Limitless appeasement

NAC’s Bill is an assault on liberty

The National Advisory Council-drafted Communal Violence Bill that is being sought to be imposed on a Government which is only too happy to be treated as a doormat by the Nehru-Gandhi family, spells disaster for India and its people. If the Bill, by some quirk of fate, were to become law, every aspect of liberty and rule of law in our republic would be in danger of being run aground and given an indecent burial. Those pushing this monstrosity in the guise of preventing the outbreak of communal violence and maintaining communal ‘harmony’ are plainly not telling the truth about the Bill. This Government is incapable of telling the truth; it is equally unable to summon the courage to tell the NAC to leave law-making to the executive and the legislature, and, in the event of people taking a dislike to a particular policy or a law, the judiciary. Hence it has chosen silence over comment on the Communal Violence Bill. But that in no manner either absolves the Government of its responsibility nor does it mitigate the looming threat to our democracy. While it is nobody’s case that communal violence should be ignored or that every possible and legally defensible effort should not be made to punish those responsible for strife, the proposed law is unacceptable, not the least because it is patently un-constitutional and reflects the perverse thinking of a few who parade themselves as the Army of the Self-righteous. The Bill, if it were to become law courtesy a gutless Government and supine party leaders for whom defiance of the wishes of the ‘high command’, also known as the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, is unthinkable — an offence that can fetch merciless retribution — would kill freedom and democratic rights in all their manifestations, turn rule of law on its head, subvert the Constitution, and rob State Governments of their legitimate authority sanctioned by the Constitution. Such are the draconian provisions of the Bill drafted by the NAC.

If this Bill were to muster parliamentary approval, it would make all Hindus into sole offenders and practitioners of communalism, absolve all minority communities of any role in or provocation leading to communal violence, and convert India into a police state where people will live in perpetual fear of being framed under its obnoxious clauses. The truth behind any incident of communal violence — for example, the horrendous crime of Muslims setting a coach packed with Hindu passengers on fire as it happened at Godhra in Gujarat — shall forever remain buried because anybody mentioning it orally or in writing would be put behind bars if the offenders were to allege feeling offended at their crime being exposed. Free speech shall die a tragic death because any comment on transgressions by any minority community or criticism of excesses and abuses in the name of faith — the horrific oppression of women under Muslim Personal Law is one example and the abuse poured on Hindu gods and goddesses by Christian evangelists is another — will be met with the registration of non-bailable offences. The identity of the complainant shall be kept a secret; the person against whom the complaint has been lodged will be presumed to be guilty unless he is able to prove to the contrary. If in the end the charges are found to be frivolous or untenable, the complainant, by virtue of being a Muslim or Christian, shall go unpunished. India must rise in revolt against this proposed law.