hajjjj

The ease with which I am slipping into a state of not writing is alarming me now. Only last week, I had written a great rant on Rahul Gandhi's visit to Maharashtra and as I was about to publish it, Blogger's new and amazing interface ensured that it didn't auto save it and I lost it all. Needless to say, I was thoroughly pissed off.

Even now, as I write this, Blogger tells me that it won’t be able to save what I am typing and that I should note down an error code and mention it to them to help them rectify the errors. So here I am writing this on a Word document offline, to be copied and pasted into my blog later.

Mmmph, so much for technology. Sometimes I wonder why can’t writing be as simple as taking a paper and a pencil and sitting down and spending a few minutes or hours just writing anymore. Why are there so many different types of blogs, kindles, technology interfaces and what not, and all to make writing and reading a better experience! Its all humbug. The best reading experience is taking a musty old book and sitting comfortably and just reading – with no television in front of you, of course.

Its been over a week since then, and my propensity to understand and read into national politics seems to be declining. As usual, there are many things going on, including Mamata Ban Her ji! And her soirees with the Government of the Banana Republic of India, and her great meetings with Hillary Clinton, who did well to massage the ego and sooth the insecurities of this crazy woman.

A big news today was the Supreme Court telling the government to do away with Hajj subsidies in ten years. The first opinion by R. Jagannathan from Firstpost.com is that it’s a good step, but a small trickling step.

Ending of Hajj subsidies is a case in point presented by all seculars, (no, not the frauds sitting in CONgress, NCP, RJD, BSP, or wherever) that if India is a truly secular country, then no religion should be provided preference over any other. Of course, thinking like a neta does, then the correct answer for this would be to start providing subsidies to other religions! Hindu’s to Kailash Mansarovar and Christians to Jerusalem.

Mr. Jagannathan only repeats the obvious. No government or politician wants to be seen as anti-minority. In India, minority means Muslims and Muslims only. So as always, the Supreme Court has to do to the dirty work and the Government can take umbrage in the fact that they are not doing it on their own accord but only because the Court has asked them to.

Mr. Jagannathan makes a very valid point, about quoting from religious scriptures to uphold law, which, by the way, is not based on the scriptures, but on the laws of modern India.

Another bad idea is the habit of quoting from scripture to uphold Indian law. A decision on the Haj subsidy should be based on the Indian constitution, not interpretations of the Koran or the Hadith.

So when a court quotes the Koran to justify its decision to end the subsidy, it is creating a bad precedent. The Koran is said to proclaim the following: “And Haj (pilgrimage to Makkah) to the House (Ka’bah) is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenses (for one’s conveyance, provision and residence).”

One is glad to hear that the Koran is against the Indian government’s Haj subsidy, but what if the Koran had held otherwise? Would we then always have the subsidy?

The courts have to abandon the idea of quoting from holy books and religious tradition while upholding Indian law. Sometimes these laws may support what the constitution says; at other times they may not.

By quoting from scripture, the courts are laying minefields in the path of upholding the constitution – which is their only job.

In fact, it is the Koran which Jihadis use to justify killing non-Muslims, or even Muslims of other sects! But then religious bigotry is a curse of modern society. We use whatever we have to from whatever scripture to do or justify whatever we want. So let me leave it at that.

According to the Indian Express, the Court makes a point that instead of spending so much money on Hajj, use the money saved on uplifting the Muslim community. While this is a noble thought, I think the few hundreds of crores saved and earmarked for the community will only end up in the pockets of a lot of politicians and well-wishers of the Muslim community.

Its not just true for any one community but stands true for the entire nation that we, as a country, are more than capable of taking care of ourselves. The bogey that Indian investments in defense, for example, or subsidies, take away a lot of money from other places, has been shown to be not as debilitating as is made out to be. A higher percentage of the GDP is spent on funding the social sector, and a very high percentage of this money is stolen and siphoned off from the top to the bottom of the pipeline. This has been happening since the country gained independence and that is the reason that despite budgets of hundreds of thousands of crore, we are still the same backward mass as we were before, now only more hypocritical and materialistic.

While it is important that the Courts be completely religion-neutral, at the same time I feel that being afraid to state the obvious is also not right. Whenever a decision that has to be taken that is right, but many rabid members of a community with vested interests might not agree with, a lot of time and effort is spent in appeasing them with nice words, and extolling the virtue of the decision and the necessity of the decision.

Till now, the Haj was open to all Muslims once every five years. Before the SC ruling, the Government had said in April that they would change that to once in a lifetime. Also, the priority will be given to people over 70 years and those that have been rejected before.

In fact, CON man Salman Khurshid, I mean Congress minister Mr. Khurshid said at once that the Government was working in the same direction for many years now! Oh happy thought that the government and the Supreme Court think so much alike in the affairs of the nation! I think it has been pointed out by many people and at many occasions that India is the only country in the world that provides subsidies to its citizens for Haj travel!

According to various news reports, a lot of people have welcomed the Supreme Court directive. Tabloid of India quotes some gentlemen from Chennai who happen to be Muslim that it will remove suspicions of favoritism, and that the subsidies were given in a very opaque manner. So in a way it will kill one avenue of corruption (among the millions of others, but that’s another story). A minor blip in the Supreme Court order is that it has asked the Government to cut down its goodwill delegations it sends to Saudi every year. This alone reeks of favors and sifarish. In fact, the Supreme Court does call it the VIP quota, which is what it had become.

* Goodwill Haj delegation – The primary purpose of sending the goodwill delegation, according to the government is “to convey goodwill on the auspicious occasion of Haj to the government of Saudi Arabia as well as to the Indian pilgrims”.

The delegation interacts with the Haj pilgrims from India, understands their issues and takes up the same with the Saudi Arabian authorities.

India first sent a goodwill delegation in 1967 with three members. Till 1987, the number of its members remained under 10. Thereafter, the size of the delegation started steadily increasing and in 1997 it had 31 members.

In 2005, there were 36 members in the delegation, in 2010 there were 30 and in 2011 its strength marginally shrunk to 27.

The court noted that the government’s affidavit did not disclose any criteria or guidelines on the basis of which people were selected for being included in the goodwill delegation.

“On the basis of the material brought to our notice, we have no doubt that the way people are nominated as members of the goodwill delegation is in complete violation of Article 14 of the constitution.”

The problem is that religion and politics are so deeply entwined with each other that it is just impossible to for the former to not creep into state policies, and in a democracy like India, religion (s) of the minority becomes an even more important factor considering the belief that it votes en bloc. So routinely you will hear news of flare-ups between communities which quickly take on a political turn with local party ‘leaders’ taking over and directing the emotions of the masses. That’s a pitiable state for our society to be in.