Sep 8, 2006

Anything for 23% of the Pie.

The Muslim population of UP, India’s most populous state is 23%. This is one community in India that votes - come what may - en bloc to the party endorsed by their Mullahs by fatwas. The coming UP election is very crucial for all the major political parties of UP – Congress, BJP, BSP and SP. Congress wants to get back to its pre-eminence it once had before VP Singh and - ironically by Congressman - Late PV Narasimha Rao killed it with Mandal Commission and Ram Janambhoomi fiasco respectively. BJP wants to polarise the Hindus in its favour by using the Muslims as cannon fodder. For BSP and SP this bloc is just numbers in its road to power in UP. So appeasement of this bloc by Congress, BSP, SP, Commies, etc was always expected.

The “appeasement” levels went to a new low recently when Congress’s Arjun Singh took back a directive – and made it optional - to sing the national song, “Vande Mataram” on Sept 7th after the Muslim clergy opposed it on religious grounds. So on Sept 7th we saw many Muslims singing “Sare jahan se acha”,Jana gana mana”, etc with a good number of them standing up and singing Vande Mataram at top of their voice. We also saw politicians singing the song – the “deshbhakts” who don’t know much of the song and the “deshdrohis” who vacillate according to directives from their vote banks.

The Congress president Sonia Gandhi - without whose knowledge a single leaf doesn’t move at the congress party - stayed away from the Congress Party’s celebration of the national song. The Congress says this doesn’t mean she is an unpatriotic Indian. What they didn’t tell was that it was a ‘desperate’ message to the Muslim bloc particularly of UP – something like “see I didn’t show up at the function coz I understand your sentiments but my senile HRD Minster made a stupid mistake from which we cant get out but let me make clear that I am with you. So please vote for me en bloc err, the Congress party in the upcoming UP elections”. How much more lowly can a political party go to woo a community just for its votes? Even a solemn occasion to commemorate a song that had rallied our unarmed satyagrahis (freedom fighters) like anything - to take on the might of the most powerful Empire in the world - was used to convey a subtle political message to the minorities (read Muslims). Poor lady just didn’t realise how she had played into the BJP’s hand by not showing up. BJP naturally is only too happy to use this new controversy they have been gifted by the Congress president. So much so that they even have constituted a special committee to work out its “Vande Mataram strategy” in the light of Gandhi skipping the commemoration event! Well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

One of Congress’s main priorities is getting back the lost Muslim vote-bank and for this they will go to any extend and each time they unwittingly play in to BJP’s hands. One of the latest ideas is again from Arjun Singh.

HRD Minister Arjun Singh wants to give 25% of the Rs 10000 crore allocated in the current fiscal for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme which is to make all of India's children literate, to madarssas to educate Muslim children. Unless madarssas are reformed and mainstream education is not provided this money is only going to produce more brainwashed Indian Muslim foot-soldiers for Pakistan’s jihad against India. This Arjun Singh won’t do because his party is only interested in the vote of the Muslim community, which is the only one in India that votes en masse. After the vote is cast the politicians leave them high and dry and that’s one of the main reasons (the other being ghettoisation) why Muslims of India find themselves in a wretched condition. The state of West Bengal went in for successful madrassa reforms and the central government should follow the WB model in all the 30,000 + madrassas in India. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan was recently pulled up by CAG for anomalies. Bibek Debroy calls for scraping it altogether. Now no one should have any doubt where the taxpayers’ money is going.

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