The Broken Pact
Minority legislators rue the erosion of the Constitution under the Modi government
“I’m a proud Muslim of India,” Mohammed Jawed said, as he began his speech in parliament during a recent discussion on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Constitution’s adoption. Jawed represents Kishanganj, a Muslim-majority constituency of the Lok Sabha and one of its most economically backward ones. Muslims, Jawed added, “are being discriminated, our people are being publicly abused, we are being lynched. Our elders are being pulled by their beards, we are being kicked with boots while offering namaz, our lands are being stolen … This is today’s India that we protest against.”
In his six-minute speech, Jawed also tabled figures showing the thin representation of Muslims across government departments. He listed various ways in which Muslims have been subjected to social, economic and political alienation under the Narendra Modi government. Many such incidents are on record and were first mentioned in parliamentary discussions on rising intolerance and lynchings during Modi’s first term as prime minister. Yet, the BJP MP Dilip Saikia, who was presiding over the discussion at that moment, asked Jawed to authenticate his claim of Muslims being kicked. Then, even as Jawed continued to speak, Saikia ordered that “unparliamentary words” from Jawed’s speech be expunged from the record.
At the anniversary discussion, Jawed was among at least a dozen parliamentary legislators representing religious and linguistic minorities, Dalits, Adivasis and Backward Classes who made emotionally stirring appeals for constitutional protection against the Modi government’s illegal actions over the last decade. Many of them faced reprimands from the presiding officers for being unparliamentary in their speeches, yet they persevered in putting out their constituents’ grievances and highlighting the distance between Modi’s actions and his slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”—Support from all, and development for all.
Modi’s own speech on the occasion offered nothing to assuage the legislators’ anxieties and fears. He focussed on the misdeeds of past Congress-led governments. He recalled the imposition of Emergency by the Indira Gandhi government in 1975. He also accused Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, of amending the Constitution for personal gains.