The Nation: Minorities Commission: At Daggers Drawn

An activist NCM takes on the Vajpayee regime over Gujarat and seeks a wider role for itself on minority issues.

Chaman ke bulbulon mein hamara bhi shumar hai
Hamari baat bhi suno hamein watan se pyar hai.
We too are nightingales of this garden
Listen to us too, we love our motherland.
--Tahir Mahmood, chairman, NCM

Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Tahir Mahmood have one attribute in common: both are part-time poets. These days, it is the differences that seem more apparent. A largely undetected cold war is taking place between the BJP-led Government of which Vajpayee is prime minister and the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) of which Mahmood is chairman.

Trouble Ahead: By ignoring NCM reports Vajpayee and Advani are only buying time

On February 1, Mahmood upped the ante by presenting the President the NCM's third report -- "and we hope the last one" -- on the religious violence in Gujarat. At the meeting, says Mahmood, "I conveyed to the President that I consider Gujarat the breeding point of all that is happening elsewhere in the country." The decision to go to Rashtrapati Bhavan, symbolic as it was, may have been prompted by Mahmood's perception that the Vajpayee Government is ignoring the NCM's findings, particularly with regard to Gujarat.

After all it was only on January 11 that the NCM had submitted its second report on the state to the Prime Minister's Office and the Home Ministry. "But on January 12," says an incredulous Mahmood, "the prime minister said in Lucknow that he had not seen the report." So the NCM chief went to Home Minister L.K. Advani with another copy. When it came to the final report, he took no chances: sending copies to the prime minister, home minister and, finally, delivering it in person to the first citizen.

That Gujarat is a persisting problem is not surprising. Mahmood divides his term, which began on November 26, 1996, into two. In the first 12-15 months, "I was dealing with cases of religion-based discrimination." In the past year, however, "in more than 90 per cent of the cases there have been complaints of religion-based physical violence". To Mahmood then Gujarat, March 1998, marks a trenchant divide. That was also the month Vajpayee was sworn in.

The NCM sent its first team to Gujarat only in August 1998. Led by panel members Reverend James Massey and Marazban J.A. Patrawala -- who was the Samajwadi Party candidate for South Mumbai in the 1996 election -- the inquiry group included three invitees: lawyer Y.M. Muchhala and journalists Javed Anand (editor, Communalism Combat) and John Dayal (editor, Delhi Mid-Day and general secretary, All-India Catholic Union). Anand dropped out at the last minute. On September 18, the first report was submitted to the state government, with a copy to the Centre.

Did the report -- or any of the subsequent ones -- specifically blame the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (vhp) and Bajrang Dal for the violence?

Mahmood takes a minute to compose his reply: "My first report in September was based on many sources. The major source was our own fact-finding team. Then there were the reports of some independent watchers. Then the media reports and my impartial analysis, with legal and constitutional spectacles, of the media reports. While submitting the report, I told the Gujarat Government that as a gesture of goodwill ... 'I am not reproducing in my report what has been said about certain individuals and organisations in the sources on which I am basing my report'."

Mahmood pauses. He half-smiles: "The problem in Gujarat is based on a central theme: alleged conversions. Now who is making those allegations? Are these things to be spelt out? I have been throwing hints ... Akalmandon ke liye ishaara kafi hai."

Acting Tough: Chairman Mahmood feels he has finally made the NCM effective

"It appears that the control of the entire country, particularly Gujarat, has been mortgaged to the ... VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the RSS."
--NCM member James Massey, December 1, 1998

"Persuasion by district authorities for not recording rape has been reported ... The local police has also been charged with spreading all sorts of baseless information ... The team expresses complete satisfaction on action taken by the state government."
--NCM report on Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, September 1998

"The peace committee was heavily loaded with members of one community ... The behaviour of the dc/dm smacks of bigotry and bias."
--NCM report on Ludhiana, Punjab, December 1997

"Almost the entire senior district staff is non-tribal. Many of the non-tribal members of the administration have open or latent sympathy for the BJP."
--NCM report on Dumka, Bihar, September 1997

A circumspect man you would think. The Gujarat Government feels differently. On December 1, Massey wrote to Advani and Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel complaining about more attacks on Christians. Massey's tone was sharp: "To an impartial observer it appears that the control of the entire country, particularly the state of Gujarat, has been mortgaged to the activities of the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the RSS."

