Seshadri Chari
A legislation that seeks to divide rather than build upon the collective expression for peace and communal harmony should be rejected — and Sonia Gandhi's toadies on the NAC investigated for their real agenda
Can a Government turn into a scheming enterprise and foist upon the majority community of the country an enactment that charges them as inherently communally rowdy and out to wreak havoc on a major minority in their own land? If your answer is no, think again. The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 smacks of a sinister agenda to divide the society on the basis of religion and draw political mileage. The Bill also unashamedly violates the basic tenets of the Constitution of India. More importantly, the Bill, when it becomes an Act, would end up creating “more equal” citizens, rubbishing the Constitutional guarantee of “equality of justice”.
When a Bill is prepared one can assume that the endeavour is bad in content but the intent of the government preparing it cannot generally be suspected. But this is one Bill which is unreservedly bad in intent as well as content.
The Lokpal draft Bill prepared by the members of the civil society led by Gandhian and anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare was ridiculed by one Congress worthy as an attempt to destabilise the government by some “unelected and unelectable” persons. So, how did the UPA government institutionalise a body of unelected and probably “unelectable” persons under the banner of the National Advisory Council (NAC), with the specific mandate to “provide policy and legislative inputs to Government?” There is no provision for NAC in the Constitution, and certainly not for a body with a Chairperson who wields greater power than the Prime Minister of the country. The NAC is nothing but a blatant and deplorable deviation from the Constitutional scheme of governance and legislation.
The perpetrators of this obnoxious Bill have not concealed their hatred for anything Hindu or what they conveniently would term as ‘saffron’. Needless their target is the Narendra Modi government of Gujarat followed by all other non-Congress and BJP governments.
The very first offensive definition in the Bill is of the expression ‘group’. A ‘group’, the Bill says, is a religious or linguistic minority and in a given state may include the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Without any deception, Clause 3(e) makes it abundantly clear that the bill seeks to protect only “religious or linguistic minorities.” The insertion of the word “linguistic” appears to be a diversion. There were not many instances of serious strife between one linguistic group and another in the past many years, except the political gimmicks in Mumbai against north Indians. But now if the Bill becomes a law, even if a presumably errant Shiv Sainik utters a word against any north Indian, the Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray could end up as Azmal Kasab’s neighbor in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail.
The next part of the sentence, “in any State in the Union of India” does not mean anything, because, for any Central law to be applicable to Jammu & Kashmir, concurrence of the state legislature is necessary. Therefore Clause I (2) is simply superfluous. If the naïve believe that it is possible to extend the law to Jammu & Kashmir to protect the Kashmiri Pundits, perish the thought. The tricky Clause 3 (m) contradicts any such possibility: “In the event this Act is extended to the State of Jammu and Kashmir” (not ‘when’, but, in the event!) “…any reference in this Act to a Law, which is not in force in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, shall, in relation to the State, be construed as a reference to a corresponding law, if any, in force in that State.”
In plain English, shorn of legalese, the Law will never be applied in Jammu & Kashmir. This is not surprising in view of the derision that an exalted member of the NAC has for the State’s minorities, the Kashmiri Pandits. She wrote in an article in Deccan Chronicle some time ago that the issue of Kashmiri Pandits has been ‘highly romanticised’ (sic).
The Bill assumes that no member of the majority community can ever be a victim. It is a unilateral declaration by the “wise men (and women)” of the NAC that Hindus in India are a bunch of serial offenders determined to deviate from thousands of years of tolerance, secularism and respect for other’s faith. The discrimination of offences is so evident in the Bill that no member of the minority community is to be punished under this Act for having committed the (same) offence against the majority community.
