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Badal blasts
Indian Govt on move to change Sikh's 'minority' status
WSN Bureau
Chandigarh: With
the World Sikh News breaking the shocking story of Indian
government's determined attempt to divest the Sikhs in Punjab and
Chandigarh of their status as a 'minority' by amending India's
Constitution, the Parkash Singh Badal-led Akali Dal-BJP government
has reacted with alarm.
Badal took
strong exception to the union government's move and said, "This is
highly thoughtless, and one that can drive the country into an
unnecessary but dangerous strife. It must be dropped." He also
criticized the increasing attempts to further erode the remnants of
federalism in the country's polity.
Significantly,
Badal's ally, the BJP, has maintained a stoic silence on the issue,
and is widely known to have a very different approach towards
minorities. The BJP has often questioned the privileges enjoyed by
the minorities in India
and is least likely to oppose the Bill in Parliament.
The WSN had
reported in its May 9-May 15 issue that the Indian Cabinet has
passed the draft bill for amending the Constitution to define
'Minorities' at the state level and this will deprive Sikhs of their
status in Punjab and also possibly in Chandigarh while Muslims will
be deprived of such a status in Jammu and Kashmir and many other
states.
The WSN
Exclusive also beat the entire Indian media on the story. It was
left to the Ajit newspaper to virtually translate the entire story
from the WSN website ( www.worldsikhnews.com ) for its May 12 edition,
three days after WSN readers had already absorbed the contents. India's
English media was much slower in reacting.
"Only the states
actually dealt with the day to day problems of the people while the
center merely took a distant view of things and never really
understood the nitty gritty of people's problems," Badal said.
Badal said the
move smacked of the "centrist and unitarist mindset" of the Union
Government and will play havoc with the basic trust and
understanding "on which our national polity is based." Badal said
the Union government must reconsider this "highly irresponsible and
inflammable move."
"The only way to
justify this highly provocative move was to declare the states as
entirely autonomous federal provinces with the center having no say
in any of the domestic areas. Only if the states enjoy complete
autonomy can you consider them as independent units for the purpose
of determining and bestowing the status of minorities on the
concerned groups. So long as we live in a single country, we can
only talk about minorities in the country on the whole," said Badal,
adding that it was absurd even to talk of determination of minority
status at the state level.
The Delhi Sikh
Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) president Paramjit Singh Sarna
has urged Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to stop the move and help
maintain the minority status of the Sikhs. Sarna wrote a letter to
the Prime Minister after the Cabinet’s clearance to an amendment for
defining minorities state-wise.
“After this
amendment, the government will evolve a procedure for defining
minorities and will lay down the criteria to be fulfilled for a
group to find place in the list of minorities...We hope that the
special status of the Sikh community is maintained,” Sarna's letter
read.
He
has also sought a meeting with the Prime Minister on the issue.
Interestingly,
the draft bill to amend the Constitution was passed at a meeting of
the Cabinet on May 3 presided over by none other than Manmohan
Singh, India's first Prime Minister from any minority.
Former Chairman
of National Minorities Commission Tarlochan Singh, currently a Rajya
Sabha MP, said the move to define minorities at the state level and
thus depriving Sikhs of the minority status in Punjab will only
result in deep divisions within Indian society and can even lead to
balkanisation of India. The Union Government will take such a step
only at its own and the country's peril and it has no right to
decide on such an issue, he said.
16 May 2007
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