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| Exclusion of Madan, Lal from Union Council of Ministers | | Congress's Double-Standards | | Neha
Jammu, Feb 16: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted his Council of Ministers on May 28. It took him no less than 12 days to complete the exercise. One can understand the reasons behind that inordinate delay. However, it was obvious that he constituted his ministry after consulting Sonia Gandhi. Reports suggested that Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi met umpteen times between May 16 and 27 to finalize the names of those to be inducted in the Council of Ministers and the portfolios to be allotted to them.
Even a cursory glance at the composition of the Council of Ministers would suggest three things. One, most of the newly-appointed ministers were family members of the erstwhile Union Ministers and former Rajas and Maharajas. Some of the newly appointed ministers were also multi-millionaire. They obviously represented the moneyed class and business interests. Hence, the new Council of Ministers simply couldn't be termed as the ministry of "Aam Adami" (common men), the Prime Minister and the UPA chairperson talked about during the intense election campaigning. The composition of the Council of Ministers did negate the very political philosophy of Jawaharlal Nehru, who in December 1929 told the Lahore Congress: "I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican, and am no believer in kings and princes or in the order which produces the modern kings of industry".
Two, the Prime Minister and the AICC president again succumbed to the "blackmailers'" pressures. They could have very easily showed the likes of Shard Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and M. Karunanidhi of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) their rightful place and accommodated persons with sound credentials in the ministry, but this did not happen. Three, both the AICC president and the Prime Minister left the non-Muslim minorities in Jammu and Kashmir in the lurch. In other words, they did not apply the principle of protection of minorities in the state. It was the majority community in the state that got a very preferential treatment. The Prime Minister inducted into his Council of Ministers two persons from the state - Farooq Abdullah from Kashmir and Ghulam Nabi Azad from Jammu. Farooq Abdullah was given berth in the Union Cabinet despite the fact that the Leh District Congress Committee was against his induction. The District Congress Committee opposed his induction because the NC had, according to it, violated the seat-sharing formula.
The yardstick applied by the Prime Minister was a negation of what the Congress fought for in 1909, exactly 103 years ago. It needs to be recalled that the Congress had condemned the regulations framed under the Indian Councils Act of 1909 and adopted resolution after resolution in December 1909 to register its protest against the British Government. A Congress delegate from Punjab Sunder Singh Bhatia, like Madan Mohan Malaviya, who presided over the 24th session of the Congress at Lahore; and Surendranath Bannerjea, "the King of Bengal", was highly severe in his criticism of the regulations. He denounced the regulations framed for the Punjab province on several grounds: firstly, "the numerical strength of the Council was inadequate"; secondly, "the elected element was small"; thirdly, "the principle of protection of minorities applied in the case of Muslims in other provinces was not applied to non-Muslim minorities in the Punjab"; and fourthly, "the regulations practically kept the non-Muslims of the Punjab out from the Imperial (Legislative) Council".
Reflecting on the fourth objection, Sunder Singh Bhatia said: "In the Punjab, the Hindus were in a minority as compared with the numerical strength of the Muslims. Although the Congress had condemned the institution of separate electorates and the granting of differential and preferential rights to any particular community on the score of religion, it was unfair that Hindus, including Sikhs, in the Punjab, were not treated on a footing of equality with the Muslims in other provinces. Of the elected seats in the Legislative Council of the Punjab, three had gone to the Muslims and one to the Hindus. Therefore, in the Punjab, the principle of protection of the minorities had been applied in the wrong way, for it is not the minorities that get protection. It is a case of the majorities as it were, swallowing the minorities" (Ghose, Pansy Chaya, The Development of the Indian National Congress, 1892 - 1909, Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1960, P. 231).
As for Surendranath Bannerjea, he introduced a resolution in the Congress denouncing the regulations. He said: The regulations had given an "excessive and unfairly preponderant share of representation…to the followers of one particular religion" and that the regulations made "humiliating distinctions between Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of His Majesty" (Ibid., P. 229). Almost identical was the reaction of Madan Mohan Malaviya (Ibid., P. 228).
The non-inclusion of Madan Lal Sharma and Lal Singh in the Union Council of Ministers established that the powers-that-be in New Delhi treated the non-Muslim minorities in Jammu and Kashmir in the same way the British treated the non-Muslim minorities in the Punjab in 1909. Madan Lal Sharma and Lal Singh had won the general election second time in a row. The people of Jammu province had defeated the BJP candidates and stood solidly behind Madan Lal Sharma, and to an extent Lal Singh, entertaining the hope that their vote for the Congress candidates would automatically mean a berth or two for Jammu in the Union Council of Ministers and that they would be there in the country's highest decision-making body. Their high hopes did not materialize. Their exclusion from the Union Council of Ministers created an impression in Jammu and Ladakh that Kashmir and the state's majority community alone matter in the New Delhi's corridors of power.
It was not for the first time that the powers-that-be in New Delhi treated the non-Muslim minorities in the state so shabbily or allowed the political elite to violate the principles of secularism and democracy when it came to the empowerment of Jammu or the non-Muslim minorities. They did so umpteen times in the past as well.
Thus, the Congress party, which had been hailed by the people of Jammu in 2008 and which got maximum support from them in the general elections, was criticized by the same people after the formation of the NC-led coalition government in the state, as also after the reinstallation of the Congress-led UPA government at the center in 2009. The reasons were obvious.
The Jammu-based Congress leaders themselves are responsible for the treatment they have getting. Those who do not assert meet the fate Madan Lal and Lal Singh met. It is time for the Jammu Congress leadership to muster courage and assert. |
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