslims in Mumbai in 1992 and and a few thousands to describe the massacre would be a gross understatement. Now we are witnesing the attack on the christians and theirinstitution in a big way. Muslims have as a defensive measure have resirted to terrorism. You cannot defend yourself in any other way and draw the attention of the State in any other way. There is no use in pious homilies on non violence and insincerely quoting Gandhi Had he survived the attack of Godse he would have been shotin an encounter. You cannot arrest the violent Hindus under TADA or POTA BECAUSE THEY USE INIGENOUS WEAPONS AND HENCE DONOT QUALIFIED TO BEUNDER tERRORIS LAWS. THE 1967 LAW BY THE SMENDMENT ACT OF 2004 IS UPDATED BY INCLUSION OF TWO OR THREE CHATERS OF POTA Please in your discussion donot be inclined to support any Draconian measure- the disgusting cliche we have been using for over two decades now.. A few clauses alone will suffice. It should be short giving no room for people like us to interpret! Such a law will be appreciated by the cogniscenti. It would proceed somewhat like this 1. If the suspect apprehende is a Muslim he should be shot in a staged encounter; 2 after parading before the electronic media for some time and 3 after some panel discusion on the suspects guilt and thereafter shot with All the principles of natural justice would be satisfied. If the minority holds demonstaration appoint one of thosejudges-judges like Nanavathi are available twenty to the dozen. But if you want to end this violence and the political burleque that follows you must recognise the fact that he Constiution is for plural Governance must campaign for reinstating The National Integration Council and create such bodies to work out equality between these communituies and create equal ppurtunities in all spheres and at all levels. In the Civil Society there should be All India Minorities Council to act as a pressure group and courts which are presently ignorant of administering justice to plural ommunities and they should be trained o come ut of he middle class bigotted shells and look at people and recognise that they are human beings first and that they cannot be subjected to the habit of homogenising . Reservation as a principle of equality is the equalising and that principle is axiomatic in plural society. The Soviet Union immeditely after the revolution was confronted with te problems of plural societies and it was young Stalin's theris on the nationalities question was what was recognised by Lenin who while forming the Govt made him the Commissar of Nationalities. Again it was Marshall Tito who recognised this problem introduced what he called Co-operative federalism in Yugo slavia, After death what happened is recent history. It is true that their systems have been discredited by history. The important thing is they were democratic enough to recognise the problem and thought abou it. We never thought about anything at all. Sorry for intruding. K.G.Kannabiran, President, PUCL. email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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