The Constitution of India, the foundation upon which we have built our
nation, its legal system, its democracy and its way of functioning.
We all seem to have forgotten or seem to be ignoring our constitution, the building blocks of our nation, in all the noise and political drama created recently by ambitious political parties like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and its leader and promoter Raj Thakeray,
It is but obvious to everyone literate and intelligent in our country that Raj Thakeray and his MNS party's agenda has nothing to do with the benefit or protection of the people of maharashtra and has everything to do with achieving his own political agenda by creating issues out of nothing, gaining media exposure, establishing his party in the public memory and making a lot of money.
Let's see if the supposed, self-proclaimed protectors of Maharashtra and its pride have any clue about the constitution of the country they lives in and are they acting in accordance to it.
To start with, the first paragraph of The Constitution of India -
| We, The people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN, SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; |
Now some excerpt from the Constitution of India -
| (Part III.—Fundamental Rights.—Arts. 15. (1) The State shall not discriminate against any |
Does that also mean that the state will not allow any citizen, or any political party to discriminate against any other citizen of India on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them. If an individual or a group of individual willfully do this, does the state has any
right to intervene and prevent this from happening ?
| Part III, Definition 12 In this Part, unless the context otherwise requires, “the State’’ |
The state in simple terms means our state government, our police, our legal system, what are they doing to prevent Raj Thackeray and MNS workers from openly flouting the 1st clause of Fundamental Rights of the citizens of India.
Raj Thackery and other members of the MNS have damaged public property (PVR cinemas, september 11), damaged other citizen's property (Roopam showroom, september 9), threatened other citizens of mumbai (Mrs. Jaya Bachchan) because of discriminations based on grounds of religion, race, caste, place of birth. This is against our constitution, a punishable offence and totally illegal, so what do we expect from THE STATE ?
| (Part III.—Fundamental 16. (1) There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State. (2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them, be ineligible for, or discriminated against in respect of, any employment or office under the State. |
Does this fundamental right also apply to private sector employers who are running businesses which are public utility establishments, like shopping malls, movie theatres, educational institutes, financial institutes, manufacturing units, public utilities like power plants, hydro projects etc.
Raj Thackeray and members of the MNS are openly pressurizing and threatening the private sector employers of these sectors to employ Maharashtrians not because of their qualifications and abilities for these jobs but purely on the grounds of religion, race, caste, and place of birth.
Is this legal and acceptable to force Indian employers to give employment based on caste or place of birth against their will, according to India's constitution ?
| (Part III.—Fundamental Rights.—Arts. Right to Freedom 19. (1) All citizens shall have the right— (a) to freedom of speech and expression; (b) to assemble peaceably and without arms; (c) to form associations or unions; (d) to move freely throughout the territory of India; (e) to reside and settle in any part of the (g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any |
Raj Thackeray and members of the MNS have been personally attacking and threatening Mr. Amitabh Bachchan since many months for the fact that he is an Indian who was born in another state of India and chose to come and settle down in Mumbai. The constitution of India seems to agree with this fundamental right (e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India) of Mr. Bachchan for settling and practicing his profession in Mumbai, since
Mumbai is a part of India, but Raj Thackeray and his MNS party has been expressing their opinion publicly that regardless of what the Constitution of India states, they have decided that living in this part of India is not a fundamental right of the Indian citizen Mr. Bachchan, but is supposed to be a special favour granted to them by the people of maharashtra in exchange of which they are supposed to behave, act and present themselves as decided by Raj Thackeray and the MNS, including what they should say in public, what they should not say, what language they should use and how they should exercise their fundamental right of the freedom of speech and expression which the Republic of India has conferred upon them. Failure to comply with this dictate of the MNS is accompanied by threatening of imposing a ban on the films of Mr. Bachchan, which directly means that his right to practice his profession successfully in India will be taken away from him, and damaging public and private property, which are the theaters where his films are playing, also endangering a public lives in this violent process.
Has the constitution of India or our legal system given any rights to the MNS or any such political party to try to run a parallel government in any part of India since they are enforcing bans, enforcing code of conduct and deciding what the Indian citizens can see and what they cannot in the form of entertainment ? If they have not then this is a gross violation of constitution of India and its laws and is obviously illegal.
Now lets look at some fundamental duties of Indian citizens that the constitution of India expects of them in return for the democratic freedom they enjoy and their fundamental rights they exercise.
| (Part VI.A—Fundamental Duties.) FUNDAMENTAL DUTIES 51A. It shall be the duty of every citizen of India— (a) to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem; (b) to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom; (c) to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India; (d) to defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so; (e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women; (f) to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture; (g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures; (h) to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform; (i) to safeguard public property and to abjure violence; (j) to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement; |
The sovereignty, unity and integrity of India directly depends on all the citizens of India assuming a common national identity and an understanding that they are Indians, not maharashtrians, gujratis, north indians, south indians, tamilians, etc. etc.
By propagating and spreading the concept of thinking and acting in terms of 'maharashtrians'
and 'non-maharashtrians' among the members of the MNS party and their followers in the illiterate and gullible masses of Mumbai, Raj Thackeray and his party MNS are actively and
intentionally defying their constitutional duty to to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.
They are also doing everything they can to destroy and disturb the harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities. Not to mention insulting and degrading a respectable lady citizen artist (Mrs. Jaya Bachchan) for choosing to speak in the national language of India, Hindi. Raj Thackeray has publicly insulted her by saying things like "Guddi Buddhi jhaali pan tyaala akkal aali nahi" (Guddi has grown old but has not got brains)
which is quite obviously a derogatory way to speak about a lady and "now she will come to know who Raj Thackeray is" which is quite obviously a threat. They are blatantly refusing to honor their constitutional duty, which is to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women.
