[sacw] The Rediff Interview/ Tahir Mahmood

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI (Posted below is a recent interview with the Chairperson of the India's
National Commission of Minorities)
South Asia Citizens Web
=============================
The Rediff Interview/ Tahir Mahmood
(February 10, 1999)

'What is happening with the minorities should not beseen in political
terms but in terms of the Constitution'

Professor Tahir Mahmood is chairman of the National Commission for
Minorities, agovernment organisation that has been in the news recently
following the attacks against Christians in Gujarat and Orissa, and the
outbreak of communal violence in Karnataka. The NCM had deputed
fact-finding teams to the states and their reports have been submitted to
the government.

Mahmood, who is credited with turning the NCM into an effective
organisation that seeks toprotect the rights of minorities, spoke to
Amberish K Diwanji. An excerpt from the interview:

REDIFF: Your fact-finding teams have been to Gujarat and Orissa and other
places.What do your reports say?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: A copy of the report on Orissa has also been sent to the
Supreme Court, which is conducting ajudicial enquiry into the murder of
Stains. Since the matter is sub judice, it would not beappropriate for me
to comment on the topic right now.
Besides, I have given copies of the reports only to the prime minister whom
I met on February4, 1999.

Besides the above mentioned, we have submitted our two annual reports --
for 1996-97 and1997-98 -- for follow-up action; we have submitted the
report on Suratkal and Mangalorewhere communal violence broke out too. By
law, these reports have to be placed beforeParliament, and we expect the
government to table them in the Budget session beginning soon.

REDIFF: Do you expect anything to come out of the reports?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: Previously, the annual report and other reports would be
submitted very late and thegovernment would then make an excuse that it is
too late to take action.
Nowadays, I submit my reports not on time but before time so there is no
justification for the government not to take the necessary action. Right
now, the government has five reports --two annual reports and the special
reports on Orissa, Gujarat and Mangalore -- and Parliament is going to sit
now. I expect the government to follow up...

REDIFF: Do you think the present government is sidelining the NCM? After
all, theBharatiya Janata Party has often said there is no need for a
commission forminorities?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: That is not the impression that I got from the prime
minister. He never said he did not see a need for the NCM.

REDIFF: In Gujarat, was the Sangh Parivar involved in the violence or was
it the work of some individuals?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: I think it is the handiwork of individuals from smaller
groups rather than some national-level organisation. Large national groups
may not be involved, but individuals belonging to those organisations and
from some smaller groups may be behind the attacks.

REDIFF: Could it not be a case that some larger national-level
organisations were unable to control their cadres at the lower level? Could
it not be a case of groups taking advantage of a government perceived as
being sympathetic?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: I find it very difficult to believe that a national- or
state-level organisation, especially if it is a religious organisation --
which ever religion it may be -- will openly sanction such a policy of
persecuting others in the name of religion. I am not able to believe this.
One of my areas of specialisation is Hindu religion [Mahmood is a jurist
with specialisation in Hindu Law].

That an organisation which calls itself the religious representative of
Hindus seeks to persecute minorities as a matter of policy is, I must tell
you, difficult for me to swallow. Whoever wants to say this will have to
prove it! It cannot be proved by just one or two incidents.

Certain individuals in small groups are committing atrocities. Even if they
are linked to certain large organisations, then of course such organisation
have a responsibility. It must be, and hasbeen, brought to the notice of
the parent organisation to do whatever is possible to stop thesmaller
groups and individuals from their actions. But to say that at the top
level, theorganisation as a whole is involved, I find it difficult to
digest.

REDIFF: Then do you have any reason for the sudden spurt of crimes in
recent times, especially against Christians?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: Yes, I have an explanation. The individuals and smaller
groups believe that such persecution is the ideology of their group. I
consider this to be a wrong belief. But it is the responsibility of the
parent organisations to correct these misconceptions from both the
individuals and the groups.

This is being said openly by so many people. I have not said that nor has
the NCM, but political parties and independent watchers are saying it. So I
think these organisations should realise their responsibility. It is also
the responsibility of Hindu organisations to save the fair name of their
religion from being tarnished by such individuals and groups.
When Stains was murdered, some groups blamed the Bajrang Dal. Almost
immediately, Home Minister L K Advani absolved the Bajrang Dal even before
checking the facts. Now does this not give the impression of a sympathetic
government?

The problem here is that those in the BJP have not been able to demarcate
their roles as members of a political party and as members of the
government. There is a world of a difference between a ruling party and a
government.

When this government took over, I was asked if I would face difficulties as
chairman of the NCM. I replied, "Which ever party may come to power, they
have sworn to uphold the Constitution of India and whatever they might have
said as a political party, the fact is that a political party in search of
power has to be different from a political party in power."

Unfortunately, some members, not all, have not been able to appreciate this
difference. Int hose unfortunate moments when they are not able to
differentiate between their political party and government role, they make
statements that should not be made by someone in government.

What is happening with regard to the minorities, whether in Gujarat, Orissa
or Mangalore, should not be seen in political terms but in terms of the
Constitution and the law of the country.To uphold these is the
responsibility of the government. So even if someone who is ingovernment
belongs to a party which is against taking action in the recent matters,
thegovernment has to do its duty.

I can say that the prime minister is quite appreciative of this difference
between a political party and a government. Some others, sometimes, slip.

REDIFF: But can you still separate a government from the ruling party's
ideology?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: But the BJP members have themselves been shouting from the
rooftop that their ideology is not the ideology of the government. That the
ruling alliance's national agenda for governanceand the BJP's agenda are
different and that the government would act according to the former.