Three weeks later there was fresh trouble in Dangs. On December 28, it was Mahmood's turn to reprimand Patel: "I write this letter to you in utter disgust. I expect an early reply from you personally and not from any of the state government officers." Patel decided not to send a personal reply. Hostilities resumed on January 7, when the NCM sent a two-member bench to Gujarat.

As per NCM rules -- which, incidentally, Mahmood framed soon after he took office -- the chairman is allowed to constitute benches comprising two or more members whenever he deems fit. As Mahmood emphasises, "I sent a bench to Ahmedabad, the first time a bench has travelled from Delhi, because the work was of a judicial nature. I wanted officers of the Gujarat Government to depose before the commission."

The NCM bench submitted its report on January 11, sending a copy, it says, to the state Government. The Gujarat administration, however, claims it got the report only on January 25, that too courtesy a Delhi newspaper. The report sought the imposition of Article 355 -- whereby the Centre monitors the constitutionality of the state's governance. A livid Patel charged the NCM with being "biased and ill-mannered". Mahmood's retort was biting: "I never comment on such slanderous outbursts."

Post-Gujarat, fireworks can be expected on two NCM reports that are currently being vetted by the chairman. The first deals with religious skirmishes in Karnataka and the second has been submitted by the "fact-finding-cum-goodwill mission" sent to Orissa after the horrific murder of social worker Graham Staines and his sons.

Actually, Mahmood is no stranger to controversy. In 1986, the professor of law drafted the Muslim Women's Bill which negated the Supreme Court's granting of alimony in the Shah Bano case. Even so, he began his three-year term -- "I'm on my way out, another 10 months" -- fairly quietly. The original Minorities Commission had been formed in 1978 with Minoo Masani as its first chairman. It was, to quote Mahmood, "a subordinate body attached to the home and then the welfare ministry (now renamed the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment)".

In 1992, Parliament made it a statutory body. Yet the initial revamped NCM (1993-96) was a "fully bureaucratised" affair. Says Mahmood: "The first thing I did was to free the NCM from official control. This commission is not meant to represent the government to the minorities, it is meant to represent the minorities to the government."

Many of Mahmood's early cases were innocuous. Muslim officers of the air force complained they were not allowed to grow beards while Sikhs were. The NCM ruled that growing beards was a religious right for Muslims and the military brass complied. Two Muslim MLAs in Uttar Pradesh were not being allowed to take their oath in Urdu. The NCM "had to intercede with Mayawati". Making a fetish of political correctness, in December 1997 Mahmood demanded that the Election Commission ban expressions like "vote bank" and "appeasement". He saw them as a "grave violation of the dignity and human rights of the minorities".

By now Mahmood's zeal was becoming evident. In September 1997, he sent a team to Dumka (Bihar), where a Jesuit school vice-principal accused of sodomising a pupil had been stripped by a Santhal throng. In December the same year, a team was sent to Ludhiana where rationalist as well as Hindu groups had protested against a meeting of Christian faith healers and violence had ensued. In September 1998, a team was sent to Jhabua in the aftermath of the rape of nuns.

To Mahmood's critics, the teams' reports are far from perfect. The Dumka report, for instance, seems to underplay the charges against the priest: "He accused the hostel superintendent of fondling his genitals ... the boy did not mention sodomy"; the priest is lauded as a "strict disciplinarian". All three reports (see box) assail the local administration and seek wholesale transfers. A senior Bihar cadre IAS officer calls the Dumka report "simplistic" and says the NCM members "have no idea how difficult it is to control mob situations".

On his part, Mahmood continues undeterred. For the purposes of the NCM Act, the Government sees Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis as minorities. Mahmood wants the NCM's ambit to extend to Hindus in Christian-majority Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland, Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep and Sikh-majority Punjab. He suggested as much to the Centre five months ago.

With the Government not reacting, Mahmood has decided to act on his own and recognise Hindus as a minority group in five states and one Union Territory. Wonder how the BJP will live that down.