Devil's Advocate: Salman Khurshid on Vande Mataram

TO BE A PATRIOT: Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid says Muslims have no doubts about national song.

        

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Was the Home Minister right to address the general session of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind? Or was it a way of covering up this Government's neglect of the real problems the Muslim community faces? Karan Thapar discussed these questions with Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid.

Karan Thapar: Salman Khurshid, let's start with the Home Minister's decision to address the general session of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind.

Given that the Indian Home Minister don't address the Catholic Bishops conference, the Sikh sangat, the Sadhus samellans, is it fitting that he should have addressed 10,000 ulema?

Salman Khurshid: Well, I am not sure on my facts about the Indian ministers not attending other religious gatherings, but I certainly know that as far as the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind is concerned, our senior leaders have been to their conventions in the past.

Karan Thapar: But not as seniors ministers, may be as leaders of the party. There is a distinction between party and the Government. This is the Home Minister of a secular Government, suddenly addressing 10,000 ulema.

Salman Khurshid: Well, they may be ulema, they may be ordinary workers, they may be ordinary people. But this is an important segment of our society. There has to be a dialogue and I think many of their concerns are often directed not as most of us but at the Home Minister, concerns about the security and they did, in fact take a very positive position on terrorism and I think the Home minister felt that he should go and encourage them obviously.

Karan Thapar: And they took it in a very strange, if not a questionable position on Vande Mataram, but I will come to that in a moment's time. And they did that on the very day the Home Minister went.

One small question on that. Is a Home Minister's intelligence so poor, so abysmally lacking that he had no knowledge that he was going to be embarrassed, almost sabotaged by this resolution?

Salman Khurshid: Well, you know that there it's a huge gathering and lot of little resolutions are passed and for the Home Minister once he's got his programme fixed, to call his programme off and then revise everything just because there is information that such a resolution is being passed is one thing. But certainly from what I understand he was not fully aware that such a resolution has been passed.

Karan Thapar: So his intelligence is so poor he had no idea of what sort of ambush he was working into? Or if, he was aware he didn't want to change it because he thought it could be a discourtesy.

Salman Khurshid: It could be.

Karan Thapar: It's a bizarre situation.

Salman Khurshid: Listen...listen, there could be many reasons. You have to take a call when you are in the hot seat. Will your going be counter-productive or your not going to be counter-productive? He has taken a call and he made a decision.

Karan Thapar: He has taken the wrong call, he embarrassed the Government, he embarrassed himself and now he is bending over backwards to find explanations.

Salman Khurshid: I don't think so. I mean I was asked the same day and I took a position.

Karan Thapar: And you didn't go that's the important thing.

Salman Khurshid: No.

Karan Thapar: You didn't attend the Jamiat, although you are Minority Affairs Minister and you perhaps had a responsibility to go. You didn't do for that very reason.

Salman Khurshid: There could be many reason for my not going but let me just put one fact straight: this is not the Jamiat, there are two factions of the Jamiat. Mr Arshad Madani, was the president. His brother became the president after him and remains the president of one faction of the Jamiat. His son Mr Mehmod Madni, who is the general secretary or an important person in this Jamiat, holds this faction together. Now to say this is the view of the Jamiat, I think it is difficult to accept it.

Karan Thapar: Even more listening to your explanation, there is a reason for your not going. Where the Jamiat itself is split, the Home Minister should not be taking sides with one or the other. Look up at what he has ended up doing.

He has ended up giving prominence to the most conservative, the most insular elements of the Muslim community at the cost of the liberal, the modern, and the forward-thinking. Is that what a secular Home Minister of a democratic country should be doing?

Salman Khurshid: You get this out of your system. Did he endorse anything they said? The answer is no. But he did encourage them on their position, on terrorism and he did say that what you have said on terrorism applies not only to Muslims alone but to everybody in this country. And I think that's a wonderful thing he did.

Karan Thapar: Let's move beyond the Home Minister because in a sense, he is only a reflection of a bigger problem and I and it's the bigger problem I want to come to.