It looks like the entire right wing has decided to come out of the closet, literally, with their communal ambitions. Only two days ago, Hindu Mahasabha’s Sadhvi Deva Thakur called for forced sterilisation of Muslims and Christians in order to curb their populations. Barely did the outrage die down, when Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut created another one by writing an article in the party mouth piece, Saamna, where he called for Muslims voting rights to be revoked.
“Vote bank politics is being played in the name of fighting against the injustice meted out to Muslims. If Muslims are only being used this way to play politics, then they can never develop. Muslims will have no future till they are used to play vote bank politics and thus Balasaheb had once said to withdraw Muslims voting rights. What he said is right,” the editorial said.
The Sena in its editorial said the “secular masks” of all the so-called secular political parties will be worn out, once such voting rights are withdrawn, it said.
It’s a downright pathetic state of affairs when political representatives in the country go around making communal and provocative statements like this, with no thought given to the consequences. Not only are statements like this unconstitutional, they also amount to criminal intimidation, especially since they were made prior to the by-polls in Maharashtra.
With all the religious hate speech that has hit the airwaves in the past six months, one wonders where the right wingers are going with this.
The sheer audacity of an elected Rajya Sabha member in asking for an entire community’s rights to be revoked is not only appalling, it also goes against our fundamental rights, which guarantees the right to vote to every citizen. No representative of a religious majority has the right to even demand for it.
It doesn’t come as a surprise therefore, all the other parties, with the exception of BJP and its right wing brigade, rose up in outrage against it. The AAP demanded criminal proceedings against Raut and urged the Election Commission to derecognise Shiva Sena while other parties made similar noises of outrage. And yes, a complaint has been registered with the National Commission for Minorities against Raut. Delhi-based lawyer and civil rights activist Shehzad Poonawalla filed the complaint with the NCM.
“It is in flagrant violation of the Constitutional Guarantee of Right to Freedom of Religion and the Right to Vote granted for every citizen irrespective of his race, religion, caste, class and creed and amounts to deliberately, intentionally and maliciously outraging the religious feelings, inciting hatred and ill-will amongst communities,” the petition stated.
“He (Raut) has made these comments in his capacity as a Rajya Sabha MP, so it also constitutes a violation of the election law. Hence, the election commission should take a stand against it,” Poonawalla said while talking to PTI over phone.
We hope that Raut is penalised and made an example of, so that it will deter the others from making similar statements of malice, that promote enmity between communities. Because no individual or community should ever have to put up with continuous hate speech, directed against it.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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