If the objective of the Bill is to protect the religious minorities, from whom does it seek to protect them? The definition of ‘association’ in Clause 3 (b) is scary and is enough to remind one of the midnight knock of the infamous Emergency. An “accused” need not be an enlisted member of any association ‘whether or not registered or incorporated under any law’. For, if the ‘association’ need not be legally constituted to be accused of an offence, where is the question of ‘enlisted’ membership? If you are ipso facto deemed to be a member of an ‘association’, it is enough for the act to take cognizance. No prize for guessing the target here. The entire top brass of the RSS and VHP can be sent packing to Tihar Jail on the basis of one complaint by a non-descript individual Even the street-corner Ganesh Mitra Madal in Chennai or Mumbai, which erects a huge shamiana every year, can be hauled up for “hurting the sentiments of the minority”.
Clause 15 expands the principle of vicarious liability. An offence is deemed to be committed by a senior person or office bearer of an association and he fails to exercise control over subordinates under his control or supervision. He is vicariously liable for an offence which is committed by some other person. If one is still in doubt about th intensions of the Bill in this regard one has to read the lengthy provisions of Clause 15 which speaks about ‘non state actors’ clearly intended to target Hindu organisations like the Bajrang Dal, RSS, and the VHP. Clause 16 renders orders of superiors as no defence for an alleged offence committed under this section.
The bill creates a whole set of new offences in Chapter II. Clause 6 clarifies that the offences under this bill are in addition to the offences under the SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Can a person be punished twice for the same offence?Probably the most vicious attack on the Hindu community and the parties and groups opposed to the Congress comes almost at the far end of the lengthy Bill in Clause 129 (Non-applicability of limitation). According to the clause the statute of limitations shall not apply to offences cognisable under the Act. The implications of this clause are far-reaching. For instance, cases being investigated by the SIT and other Commissions in Gujarat may fail to convict the accused. With total disregards to the existing laws, any one of the ‘victim’ can at anytime reopen the cases against the ‘culprits’ and drag the case on till “death do us apart”. Even those who are outside the ambit of the present cases, and you know who, can be dragged under this Bill through a revision of the cases in a superior court — and to be tried under the new act.
It is important to note that ‘offences’ under the Act are non-bailable. All that the Congress has to do is to wait for the Bill to be passed and then, lo and presto, Modi is banished from politics.
A legislation that seeks to divide rather than build upon the collective expression for peace and communal harmony should be rejected — and Sonia Gandhi's toadies on the NAC investigated for their real agenda
Can a Government turn into a scheming enterprise and foist upon the majority community of the country an enactment that charges them as inherently communally rowdy and out to wreak havoc on a major minority in their own land? If your answer is no, think again. The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 smacks of a sinister agenda to divide the society on the basis of religion and draw political mileage. The Bill also unashamedly violates the basic tenets of the Constitution of India. More importantly, the Bill, when it becomes an Act, would end up creating “more equal” citizens, rubbishing the Constitutional guarantee of “equality of justice”.
When a Bill is prepared one can assume that the endeavour is bad in content but the intent of the government preparing it cannot generally be suspected. But this is one Bill which is unreservedly bad in intent as well as content.
The Lokpal draft Bill prepared by the members of the civil society led by Gandhian and anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare was ridiculed by one Congress worthy as an attempt to destabilise the government by some “unelected and unelectable” persons. So, how did the UPA government institutionalise a body of unelected and probably “unelectable” persons under the banner of the National Advisory Council (NAC), with the specific mandate to “provide policy and legislative inputs to Government?” There is no provision for NAC in the Constitution, and certainly not for a body with a Chairperson who wields greater power than the Prime Minister of the country. The NAC is nothing but a blatant and deplorable deviation from the Constitutional scheme of governance and legislation.
The perpetrators of this obnoxious Bill have not concealed their hatred for anything Hindu or what they conveniently would term as ‘saffron’. Needless their target is the Narendra Modi government of Gujarat followed by all other non-Congress and BJP governments.
The very first offensive definition in the Bill is of the expression ‘group’. A ‘group’, the Bill says, is a religious or linguistic minority and in a given state may include the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Without any deception, Clause 3(e) makes it abundantly clear that the bill seeks to protect only “religious or linguistic minorities.” The insertion of the word “linguistic” appears to be a diversion. There were not many instances of serious strife between one linguistic group and another in the past many years, except the political gimmicks in Mumbai against north Indians. But now if the Bill becomes a law, even if a presumably errant Shiv Sainik utters a word against any north Indian, the Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray could end up as Azmal Kasab’s neighbor in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail.
