108 ex-bureaucrats write to PM Modi: Your silence is deafening

108 ex-bureaucrats write to PM Modi

Ex-bureaucrats call for end to ‘politics of hate’

108 former bureaucrats have signed an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and calling for an end to the “politics of hate” that they said was being practiced by BJP-led governments. The signatories said that hate violence against minorities – particularly Muslims – had escalated and acquired a ‘frightening new dimension,’ in states such as Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The Prime Minister’s silence, they added, was deafening in light of the current situation.

“We appeal to your conscience, taking heart from your promise of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas‘. It is our fond hope that in this year of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, rising above partisan considerations, you will call for an end to the politics of hate that governments under your party’s control are so assiduously practising,” they said in that open letter.

The 108 signatories included Former Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, ex-Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh, former Home Secretary GK Pillai and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Principal Secretary TKA Nair.

The former bureaucrats said that while they did not normally speak out in “such extreme terms” they had now been persuaded otherwise by the “relentless pace at which the constitutional edifice created by our founding fathers is being destroyed”. The sacrificial altar of the recent “frenzy of hate-filled destruction”, they opined was not just members of minority communities but also the Constitution itself.

Earlier this April month, a slew of communally charged clashes had broken out in various parts of the country amid Hanuman Jayanti and Ram Navami celebrations, triggering a political slugfest. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court expressed its dissatisfaction with the Uttarakhand government for allowing a Dharm Sansad event to take place despite prior notice and asked the state’s Chief Secretary to ensure that “no hate speeches are made” at the upcoming event to be held in Roorkee on 27th April, 2022.

“It is our fond hope that in this year of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, rising above partisan considerations, you will call for an end to the politics of hate that governments under your party’s control are so assiduously practising,” said the letter.

27-04-2022

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