An Open Letter
Dear Justice Sachar
In your article, ‘A P.M. at Work’ published in The Statesman on June 15, 2014, you have waxed eloquent about importance of justice, ethics, etc. My humble advice to you, sir, is the famous dictum: “Physician heal thyself.” Let me elaborate.
You have known me and I have known you through small time chance meetings in a television studio, at the I.I.C., New Delhi and later on at the golden wedding anniversary of a common friend, a retired Chief Justice.
You are aware, dear Sir, that by using the fabricated findings of the former P.M.’s High Level Committee chaired by you, an unprecedented wanton discrimination has been heaped by Shri Salman Khurshid, the former Minister of Minority Affairs, on the unwashed children of nearly 34 crore Hindus living below the poverty line.
It was fully established by Salman Khurshid, in his press conference on 29th May, 2012 at Delhi, that he deprived the unlettered daughters and sons of the poorest Hindus living below the poverty line, mostly in rural areas. The High Level Committee chaired by you was born in sin of grave constitutional impropriety. The task assigned to you sir, had been entrusted in 1992 by the Parliament to the National Minorities Commission by enacting a special law called The Minorities Commission Act, 1992. The responsibility for the protection of the rights of minorities and ensuring their welfare had been assigned by the Parliament in terms of the aforesaid legislation to the Minorities Commission. Thus, the very act of the Prime Minister constituting a High Level Committee in March 2005, by an executive fiat for one single religious minority was patently unconstitutional and bad in law. The worst aspect of the sinister move was that you, a Judge well versed in law, did not inform the P.M. that constituting the proposed Committee was a violaton of the Constitution.
For decades an unsubstantiated belief has been propagated across the country that economically and educationally, Muslims are more disadvantaged than the Hindus. That is an unalloyed lie. This bogey of Muslim backwardness is being unabashedly used by the powerful pro-Muslim vote bank lobby to bestow many unmerited benefits and concessions, including nearly twenty million scholarships and concessional educational loans exclusively on the Muslims and four other minorities.
It was revealed by Salman Khurshid on May 29, 2012, that during the last 6 years not one single scholarship was given to the daughter or son of any poor Hindu. Nor were any cheaper educational or entrepreneurial loans advanced to any Hindu poor, while funds worth several lakh crores were advanced to the children of better placed minorities.
This strategy of religion-based discrimination was implemented in pursuance of the communally divisive vote bank policy enunciated in the Prime Minister’s notoriously famous “Muslims First” policy statement made on December 9, 2006, by the Prime Minister. Inexplicably the aforesaid policy statement was made by Dr. Manmohan Singh on the birthday of Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance. And thereby hangs a tale !
Sir, you cannot deny that crores of poor Hindu children belonging to the perennially famished hoi polloi of rural India have been deliberately deprived of any share in the 20 million scholarships awarded to the five minorities, including four economically and educationally better placed communities than the Hindus. These four super-privileged minorities are the Christians, the Parsis,the Buddhists and the Sikhs all of whom happen to be show stealers in literacy average, economic prosperity, urbanization and education.
The data pertaining to infant and child mortality, degree of urbanization and life expectancy at birth available in public domain in 2005 proved that it is the Hindus, and not the Muslims, who are the most disadvantaged religious group.
The following are the five major globally recognized human development indicators :
i) Infant Mortality;
ii) Child Mortality;
iii) Life Expectancy at Birth;
iv) Degree of Urbanisation ;
v) Literacy
Hindus are far behind the Muslims in the first four human development indices, excepting literacy in which Hindus with 65.1 percent literacy are marginally ahead of Muslims who have the literacy average of 59.1 percent. But you and your team-mates lacked the moral courage to identify and write that one single factor responsible for lower Muslim literacy average was the lower ratio of literacy among Muslim women at a meagre 50.1 percent –lower by 3.6 percent than the national average of female literacy at 53.7. Thus, this important cause of lower female literacy among Muslims has been ignored by you sir.
By sheer fraud, the children of 34-35 crore poor Hindus were deprived by Salman Khurshid with your assistance sir. This defrauding of the majority religious group, mostly the rural Hindus, was launched by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in June, 2006, in the garb of Prime Minister’s New 15 Points Programme for Welfare of Minorities. Courtesy the fabricated findings recorded by you, the poor Hindu children were deprived of any share in the twenty million scholarships showered on Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis and the Sikhs. The data available in the public domain in 2005 rebutted your Committee’s malicious findings.
In our seminally researched book, The Majority Report, authored by me and my friend J.P. Sharma, we have cited five data-based rebuttals of your fabricated report sir. All these rebuttals are in the public domain. A copy of the book was sent to Salman Khurshid more than 4 months ago, followed by two subsequent reminders. But he did not respond. I hope at least you will respond.
Sincerely Yours
Ram Kumar Ohri
Ram Ohri is a former IPS officer and writes regularly on security issues, demographics, and occasionally, on policy.