Jamaat-e-Islami Hind today organized a seminar on "Committees, Commissions and Minorities” in association with the Urdu Edition of the distinguished The Sunday Indian news weekly at India Islamic Culture Centre in New Delhi, with speakers highlighting the sordid history of such committees and commissions particularly those set up with the apparent intension of taking out the truth of events and organized crimes that directly hit the minorities specially Muslims in the country.
Though commissions are set up to dig out as to why and how an incident of great public importance happened and who are responsible for it as the public has right to know about it, governments have used reports of such commissions for political gains. They wait for the most opportune time to public a report or just let it gather dust in office shelves, said Yusuf Muchalla, senior advocate at Bombay High Court. Notwithstanding, such commissions are important as they play crucial role in dimming the chance for a mutated history of an event, he said and gave the example of Bombay riots of 1992-93. The police commissioner's enquiry report had concluded that Muslims were responsible for the riots, and they were spontaneous. But Srikrishna Commission has concluded that police used excessive force against Muslims, Sangh Parivar people were involved in the rioting and looting and Muslims were not responsible for the riots.
Advocate Muchallah called for the community to be vigilant both during the proceedings of a commission and also in its follow-up phases. He stressed on creation of para-legal workers to assist lawyers taking up issues of Muslims across the country. Mujtaba Farooq, secretary, political affairs, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, while talking about the fate of such commissions said: Liberhan Commission took 17 years to complete, yet its report is not going to be implemented as the guilty are either powerful (top leaders of Sangh Parivar) or they are in the government itself (Congress). The guilty of Sikh riots are enjoying power in the government and Srikrishna Commission report is gathering dust, Farooq said adding that generally governments do not want to table reports of such commissions, let alone their implementation.
Eminent Christian leader Dr John Dayal said that if there is an element of justice and political will with the government to take an issue to natural justice, there is no need of any commission or committee. Killers of Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi were sentenced to death. No commission was formed for those incidents. Commissions, he said giving his own experience, are not set up to dig out the truth but to silence the hue and cry.
Dr Dayal calls upon the Muslim community to lead the other minorities as all of them are facing the same bias from the government. "Muslims today are in historic position to do that," he said while asking the organizers as to why there is no Christian, Buddhist, Jain or Sikh in the audience.
Presiding over the seminar, Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umri, Ameer, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, said the purpose is lost when a report of a crime comes so late, for example 17 years in Babri demolition case. This is not at all justice. He demanded amendment in commission of enquiry act to give legal time-frame binding for a commission.
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