by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : A day after Congress President Rahul Gandhi sought the Prime Minister’s support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday asked him to support the proposed law to prohibit triple talaq and nikah halala.
He said that as national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress cannot have two sets of standards in dealing with women and their rights.
In a letter to Gandhi, which was released to the media, Prasad said: “As part of the new deal, we should approve, in both houses of Parliament, the Women’s Reservation Bill, the law prohibiting triple talaq and imposing penal consequence on those who violate the law, and prohibiting nikah halala.”
Under the triple talaq practice, a Muslim man can instantly divorce his wife by orally repeating the ‘talaq’ word thrice. As per ‘nikah halala’, a woman divorcee has to marry someone else, consummate this marriage to get a divorce and remarry her earlier husband.
Prasad’s letter came a day after Gandhi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek his support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament’s monsoon session starting on July 18, claiming that the BJP appears to have had second thoughts on the proposed law even though it was a key promise in its 2014 manifesto.
“As national parties, we cannot have two sets of standards in dealing with women and their rights. We are already too late in conferring the right of adequate representation, equality in personal laws and doing away with such provisions which compromise women’s dignity,” Prasad said.
The BJP leader also targeted the Congress chief over the lapsing of the Women’s Reservation Bill with the dissolution of the last Lok Sabha.
“The bill was originally proposed by the National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee but could not be passed for want of a consensus in Parliament.
“It was reintroduced during the UPA-II government in the Rajya Sabha. Despite disturbances, the BJP and NDA stood in firm support of the bill and got it passed in the Rajya Sabha. For reasons best known to the government of that day, no effort was made to get the bill passed in the Lok Sabha,” Prasad said.
The Minister said that the Modi government welcomes Gandhi’s initiative to support the bill. “However, the government will like to understand fully the reasons why the bill was not taken up for three years by the UPA government in the Lok Sabha and allowed to lapse?”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The BJP on Monday questioned the intention of Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha. Raising the women’s quota issue now is nothing but an attempt to divert public attention from his remark that ‘Congress a party of Muslims, the BJP said.
Addressing the media here, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said: “Why did he raise this issue today? It is an attempt to divert the people’s attention from his remark that the Congress is a party of Muslims…This is the double standards of the Congress.”
Javadekar sought to know from the Congress chief whether he would also ensure the support of parties that were opposed to the bill in the past.
“The Congress has alliances with parties opposed to this bill. Will they come out of the alliance? Will they ask for letters of support from parties opposed to the bill,” Javadekar asked when questioned on Gandhi’s letter to Modi on Monday. However, he did not name the Samajwadi Party or the Rashtriya Janata Dal which had opposed the Bill and are now allies of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The BJP leader’s response came soon after Rahul Gandhi wrote to the Prime Minister to seek his support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament’s monsoon session. Gandhi said the BJP appears to have had second thoughts on the proposed law even though it was a key promise in its 2014 manifesto.
The Congress leader said the bill, passed by the Rajya Sabha in March 2010 during the UPA II government headed by Manmohan Singh, has been stalled in the Lok Sabha on one pretext or the other.
Gandhi said the bill holds the potential to transform the country’s governance and any further delay will make it impossible to implement it before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The monsoon session will be held from July 18 till August 10.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : With the BJP continuing its attack on Rahul Gandhi for his reported remark that the Congress was a party of Muslims, historian S. Irfan Habib, a participant in the July 11 meeting, on Monday denied that the Congress President made any such reference.
“He (Rahul) didn’t say that at all. I didn’t hear it. Nobody will say that. BJP, a majoritarian party, will never say that. No party would ever say that,” Syed Irfan Habib, an Indian historian of science and a well-known intellectual, told IANS.
“…he (Rahul) spoke about the poor sections of society, which have been the strength of the Congress all these years,” Habib added.
He said Rahul agreed that the Congress “got weakened” after losing the support of the poor sections, and that it needed to bring them back to the fold.
“What Congress party has to do, according to him (Rahul), is to win back those sections — minorities and Dalits,” he said.
“He spoke about the Muslims along with other sections. He said ‘we have to take corrective measures’ to bring these sections back to the party, be more accommodative. Nobody is talking about it,” said Habib.
