Today I am covering a topic , which happened 2 days back, and is quite disturbing.
I do not understand that how our politician can go to such a low level for votes. Two days back congress govt in Karnataka move on grant of religious minority status for Lingayat-Veerashiva community. This motion was passed in assembly and being sent to Centre for approval. The move is expected to have huge impact on the next assembly elections. It may make or mar the prospect of ruling Congress. This community makes up about 17% of state’s population, BJP had opposed this move citing that it would split society further. Generally Lingayats back BJP, and this move by Congress is seen as to split the BJP votes.
The Political experts say that similar move was made by both Karnataka and Maharashtra govts in 2013, but Congress led UPA govt at centre, that time, had rejected this move. Again the same demand and that too before state election raises the doubts in the electorate’s mind that Congress is still not ready to leave caste and religion base politics, and they call themselves secular party. Secular Party- Ha Ha Ha.
In 2013, Registrar General of India(RGI) has said that Lingayat-Veerashiva is a sect of Hindu, so therefore no separate code/column can be assigned for persons with their religion as Lingayat-Veerashiva. The RGI had further stated that if Lingayat- Veerashiva is treated as separate religion, then all Schedule Caste(SC) people from Lingayat-Veerashiva will lose their Constitutional status of SC, since as per constitution SC can only be from Hindus, Sikhs and Budhists. Therefore in Nov 2013, the then Manmohan Singh (UPA 2) govt had decided that giving separate religion tag will split the society further and affect SC’s from Lingayat -Veerashiva.
The Akhil Bhararta Veeradshiva Mahasabha has opposed the Karnataka’s cabinet decision, to recommend to centre for granting religious minority tag to the dominant Linayat and Veershiva community. The Mahasabha has called a meeting of their members on 23rd Mar. One dissenting group wants the separate religion status only for Lingayats as they believe that Veerashivas are one among the seven sects of Shiva, which is part of Hinduism.
The main problem for the BJP is, that their Chief Ministerial candidate for next Karnataka state election Yeddyurappa is also a Lingayat, who is also state’s BJP Chief. He stated that his party would make its stand clear. based on Mahasabha’s decision.
So Congress has sown a seed of caste/religion politics once again. Earlier during Gujarat Elections they backed separatist leaders like Hardik Patel, who was fighting for reservations for Patel community, knowing that state reservation quota has reached its limit and even if they come to power they can not grant the reservations to Patels, but they went ahead and started promising in their campaign. But Congress will keep on playing the caste/religion card for all the elections all over again. Do their CM Siddaramaiah ever talks of development of state, because if he starts talking of development projects, then for each project there will be many cases of corruption, hence he keeps quite on this issue.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court, while speaking on the case related to SC/ST Atrocities act made a observation, It said ” Holding that caste poses a serious threat to unity and integrity of the country, steps should be taken to achieve the constitutional goal of a caste less society and prevent misuse of law resulting in spreading hatred on caste lines.” And here one of the main national political party still wants to recommend separate & special religion tag to be given to a particular community in a state. Tomorrow so many other communities from different states will start demanding similar status, then what is central govt going to do.
What a pitiable situation , when a party whose leaders fought for the independence of our country, can not come out of divisive politics, first they agreed to divide the country on religion basis, and after the independence they are propagating the same divisive politics on the caste and religion basis. On the contrary being the oldest political party in the country they should have shown the way to achieve goal of caste less society as demanded by our constitution, but instead their performance is quite the contrary.
Waiting for your views/comments/feed backs.
R. N. Mungale.
All political parties are playing caste based politics. I think is really a sad state of affairs. I hope centre rejects the recommendation of state government.