Minority

The non-visit of Salman Rushdie to the country – a big shame ..

Let me start with a quick point. I have not read the Satanic Verses, so I don’t know whether the book is as insulting to the feelings of Muslims as is made out to be. Let us assume that the book is incredibly insulting and hurts the feelings of Muslims p(with a slight Devil’s Advocate – I can bet most of the people who have been voicing their protest against the author and the book have not read the book, but have heard that the author denigrates the religion and the Prophet). So, ever since the emergence of the book, the author has been in hiding, with a death threat against him by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, however, the administration of Khatami moderated this threat with the statement that the Iranian Government is not seriously expecting this fatwa to be carried out.
All this happened many years ago, so why is this issue coming up again ? Well, the author is of Indian origin, and having a PIO card, the author can come to India any time, without the need of applying for a visa. This made the promised attendance of the author in the Jaipur Literature Festival controversial. And what made it controversial ? This entire discussion is just like pulling a thread and seeing what emerges from the thread …
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The whole drama about reservations for Muslims and its politics – primarily in Uttar Pradesh

For the past few days, in addition to the many caste calculations going on in the UP electoral scene, there is another twist that has been added to the whole discourse. This is related to political parties trying to attract the Muslim vote and what they can do for it. Now, getting support from a community is not a problem, but doing it only for electoral purposes and at the time of elections continues to be a problem, especially when it is so blatant.
A series of reports over the years have concluded that Indian muslims over the years have a level of development which is lower than that of the general population, and nobody can really doubt these conclusions. Further, over the years, a number of trades that had traditionally a higher proportion of Muslims (such as weavers) were affected by economic movements, further reducing the economic growth of the community. These were items that the Governments of the day should have handled, with targeted economic and development measures that laid a lot of emphasis on economic development that would increase the empowerment level of Muslims in the country.
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The drama continues in Karnataka, Governor seems to lose support

The heading of this article seems to suggest that the Governor is the primary villain of the piece, but that is not entirely true. The Governor of the state of Karnataka, H R Bhardwaj, has behaved in a most inappropriate manner; over the past many months, he would comment on the internal state of the BJP, was picking a fight over ministers that he felt should be pushed out, and so on. But it is in the recent state of affairs over the dissidence in the BJP and the attempt to make the Government a minority Government, that the picture of the Governor has really got distorted. He first sent a letter to the Speaker instructing the Speaker not to make any changes in the legislature and claiming that he would have the ultimate responsibility to take a decision; and since the Speaker of any assembly would refuse any such letter, this missive was treated with contempt by the Speaker. Then, when the BJP Government managed to win the trust vote through a very controversial method (of disqualifying the dissident members of the BJP, and even more controversially, the independent members of the legislature), the Governor seemed to see red. He wound up sending a report to the Central Government that the state had seen a Constitutional breakdown and it was fit for President’s rule. However, even the Congress central Government did not see fit to consider the report of the Governor and instead decided to go in for such a notion (although the fact that the Congress Government did not have a majority in the Rajya Sabha could have something to do with this).
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