Not untouchable anymore?
After Matanhy Saldanha joined the BJP, there have been more from the Catholic community who have had the courage to announce their proximity with the once “untouchable” party. Of course, Francis Silveira and Wilfred Mesquita were the odd lone rangers, so to say. But, when Matanhy decided to join a party, which has links with RSS, it did ruffle many feathers, specially his colleagues during his young activism days. This, because, he staunchly opposed RSS policies.
During his last term in office Matanhy was a member of the BJP-led government. But that was limiting to just being a member of the government, not an integral part of the party.
Now however, there seems to be more openness vis-à-vis links with BJP amongst the minority community, evident by the fact that following Matanhy’s entry into BJP, more from the minority has joined the saffron brigade.
This is not to say that the Catholic minority never voted for BJP. This however was not out of love for BJP, rather out of frustration of limited choices before the electorate. The “ideal candidates’ unfortunately do not have the power to attract block votes, which can swing the tides in their facour.
The general argument now-a-days is that both the Congress and the BJP is guilty of practising communalism. True. There are Congressmen from some constituencies who have created and doled government jobs exclusively to only members of one community. If at all, some of the minority candidates did secure a job, it was out of compulsion to camouflage the communal tag and avoid being seen as having a bias.
In any case, what is the difference in the so-called “secular” Congress and the communal BJP? Congress comprises several ex-BJP MLAs. Even chief minister Digambar Kamat was the second-in-command of Manohar Parrikar during the tenure of Parrikar-led government. Moreover, its clear as dayling how the Congress shamelessly is hobnobbing with potential candidates having BJP affiliations.
While the Congress is guilty of adopting polices which are detrimental to the minority, the BJP during its tenure had authored the infamous VCD controversy, cancelled holidays on Good Friday and the feast of St Francis Xavier, besides overwhelmingly recruiting those from the minority community in the police force. The first instance when a mosque was burnt in Goa was during the BJP tenure.
With elections at hand, Parrikar has admitted that he blundered in cancelling holiday on Good Friday. But is admitting a mistake enough? The very fact that he failed to apologise to the community on the issue besides resorting to several anti-minority policies, indicates that he is not a changed soul. Such utterances are akin to the likes of Narendra Modi, who some months ago went on a “peace fast” with great fanfare, failed to apologise to Muslim parents of deceased children killed in the communal riots. Is Parrikar adopting such a ploy on election eve?
True, both the so-called secular Congress (which has left Muslims unsatisfied with an adequate burial ground) and the communal BJP are guilty of communal bias. Both have sidelined the minorities. The only difference lies in magnitude and brazenness. BJP has shown that they can do it in broad daylight. We will not say who is worse.
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people’s edit
Secession: the instrument of dividing authority
David D’Amato
In June last year, I mentioned a referendum that would put the question of Scottish sovereignty squarely to the country’s people. Six months later, MSNBC reports, “The Scottish and British governments [are] playing a cat-and-mouse game over the future of the 300-year-old union between Scotland and England.”
The government of the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a part, challenges the idea of a referendum on Scotland splitting from the United Kingdom. Although Scotland enjoys many traditional powers of an independent, sovereign state, it remains linked to London, and many in the British corner argue that it has no legal right to secede.
As novel and thorny as the legal question may be, there is another, far more crucial question at play, one that goes to the very meaning of self-determination; it inquires about the foundations of control and compelled relationships.
“Political order,” Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said, “rests fundamentally on two contrary principles: authority and liberty.” Contrasting the two, Proudhon observed that authority is at all times “tending to hierarchy, centralization, [and] absorption,” while liberty, a principle “supplied by the mind,” he described as “personal, individualist, critical, the instrument of dividing” (emphasis added).
Proudhon was a master of language, finding understanding and insight in the interaction of opposites. The first self-styled anarchist, he saw the lack of a state not as an avenue to chaos, but as coextensive with a different and better governing system – that of self-government based upon a continuing “division of power.”
Such indeed was the Principle of Federation that Proudhon so spellbindingly suggested, a radical partitioning of political power, on and on until each individual deals with every other on equal terms – secession pushed to its limit.
We advocate what is essentially a peaceful, revolutionary secessionism. A comprehensive treatment of society and the political takes labor and economic reward together with broader questions about justice, personal freedom and autonomy. If centralized power leads to trespass against civil liberties, then so too does it pervert the discretely economic element of human life. The dissolution of today’s political entities and their separation into ever-smaller communities of voluntarily participating citizens would mean the end of all ruling classes. The story in Scotland provides an opportunity to consider in turn what that might mean.
