Chapter 3: Footnote 2

The full text is at columns 131–42 of the Lok Sabha proceedings of 11 May 1992. The speech was delivered in Hindi.

I will come to Yatra shortly, but it was preceded by two major opportunities to intervene in Parliament on 11 May 1992 and 29 July of the same year. The context for my May intervention was the presentation of a Bill for establishing a National Commission for Minorities. Shri L K Advani had preceded me to virtually open the discussion with a long dissertation on the RSS/BJP point of view on the position of the minorities in secular India. I availed of the opportunity to rebut him in a speech in Hindi that lasted the better part of an hour and a quarter (the official English version may be seen at columns 131-142 of day’s proceeding in the Lok Sabha records. I have preferred to use my own English version of my speech in the passage that follows).

I began by taking up Advaniji’s point that, as he claimed Sardar Patel had said in the Constituent assembly, we should not be talking too much of “minorities and the majorities” but hoping that in “modern India” we might “slowly grow out of using the criterion of religion to define the minority and majority communities”. Advaniji had also said that there is no reference to religious minorities in the Constitution. I pointed out that Article 30, in particular, dealt explicitly with linguistic and religious minorities, and invoked other provisions that were relevant to the protection and promotion of minority rights as addressed in the Preamble and Articles 15,16,25,26, 27, 28 and 29 plus, of course, Article 30. In other words, all the fundamental rights listed in the Constitution reflected the apprehension that, in the name of religion, the rights of the minorities could be affected. To this end, the principal duty laid upon the Indian state was to ensure that there was no discrimination against, or any hurt inflicted upon, any Indian citizen on the basis of their religion. Unfortunately, I said, we had failed to fully ensure that this was the reality. This was because the position of the minorities was “a deep societal problem” and it is for this reason that we must deal with our minorities with sympathy and affection and the recognition that, as Indian citizens, any fears or apprehensions on the part of the minority are met by the State reassuring our minority brothers that rights flowing from their citizenship of India apply as much to them as to any of us. It is this sensitivity to questions relating to our minorities that is being described as “pseudo-secularism” and the claim being made that it is only to tap into their votes that the Congress has been disguising their intentions as a sympathetic understanding of minority issues.

I then went briefly into the Partition of India. I emphasized that in the 1937 elections, the Muslim League had secured only 4.3 per cent of the votes of the Muslim community in separate electorates. It was only after 1940 that support for the Muslim League started growing and by 1945 reached a substantial majority of Muslims eligible to vote only because Congress leaders of the Quit India movement had been detained between 1942 and the end of the Second World War, and were, therefore, not in a position to counter false political propaganda. That is how Pakistan came to be created. But the Congress had consistently held that even if Pakistan was a historic reality that we accepted, and even though Pakistan had embarked on the road to becoming an Islamic state, we were determined not to allow India to become a Hindu state but to remain a secular state. And for precisely this reason Nathuram Godse, a journalist connected with a journal called “Hindu Rashtra”, had assassinated Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948. Indeed, even after the first attempt on Gandhiji’s life on 19 January 1948 by Madan Lal Pahwa failed, the “Hindu Rashtra” journal had described Gandhi taking India on the path of secularism as “tushtikaran” (appeasement), an expression that had been revived contemporaneously by those who wanted to replace the secular state of India with their concept of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

Addressing Shri Advani (who was not in the House), I underlined that this perception of India as a Hindu nation was not only a BJP perception but also a problem within the Congress party, particularly reflected in the challenge mounted by Purshottam Das Tandon to Jawaharlal Nehru’s unflinching secularism when, in 1950, Tandon was elected President of the AICC. The Tandon platform’s principal plank had been that if Pakistan could be constituted as a religious state, then why not make India a “Hindu Nation”?

Until this question of India as a Hindu nation or a secular state is finally resolved and laid to rest, I said, our minorities will be apprehensive about their future in this country. True, the Hindu majority is close to 85 per cent, but I find my Muslim friends like Shahabuddin, who had been with me in the Foreign Service and preceded me to the Lok Sabha, asking, “Have we really been accepted by the country we have served so faithfully?” It seemed to me that our primary duty is to answer them to their satisfaction. If we say we accept them as Indian Muslims, they are reassured, but when they are asked, as Advaniji has asked them, to accept that they are “Hindu Muslims”, then, of course, they object.

