Saturday, July 18, 2009

 

 

India's Sikh Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's private deal with France's Jewish President Sarkozy

 

According to a PTI/IANS report published on page 16 of The Times of India, Mumbai:

 

 

Sarkozy assures PM no ban on Sikh turbans

IANS 16 July 2009, 09:40pm IST

 

SHARM-EL-SHEIKH (Egypt): French President Nicolas Sarkozy has assured Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that there is no ban on Sikhs wearing 

turbans in his country. 

Sarkozy's assurance came after Manmohan Singh handed over to him a 'non-official' memo two days ago in Paris, official sources said here on Thursday. 

France is considering a bill to ban wearing of any religious symbols in the state schools. 

The country's 6,000-strong Sikh community in France has been up in arms against the proposed legislation, saying that the turban is not a religious symbol but an integral part of their life.

 

It should be welcome news for our Sikh brothers and sisters, as French President has gone on a rampage, picking up on minorities' rights to enjoy full constitutional freedom that French constitution awards them. However, the private intervention of a Sikh Prime Minister of a secular state, cutting a deal for his own religious community, is a serious matter, as there is another religious community, the 120 million Muslims who have been subjected to virulent attack by the Jewish French President Sarkozy, over Muslim religious/cultural practices and they could hold the Prime Minister as practicing religious discrimination against their practice of burqa over which Sarkozy had started a campaign with a view to ban it. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot forget that it is the long lines of burqa clad Muslim women that voted for Congress, that got the clinching marginal votes to shoo Congress in and let Manmohan Singh become the prime minister for a second term. One would have thought that the Prime Minister would have represented the wider concerns of his people across the board, over the Jewish President's marked propensity to further his racist and communal agenda, starting from his own country. In as much as, the people of India have yet to figure out what Prime Minister has ended up giving direct and indirect quid pro quo, for his private deals with the French President. A long list of recent defense and energy understanding between India and France are in the pipe-line. Is it too much to ask of our Prime Minister to ask publicly or through a non-paper memorandum, to refrain from disturbing the peace and tranquility of the world, by giving in to fascist elements in his country as any action by Western powers in matters of religious or ideological differences, does have great danger of reverberating across the world and creating mini-tsunamis, in multi-cultural nations, who are pressed hard to maintain communal peace and harmony in their respective countries. While India is being lectured for acting up as a 'emerging great power', what about some accountability on the existing 'western great powers', who completely ignore that they too have responsibilities towards the rest of the world.

 

Meanwhile, PM's private deal should be debated in Indian Parliament, to put the whole private exercise in public arena.

 

 

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com