The next part of the sentence, “in any State in the Union of India” does not mean anything, because, for any Central law to be applicable to Jammu & Kashmir, concurrence of the state legislature is necessary. Therefore Clause I (2) is simply superfluous. If the naïve believe that it is possible to extend the law to Jammu & Kashmir to protect the Kashmiri Pundits, perish the thought. The tricky Clause 3 (m) contradicts any such possibility: “In the event this Act is extended to the State of Jammu and Kashmir” (not ‘when’, but, in the event!) “…any reference in this Act to a Law, which is not in force in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, shall, in relation to the State, be construed as a reference to a corresponding law, if any, in force in that State.”
In plain English, shorn of legalese, the Law will never be applied in Jammu & Kashmir. This is not surprising in view of the derision that an exalted member of the NAC has for the State’s minorities, the Kashmiri Pandits. She wrote in an article in Deccan Chronicle some time ago that the issue of Kashmiri Pandits has been ‘highly romanticised’ (sic).
The Bill assumes that no member of the majority community can ever be a victim. It is a unilateral declaration by the “wise men (and women)” of the NAC that Hindus in India are a bunch of serial offenders determined to deviate from thousands of years of tolerance, secularism and respect for other’s faith. The discrimination of offences is so evident in the Bill that no member of the minority community is to be punished under this Act for having committed the (same) offence against the majority community.
If the objective of the Bill is to protect the religious minorities, from whom does it seek to protect them? The definition of ‘association’ in Clause 3 (b) is scary and is enough to remind one of the midnight knock of the infamous Emergency. An “accused” need not be an enlisted member of any association ‘whether or not registered or incorporated under any law’. For, if the ‘association’ need not be legally constituted to be accused of an offence, where is the question of ‘enlisted’ membership? If you are ipso facto deemed to be a member of an ‘association’, it is enough for the act to take cognizance. No prize for guessing the target here. The entire top brass of the RSS and VHP can be sent packing to Tihar Jail on the basis of one complaint by a non-descript individual Even the street-corner Ganesh Mitra Madal in Chennai or Mumbai, which erects a huge shamiana every year, can be hauled up for “hurting the sentiments of the minority”.
Clause 15 expands the principle of vicarious liability. An offence is deemed to be committed by a senior person or office bearer of an association and he fails to exercise control over subordinates under his control or supervision. He is vicariously liable for an offence which is committed by some other person. If one is still in doubt about th intensions of the Bill in this regard one has to read the lengthy provisions of Clause 15 which speaks about ‘non state actors’ clearly intended to target Hindu organisations like the Bajrang Dal, RSS, and the VHP. Clause 16 renders orders of superiors as no defence for an alleged offence committed under this section.
The bill creates a whole set of new offences in Chapter II. Clause 6 clarifies that the offences under this bill are in addition to the offences under the SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Can a person be punished twice for the same offence?Probably the most vicious attack on the Hindu community and the parties and groups opposed to the Congress comes almost at the far end of the lengthy Bill in Clause 129 (Non-applicability of limitation). According to the clause the statute of limitations shall not apply to offences cognisable under the Act. The implications of this clause are far-reaching. For instance, cases being investigated by the SIT and other Commissions in Gujarat may fail to convict the accused. With total disregards to the existing laws, any one of the ‘victim’ can at anytime reopen the cases against the ‘culprits’ and drag the case on till “death do us apart”. Even those who are outside the ambit of the present cases, and you know who, can be dragged under this Bill through a revision of the cases in a superior court — and to be tried under the new act.
It is important to note that ‘offences’ under the Act are non-bailable. All that the Congress has to do is to wait for the Bill to be passed and then, lo and presto, Modi is banished from politics.
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