 "Arun Jaitley")
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday termed the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq, 52, by a Hindu mob in Dadri late last month as "extremely unfortunate and condemnable". But Jaitley, considered the most important voice in the current government after that of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, slammed as "manufactured revolt" the returning of their Sahitya Akademi/Padma Shri awards by several writers.
Jaitley claimed these writers, critics of Modi even when he was the chief minister of Gujarat and recipients of patronage by the previous Congress governments, were "resorting to politics by other means", given that the Congress is showing no signs of revival and an insignificant Left (parties) lack legislative relevance. He also asked whether the writers had protested the excesses of the Emergency or the killings of the Sikhs in 1984, the Bhagalpur riots of 1989 or the corruption between 2004 and 2014.
Akhlaq was beaten to death on the suspicion that he had slaughtered a calf and stored beef in his refrigerator. The forensic tests later revealed, as Akhlaq's family had maintained, that the meat was mutton, and not beef.
In an interview published on Wednesday in Bengali daily Ananda Bazar Patrika, the PM broke his silence on the Dadri issue as also that of the cancelling of a concert of Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali in Mumbai. "Incidents like Dadri and Ghulam Ali are really sad but what is the role of the Centre in these incidents," Modi told the newspaper. He also blamed his political opponents for communalising the issue and said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has always protested against this type of pseudo-secularism.
Jaitley, in a Facebook post, said no "right thinking person can ever rationalise and condone such an action (the Dadri incident). Such incidents bring a bad name to the country." Earlier this month, the finance minister had disapproved of the Dadri lynching while on a visit to the Columbia University in the US. But, on Wednesday, Jaitley was also critical of the writers who had returned the awards conferred on them by the Sahitya Akademi and government.
He said the thrust of the protest by the writers appeared to be that the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre has created an atmosphere of intolerance in the country. "Is this protest real or a manufactured one? Is this not a case of ideological intolerance," Jaitley asked. He went on to state that there are a large number of writers with Leftist or Nehruvian leaning who were recognised by previous governments.
He said some of these writers might have been entitled to the recognition and that he was "neither questioning their academic merits nor their right to have political prejudices" but they have been "obviously uncomfortable" because of losing the patronage they received from the previous governments. This discomfort has increased because of the shrinking space of the Left parties and the Congress seeing no signs of revival. "The new strategy of anti-Modi, anti-BJP sections appear to be to resort to politics by other means. The easiest way is to manufacture a crisis and subsequently manufacture a paper rebellion against the government in the wake of a manufactured crisis," the finance minister said.
Jaitley insinuated that this was part of a design that started with propaganda, within months of the new government having been sworn in, that churches were being vandalised. Investigation into the attacks proved these to be cases of petty crime that had nothing to do with religion or politics, Jaitley said. He also pointed at several other instances of such propaganda against the current government, like the rape of a nun in West Bengal where the culprit was eventually found to be from Bangladesh or the killing of rationalist M M Kalburgi in the Congress-ruled state of Karnataka or that of N Dabholkar during the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party ruled Maharashtra in 2013.
The minister said law and order is a state subject and the Samajwadi Party is responsible for maintaining peace in Uttar Pradesh, where the Dadri incident took place. But, Jaitley said, the strategy seems to be to "camouflage" and "obfuscate" the truth about these incidents and blame it all on the central government. The finance minister said there was "no atmosphere of intolerance in the country" and the "manufactured revolt is a case of an ideological intolerance towards the BJP."
The minister asked how many of these writers courted arrest, protested or raised their voice against the dictatorship of Indira Gandhi during the Emergency of 1975-77 or did they speak against the Sikh killings of 1984 or the Bhgalpur riots of 1989. "Was their conscience not shaken by the corruption involving lakhs of crores (of rupees) between 2004 and 2014," he asked.
