 "Arun Jaitley")
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday launched a sharp attack on the Congress party in his speech in the Rajya Sabha. Speaking on the second day of the winter session in Parliament, Jaitley recalled the Emergency period of 1975. One of the biggest challenges the country ever faced was suspension of Article 21 — dictatorship at its worst — he said.
“Today, if someone comes on TV and gives an irresponsible statement, it is called intolerance. Earlier, people’s life was being taken away illegally — of course there’s no comparison, it’s like comparing a mountain to a molehill,” Jaitley said, comparing the India on today with the India of Indira (the then prime minister Indira Gandhi) four decades ago.
He asked the Upper House: “After 65 years (since the India Constitution was adopted), are we ready to say the Constitution is fully complied with… We still have personal laws across religions which violate fundamental rights.” He said: “How would the House have reacted if Dr Ambedkar had proposed Article 44 (on uniform civil code) and 48 (on cow slaughter).”
He said: “Article 15 gave special rights to SC, ST and the socially-educationally backward; we respect those rights. And Article 29 and 30 give special rights to minorities... but what about the SC, ST who convert to other religions? They enjoy the provisions of both articles...” This led to some uproar in the House.
“Nobody in this country should ever be seen as soft on terrorism,” Jaitley said, calling terrorism the biggest challenge the country was now facing. In an apparent reference to Mumbai blast accused Yakub Memon, who was recently executed, the minister spoke of some protestors who called “somebody who virtually massacred Bombay” a martyr.
“Dangers to the constitutional order can come when constitutional systems are used to subvert them,” he said, citing Adolf Hitler’s Germany an example. He took digs at the Congress by subtly comparing the Germany of 1933, and its methods to facilitate dictatorship, with the Emergency of 1975. “You don’t have to bring a dictatorship; there are illustrations in history, the most glaring example of it in the last century was in Germany in 1933.”
The minister said Hitler’s advisor always ended his speech with the sentence “Adolf Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolf Hitler”, a thinly veiled comparison with a statement in the past on Indira Gandhi, who imposed the Emergency in India — “Indira is India, and India is Indira”.