Nevertheless, sometimes this does not happen. I told the prime minister of
an incident that quite disgusted me. Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel
said he had not received the NCM'sreport. Immediately thereafter he said
the report was biased. Now how could he say the reportwas biased if he had
not seen it? Obviously, one statement is a lie. Fortunately, I have
receiveda fax from the Gujarat government telling me that it had received a
copy of the NCM's reportand that the chief minister's statement that the
state had not received the report was not correct.

REDIFF: In all your work, have you come across any case of induced, forced
orcoerced conversions in the tribal areas as alleged by certain groups?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: We have been asking for such evidence from converts willing
to admit that they have been forcibly converted, or converted by illegal
inducement or coercion. But the fact is that in the 10 months that we have
spent in Gujarat, not a single such case has come up. In fact, during
thefag end, one person came up to speak of conversion. When we understood
him through thetranslator, it transpired that he had been converted from
Christianity to Hinduism. We ignored his case.

REDIFF: Have you ever come across intra-tribal violence between different
religious denominations?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: There are as many as 60 recognised tribal groups in India.
In my travels I have found that among the tribals, there is so much unity
that they don't care if one person belongs to one religion and a second
person belongs to another. In Meghalaya, where I went recently, there are
Hindus, Muslims and Christians within a tribal group yet they don't care.
There are inter-tribal rivalries, but never along religious lines. Hence
reports of conflicts within a tribe onthe basis of religion is nothing but
a story.

The government has asked for a debate on conversions. What do you think
about it?
The prime minister has clarified that he was not talking of debate but was
talking of a dialogue.He explained that to me, saying that there is a
difference between the two. Before that, he said there is no proposal to
amend the Constitution's Article 25 to ban conversions in India. After that
he clarified that a debate on conversion has already taken place in the
Constituent Assembly and hence there was no need for another. The need was
for a dialogue.

A very appreciable point about the prime minister is that if he is
convinced that what he is saying is not correct, he has no hesitation in
correcting himself. Only a few days ago, in Lucknow, the prime minister
said there were no forcible conversions in the country. If he says that,
that is the end of the controversy.

REDIFF: But you don't have any view on whether there should be a debate
onconversion?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: The reality is that there have been conversions because of
the weaknesses in the Hindu society. The whole world, minus the Hindu
society save a few who have studied Hindu society, recognises this fact.
Whatever conversions have taken place, whether to Islam or to Christianity,
the dominant majority -- not all -- have been due to the weaknesses in
Hindu society. So if we have a debate, these weaknesses will be talked
about. Where will it lead us? It will only create more bitterness. I don't
think anyone will relish the idea of creating more bitterness. In fact this
bitterness must come to an end.

REDIFF: All the crimes so far have occurred in states with non-BJP
governments, save Gujarat. Yet, fingers are pointed at the central BJP
government rather then the state governments. Law and order is a state
subject. Does this reflect a prejudice against the BJP?

TAHIR MAHMOOD: A politician is a politician. Whichever party is in power,
it does not matter because a politician will take the first opportunity to
criticise his opponent if anything happens. This is what the non-BJP
politician has been doing.

What is happening is not just a law and order situation. It is a basic
question of equality of every citizen in this country, the implementation
of fundamental rights, the rights and equality of minorities and majorities
as guaranteed by the Constitution of the country. This is where the central
government is involved because the Constitution imposes certain duties upon
the centralgovernment regarding such matters.

This is exactly what we recommended to the central government in the case
of Gujarat, whichcaused a hue and cry. Yet what did we say? Article 355
states that if there is any internaldisturbance in any state, it is the
duty of the central government to protect that state. We askedthe
government to invoke Article 355 in Gujarat as we saw the attacks on
Christians as aninternal disturbance. It was not an incident that occurred
on one day but has been happeningsince April 1998.

A number of incidents have occurred despite the efforts of the Gujarat
government -- I have not and am not blaming the Gujarat government of
inaction in any of my reports. But what matters is not the action taken but
the impact it has, which was negligible. The Gujarat government in early
December said that it had taken sufficient action and we all saw what
happened on December 25, 1998.

Hence we made our recommendations to the central government. The government
could give directions to the state government under Article 256. All these
are existing laws. We listed those laws to the central government. So what
is the bias in it?

But there does appear to be more harshness towards Gujarat, which has a BJP
government, than Orissa, which has a Congress government. Is it because
ofthe BJP's image and its past record?

Our commission has never been concerned with who or which party has been
ruling the state.It is absolutely irrelevant to us. The Anjana Mishra rape
case and the Jehanabad massacre doesnot fall under our jurisdiction. We are
deeply concerned.

In the Anjana Mishra case, we have made an official reference to the
National Commission forWomen to what we would have done had the victim been
from a minority and, similarly, forthe Jehanabad case, we have sent a
reference to the National Commission for Scheduled Castesand Scheduled
Tribes. We are concerned with minorities. How the media and
minoritiesbehave is not our cup of tea. I don't want to comment on that.

But I would like to say that what you attribute to its past, I would
attribute to the present styleof action and statements of the government,
which indicate that there is a prejudice on their partagainst the
minorities.

If the press takes notice of that and comes out openly against it, I don't
think there is anything wrong. My overall assessment of the media is that
it has been very fair to the minorities. Beingfair to the minorities does
not mean prejudiced against the ruling party.

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