Activists across the board have criticised the constitution of a one-man judicial commission to probe ghettoization in the state. Mukul Sinha of the Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM) said, “All the commission will achieve is aggravating the situation. This is clearly a political hypocrisy. It is going to start a debate, which ought to have never started. The government should scrap the commission.”
Activist Hanif Lakdawala said, “The reality is that segregation has happened in both the communities. People from both the communities have moved away. We have been witnessing this during the past two decades.”
On the other hand, Father Cedric Prakash of an NGO, Prashant, said in a communiqué that the commission was meant to target minorities. “The very nature and tone of this so-called Commission of Inquiry is bound to target the minorities of the state and add to the already existing fear among these groups. Further, it is bound to speed up polarisation and make the minorities sitting ducks (because of minority mapping) for the hate propaganda and violence by right-wing Hindu groups, who have the patronage of the state government. Minorities in the state continue to be victims of overt and subtle intimidations, harassment and attacks.”
The state government appointed the commission of inquiry to inquire and report into the “polarisation of population on the basis of religion taking place in the state of Gujarat” and “the migration of people following different religions”. According to the state government, this commission is being instituted because of allegations which have been made in the courts as well as in the media against the state, that the population of Gujarat is polarised on the basis of religion.
Activist Teesta Setalvad said that demographic profiling, an exercise that the commission will do, is not going to yield any result. She has said, “At worst it could be to make the pockets profiled by the government a target of subtle state terror. Already, the Gujarat government has attempted to silence the voice among the minority elite by seeking a compromise on the issues of rights and justice. In the past too, Gujarat governments have been known to use religious profiling, including the selective census of Muslims and Christians, as a precursor to violent attacks launched against them.”
Source: DNA