A news report in an Urdu Daily Inquilab had said that Congress’ minority unit chief Nadeem Javed had confirmed that Rahul Gandhi did say that “Congress is a Muslim party” during his meeting with Muslim intellectuals.
Those who met Rahul for their feedback on various issues and for a discussion on “public policy” included M.S. Farooqui, Amir Mohammad, Syeda Hameed, Ilyas Malik, Rakhshanda Jalil, Junaid Rehman, Farah Naqvi and others.
Earlier in the day, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala compared the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government with the East India Company and rejected Inquilab’s report, saying Javed was “misquoted”.
Inquilab Bureau Chief Mumtaz Ali Rizvi told a news channel: “Questions are being raised on their leadership. I challenge that Rahul-ji should tweet to say what I have written in the newspaper was not told by him.” He said Congress should come out and say that it is not a party of the Muslims. “In one rhetoric, it will be clear. I will leave journalism,” he said.
Surjewala, however, questioned if a particular newspaper or its representative was present in the meeting that was attended by a select group of individuals. “That’s the first question to be asked and the answer is in the negative,” he said.
On Javed’s interview to the newspaper, the Congress leader said: “I took the liberty of trying to read even the misquoted interview that has appeared and I tried to write it in Hindi because I can’t read Urdu, except a few words.”
“What he said was this and let me quote: ‘yaad rakhiye kisi bhi mulk ki taraqqi, kisi ek tabqe, yaani warg ki taraqqi se nahi ho sakti. Balki har tabqe ki taraqqui se mulk taraqqui karega (remember that no country can develop with the development of just one community. Development of all communities can lead to the development of the country).'” “This is what Rahul Gandhi had said,” Surjewala quoted Javed as saying.
“The BJP and PM Modi are now dependent upon only polarization. Like the East India Company, they follow the principle of division,” he said.
Javed later told a news channel: “To say that Congress is only the party of Muslims is a very stupid thing to say. The Congress President can’t say this. No mature politician would say this. Propably, the editor failed to understand what I said,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh) : Raking up the controversy over the reported remarks of Rahul Gandhi that the Congress is a party for Muslims, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday accused the Congress and other parties of wanting continuance of practices like triple talaq.
He also wondered whether the Congress was interested only in the welfare of Muslim men and not women.
“For the last two days I am hearing that a naamdar leader (a sarcastic reference to Rahul Gandhi) recently said that the Congress is a party of Muslims. I’m not surprised. Even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once said that Muslims have the first right over nation’s natural resources.
“But I want to ask the naamdar of Congress, congratulations to them. But please tell us whether the Congress is only for Muslim men? Or does it have space for Muslim women too because they don’t stand with Muslim women on issues of triple talaq and nikah halala,” he said addressing a public meeting after inaugurating the Purvanchal Expressway in a speech aimed at the next Lok Sabha polls in the battle ground state.
Modi said all the parties have been exposed on the issue of triple talaq. It concerns the lives of lakhs and crores of Muslim women. Even in Islamic countries, there is a ban on triple talaq, he said.
The Prime Minister’s attack on Gandhi and the Congress on the issue of Muslims came a day after Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman accused the Congress of dividing the country on communal lines and playing a dangerous game before 2019 general elections.
Citing a report in an Urdu daily which claimed that Gandhi told a meeting of Muslim intellectuals earlier this week that the Congress is a party for Muslims, she had demanded an apology from the Congress President.
The Prime Minister also accused the opposition parties of not allowing Parliament to function. “They don’t allow the Parliament to function. They stall the proceedings. I would like all anti-Modi leaders to go and meet these women who have been affected by triple talaq and nikah halala and then come to Parliament. People have to be alert about such parties.
“These parties want triple talaq to continue. I will try to make them understand and bring them together for the sake of Muslim women so that they get freedom,” he alleged.
He said these are 18th century parties in the 21st century and cannot do any good for the country.
Modi said that Purvanchal Expressway will take Uttar Pradesh to greater heights. “More than Rs 23,000 crore will be spent on the project. All cities, towns between Lucknow and Ghazipur, that fall on this route will witness a change.”
The Prime Minister also said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had changed perception about Uttar Pradesh.
