The Telegraph, 28 May 2011
BJP steps on Hindutva gas
RADHIKA RAMASESHAN
New Delhi, May 27: The BJP has stepped up its Hindutva rhetoric ahead of its June 2 national executive, which is expected to set the tone of the party’s campaign for next year’s Uttar Pradesh elections.
The party has picked the issues of Afzal Guru’s hanging and the proposed communal violence bill drafted by Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council (NAC), which it accuses of being biased against Hindus.
The BJP today bayed for Guru’s blood, a day after the President rejected two death-row convicts’ mercy pleas.
“When will he (Guru) be hanged? Will the government explain which law authorises it to adjudicate mercy applications only in a queue?” spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad asked.
Guru, convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 Parliament attack, was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in 2004. His mercy petition has been waiting in a long queue. Prasad said the Centre’s alleged indecision on Guru was a “copybook example of vote-bank politics”.
Arun Jaitley alleged the draft communal violence bill discriminated against the majority community — by which he meant Hindus — by making it culpable for communal trouble while letting minorities go scot-free.
“This draft bill... proceeds on a presumption that communal trouble is created only by members of the majority community and never by a member of the minority community,” he wrote.
“Thus, offences committed by members of the majority community against members of the minority community are punishable. Identical offences committed by minority groups against the majority are not deemed to be offences at all.”
Jaitley’s argument is based on the bill’s focus on the protection of “those particularly vulnerable groups of citizens who are routinely subjected to violence or threats of violence in different forms because of ‘who they are’”.
The NAC has defined these groups as religious and linguistic minorities, and Dalits and tribals.
A member of the working group that authored the draft denied that the bill discriminated against majority communities and said it was merely trying to protect vulnerable groups against violence.
The member also debunked Jaitley’s assumption that “majority” always meant Hindus, saying the bill would protect the Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, as also Hindi-speaking migrants in Maharashtra where they are often attacked.
The member pointed out that Hindus were in a minority in Punjab, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Lakshadweep.
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