At this point, there was a major disruption of the proceedings caused by BJP backbenchers. After the Chairman had restored order, I continued that this point related to our dignity and pride as a nation. Advaniji asked us to not resort to the vocabulary of “minority and majority” but had repeatedly stated in interviews and from public platforms that Christians are ‘Hindu Christians’ and Muslims are ‘Hindu Muslims’ and that Sikhs are ‘Hindu Sikhs’. What I would like to ask Shri Advani, I said, is whether when he looks at a Hindu, he regards him as Hindu - or as a ‘Hindu Hindu’? When Advaniji is faced with a Hindu, Hinduism suddenly becomes a religion and is linked to nationhood and a demand is made that from a “cultural” perspective Muslim should regard themselves as ‘Hindu Muslims’. I affirmed that, according to our Constitution, we are all Indians and there is no reference to our being ‘Hindu’.

I then referred to previous interventions by two Muslim members, Shri Ebrahim Suleiman Sait and Shri Salahuddin Owaisi. They had made it clear that they regarded themselves as ‘Indian Muslims’ but were not ready to call themselves ‘Hindu Muslims’. The Constitution provided that our country would be called ‘India’ in English and ‘Bharat’ in Hindi, but nowhere was it said that we were a ‘Hindu nation’. If religion was to be made the criterion of our identity, then what becomes of the national sovereignty of Hindu-majority nations like Mauritius and Nepal? Advaniji may claim that Hinduism is a ‘culture’, and not a religion, and that his religion is the ‘Sanatana Dharma’ (The Eternal Faith) but while I may personally be an atheist, my name indicates that I could be a Hindu but not a Muslim or a Christian. Pointing to retired Justice Ghuman Mal Lodha, who was looking agitated on the BJP benches, I said that if I were to describe him as a Hindu, would he deny it? The meaning of secularism is that whether a citizen is a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Sikh or an atheist, provided he is an Indian citizen, there is nothing more to be said. But the BJP opposition insists that while affirming their Indian citizenship they must also acknowledge that the only authentic culture of India is the ‘Hindu culture’. It is this that arouses suspicion and fear in the minds of our fellow-Muslims and Christians who wonder whether if they read the ‘Namaz’ or the Bible, they would be accepted as ‘Indian’ or not. In their minds, this is their land, this their home, this is their family, this is where their future lies, and this is where the future of their children lies. But when Shri Advaniji speaks softly and sweetly, he concerns himself only with Indian Muslims and Indian Christians, while his cohort resort to more blunt and offensive expressions and threatening gestures, that bring to mind the English proverb: “A man is known by the company he keeps”.

Their stand, I went on, is: “Hum Mandir wahin Banayenge” (We will build the temple only “there”). What do they mean by “there”? It is here that the struggle begins. I said I would like to ask my fellow MP, Uma Bharti (who was absent from the House) why they had started agitating this matter only after 1986. “Had Lord Ram not been born before 1986”? She had claimed in an earlier debate on the Places of Worship Bill that they had decided to agitate this matter because of the injustice inflicted on Shah Bano in 1986.

This point caused a long spell of disruption which ended with my shouting above the din that in order to save one Muslim woman, why were they choosing to destroy a Muslim place of worship? This led to Dau Dayal Joshi of the BJP saying that my question has brought me down from the high heights to the size of a dwarf. This led to further disruption. When the House was back in order, I underlined that the rumpus clearly showed that any mention of the minorities led to a swelling of the saffron wave. It is they who had brought sadhus and sants into the House, making one wonder whether this was a Parliament or an Ashram. All this was being done in the name of religion, yet their leader claims that we should not talk about “majority and minority”. As soon as Shri Shahabuddin or Shri Suleiman Sait or Shri Mohd Salim rose to their feet, this saffron wave sweeps through the House. I begged them to forget their religion and confine themselves to politics and statesmanship. For at least 119 members of this House, I said, religion alone guides their speech and action. Until we are able to finish with this Party, we will have to protect our minorities. We, on the other hand, are a responsible party and a responsible government, and we say to our minorities, “Brothers, do not be scared; we are there for your protection”.

A BJP backbencher interrupted to says that a Muslim woman had been insulted and so for a Congressman to bring up Shah Bano was not befitting.

After the din had died down, I resumed that when Shri L K Advani had asserted that it was the Shah Bano issue that had provoked the Ayodhya matter, I asked what was the need to protect Shah Bano’s interest by breaking a masjid? Shah Bano had passed away the previous week and until her dying day she had been a Muslim, she prayed to Allah, she went to the mosque to read the namaz and believed that the Babri Masjid was really a mosque. How was she protected by attempting to destroy the mosque?

I then concluded that we were gathered to set up a National Minorities Commission only in order to protect and promote the rights and interests of the minorities, as guaranteed by the Constitution, even as we had similarly set up a National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.