Former Civil Servants Slam Modi's 'Belated Promises' on Kathua, Unnao Rape Cases
Holding him
responsible for the “terrifying state of affairs”, 49 retired civil servants,
in an open letter, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reach out to the
families of the Kathua and Unnao rape victims to “seek their forgiveness”. “We have had enough of
these belated remonstrations and promises to bring justice when the communal
cauldron is forever kept boiling by forces nested within the Sangh parivar,”
they added. The Wire is reproducing here full text of the open
letter below.
We are a group of
retired civil servants who came together last year to express our concern at
the decline in the secular, democratic, and liberal values enshrined in our
constitution. We did so to join other voices of protest against the frightening climate of hate, fear
and viciousness that the ruling establishment had insidiously induced. We spoke
then as we do now: as citizens who have no affiliations with any political
party nor adherence to any political ideology other than the values enshrined
in our Constitution.
We had hoped that as
someone sworn to upholding the Constitution, the government that you head and
the party to which you belong would wake up to this alarming decline, take the
lead in stemming the rot and reassure everyone, especially the minorities and
vulnerable sections of society, that they need not fear for their life and
liberty. This hope has been destroyed.
Instead, the
unspeakable horror of the Kathua and the Unnao incidents shows that the
government has failed in performing the most basic of the responsibilities
given to it by the people. We, in turn, have failed as a nation which took
pride in its ethical, spiritual and cultural heritage and as a society which
treasured its civilisational values of tolerance, compassion and fellow
feeling. By giving sustenance to the brutality of one human being against
another in the name of Hindus we have failed as human beings.
The bestiality and the
barbarity involved in the rape and murder of an eight year old child shows the
depths of depravity that we have sunk into. In post-independence India, this is
our darkest hour and we find the response of our government, the leaders of our
political parties inadequate and feeble. At this juncture, we see no light at
the end of the tunnel and we hang our heads in shame. Our sense of shame is all
the more acute because our younger colleagues who are still in service,
especially those working in the districts and are required by law to care for
and protect the weak and the vulnerable, also seem to have failed in their
duty.
Prime Minister, we
write to you not just to express our collective sense of shame and not just to
give voice to our anguish or lament and mourn the death of our civilisational
values – but to express our rage. Rage over the agenda of division and hate
your party and its innumerable, often untraceable offshoots that spring up from
time to time, have insidiously introduced into the grammar of our politics, our
social and cultural life and even our daily discourse. It is that which
provides the social sanction and legitimacy for the incidents in Kathua and
Unnao.. read more:
https://thewire.in/politics/narendra-modi-open-letter-kathua-unnao