“The Yogi Adityanath government has been able to control crime rate, corruption in Uttar Pradesh. He has contributed immensely in the state’s development,” Modi said.
He also said besides highways, work was also on relating to waterways and airways.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Ever since the A.K. Antony committee identified the Congress’s Muslim “appeasement” tag as a major reason for its electoral reverses, the 133-year-old Grand Old Party (GOP) has been unable to formulate a clear-cut policy on the country’s largest minority community.
In a transparent attempt to shed the derogatory label given by its opponents, Congress President Rahul Gandhi has engaged in what has been called “temple hopping” and has even expressed a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Kailash Manasarovar, the ultimate pilgrimage destination in Tibet for Hindus.
The chances, however, of these gestures persuading Hindus to turn away in droves from the avowedly pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and support the Congress are minimal. Instead, the latter’s new Hindu card may confuse the Muslims.
Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, also made the mistake of following a muddled policy when he opposed the Supreme Court’s judgement in favour of a divorced Muslim woman, Shah Bano, at the behest of Muslim fundamentalists and then ordered the opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid to please their Hindu counterparts.
However, the fact that religious overtures do not matter if the nation is seen to be advancing economically was proven in 2009 when the Congress increased its tally of Lok Sabha seats at a time when India was experiencing the fastest-ever reduction of poverty, according to Arvind Subramanian, the former Chief Economic Adviser of the Narendra Modi government.
Yet, only five years later, the Congress suffered its worst ever defeat largely because of the “socialistic” policies favoured by Sonia Gandhi advocated by the crypto-communist members of her National Advisory Council at the expense of economic reforms.
What these ups and downs show is that economy is the key. There is no need either to display an overt devotion to Hinduism or hold a meeting with a select group of Muslim intellectuals, as Rahul Gandhi has done, to find out what their community wants.
It is another matter that at the moment, the Muslims want a sense of security, which was pointed out by former Vice President Hamid Ansari. Their angst is understandable at a time when a Union minister garlands a group charged with killing a Muslim.
But, in the long run, the most palpable sense of safety is provided by a buoyant economy as it fosters a feeling of wellness which few want to disrupt through targeted violence.
The BJP’s success in 2014 was the outcome of Modi’s appropriation of the economic reforms which the Manmohan Singh government had neglected in its twilight years when, as former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said, the government made the mistake of taking its foot off the accelerator of reforms.
It is patent enough that the BJP would not have fared so well in 2014 if large sections of the Muslims had not voted for it. If they are now feeling uneasy, as Ansari has said, the reasons are not only the sporadic acts of violence of the saffron activists, but also that the reforms have not delivered to the extent they were expected to do.
As the original initiator of the reforms, the Congress’s focus should be on ways to rev up the economy and not on photo-ops at temples and powwows with Muslim notables. If the party can generate enough confidence about its ability to do what it alleges the Modi government has failed to do, there will be no need for any kind of religious overtures.
Along with the articulation of development-oriented ideas, the Congress will have to be less apologetic about its pursuit of secularism. While Jawaharlal Nehru’s Fabian socialism can be discarded when it doesn’t exist even in the fatherland of the creed, his secularism has to be preserved and nurtured.
If the Congress earned the reputation of being a “Muslim party”, as Sonia Gandhi has said, it is because of the misapplication of the secular principles as the Shah Bano fiasco showed, for the doctrine does not entail pandering to the Muslim hardliners as was done in the mid-1980s but to the ordinary members of the community.
Their value is immense not because they constitute 14.2 per cent of the population, numbering 172.2 million, second only to Indonesia (209 million) and ahead of Pakistan (167.4 million), but because of their contributions to India’s art, architecture, cuisine and culture. Moreover, their interest lies in advancing in step with the rest of the country as M.S. Sathyu’s iconic film, “Garam Hawa”, depicted in the 1970s.
The Congress, however, made the mistake of seeing the community through the lenses of the bigoted and bearded maulvis (clerics) and abiding by their prejudices. Hence, the “Muslim party” nomenclature because the BJP was quick to capitalise on the GOP’s lapses in judgement.
It is time for the Congress to clarify that secularism does not stand for appeasement of minorities but ensuring that they have a place of honour in the country.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