The MNS party's public rioting, using violence by damaging public and private property, burning effigies, assembling in public with an intention to threaten, cause harm and disrupt public life of the citizens of India is in direct contradiction of our constitutional duty to safeguard public property and to abjure violence.
| PART XVII OFFICIAL LANGUAGE CHAPTER I.—LANGUAGE OF THE UNION 343. (1) The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. |
If the official language of the union of India is Hindi, it should not be a problem if any Indian citizen chooses to use it in their day to day life and business? While the official language for state government work is marathi, as it should be, It is the fundamental right of every citizen of India
to -
1. Choose to display his business establishment's signboard in Hindi, or any language understood by the visitors of his establishment, which might not be marathi.
2. Choose the national language Hindi as his language of choice for educating his children in any school in india, not be forced to make them learn marathi (or any regional language for that matter). Everyone knows the importance of learning a regional language, but the MNS party has been trying to enforce a certain curriculum on the schools in Mumbai by unlawful means to
include marathis as a compulsory language. This is against the constitution of India and the democratic rights she has chosen to give its citizens. This is a specially frivolous and un-necessary issue of conflict in a state where everyone understands and can communicate in the national language, Hindi. Comparison to other south indian states is a useless argument of this case because every south indian state, every citizen of those states have within their democratic and constitutional rights to CHOOSE and decide the language they learn, communicate in, use in their daily lives. the people of South India have chosen to adopt
their regional language and english for this purpose, not because someone forced them to, but simply because they understand these languages better and its easier for them to communicate in them. The fact that the constitution of India does not even proposes forcing them to learn the national language, Hindi, is testimony to the extent to which our constitution extends the freedom of choice in choosing one's preferred Indian language.
Enforcing marathi on the people of Mumbai,
Forcible inclusion of marathi in all curriculums, including CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) and ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education), which are both national education boards of India and
Enforcement of marathi signboards on commercial establishments
is downright un-constitutional and illegal.
Like Indian citizens all over the country, people of Mumbai have a fundamental right to choose Hindi, english, marathi or any other language they are proficient in to adopt in their daily lives, including their children's education, their shop's signboards and their choice of language to speak at public functions.
Nowhere in our constitution or our laws is stated that any individual or group of individuals have a right to enforce the learning, use and expression of any language upon other citizens of India.
In which case, what Raj Thackeray and the MNS is publicly doing is illegal and against national interest.
We are first and foremost Indians, than maharashtrians, or non-maharashtrians, or UPites, or biharis, or tamilians etc. And to every citizen of India, national interest and integration should come much before the interest of the people of the state they live in.
Lets take a look at the latest incident that happened that sparked off the political circus of Raj Thackeray and his MNS party.
Mrs. Jaya Bachchan started to speak at a public function where just before her 2 other speakers had given their speeches in English.
She made a humorous remark at them for speaking in English by saying that "hum UP waale hain, hame Hindi me bolna chahiye." meaning we are from UP, we should speak in hindi (not in english).
She did not say "we should not speak in marathi",
she did not say "we are not mumbai-ites, we should speak in hindi,"
she did not say "we are not from maharashtra, we should speak in hindi",
in fact she did not even utter the words 'marathi', 'maharashtra', or made any reference to marathi speaking people or maharashtrians, nor did she hint at any 'anti-maharashtrian' word or sentiment. How this managed to hurt the pride and sentiments of marathi speaking people is a question everyone is asking themselves.
It could also have hurt the sentiments of the gujratis, the tamilians, the punjabis, the rajasthanis in mumbai because she said we should speak in hindi and chose not to speak in any of these state's languages. Many of the people present in that audience were surely from these states. But it only hurt the sentiments of marathi speaking people, and amazingly no marathi speaking
person in maharshatra except Raj Thackeray and members of his MNS party seemed to notice that the pride of maharashtra has been compromised because of what this lady said and now the maharashtrian dignity needs to be protected from all non-maharashtrians because of her casual remarks which were aimed at the 2 english speaking speakers.
Surely a very weak and in-adequate premise to launch a political attack and make an issue but politicians have never been known to have reason and logic, especially desperate, attention hungry, wanna-be politicians and self-proclaimed guardians of some fictitious public sentiments like Raj Thackeray whose only claim to fame is being from an illustrious family and finding himself in a commercial and financial capital of the country, which he and his equally desperate followers have very clear intentions of exploiting regardless of the 'interest of the maharashtrian
people'.
She merely said we should be speaking in hindi (which is our national language) and not in english, like the 2 previous speakers had done.
She shouldn't have said "hum UP waale hain . . ."
But think about this . . . even if she had said "hum mumbai waale hain, hame hindi me bolna chahiye", Raj Thackeray and his MNS chimpswould have still have jumped up and down, even sooner and louder saying the marathi sentiments have been hurt.
If the audience at the function was ok with hearing speeches in english and that did not hurt the maharashtrian pride, surely hearing a speech in our national language should not hurt their sentiments to the extent that it warrants this public drama by Raj Thackeray and their warnings of a ban on films and damaging of public property.
If Raj Thackeray and the party created and led by him MNS have been committing these acts and expressing their political agenda which is clearly against our constitution, the national interest and which are consequently illegal, and still the central government, the state government, our police force and our law and order system are not actively making efforts of stopping them and prosecuting them, I am sorry to say they too are abetting a crime and a criminal and are equally responsible for the sorry situation Mumbai finds itself in
today.
Mumbai being the cash cow of the whole nation, its obvious that these rogue political parties have an interest in creating trouble here for creating their identity, and eventually getting their share of the pie by any means, but we must all remember one thing, Mumbai, like any other city
is a part of the Republic of India and must be governed as such. This kind of jungle raj will only render our already shaky democracy even more weak.
And we all know at this point of time in this global scenario, we cannot afford this.
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