On Implications of the Communal Violence Bill..

A few weeks back, at one of my frequent sessions at Chanakya Institute of Public Leadership, I got the chance to share my thoughts on the proposed Communal Violence Bill with participants in the programme. We had a lively discussion against the backdrop of some slides I had prepared. Unfortunately we could not record the session…Below are the slides…Comments, thoughts welcome.

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Related Post: Losing sleep over communal violence and hate propaganda

B Shantanu

Political Activist, Blogger, Advisor to start-ups, Seed investor. One time VC and ex-Diplomat. Failed mushroom farmer; ex Radio Jockey. Currently involved in Reclaiming India - One Step at a Time.

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4 Responses

  1. This is a terrible law. I would suggest this law could be unconstitutional. But, of course, there are so many unconstitutional laws in India.

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  2. Kishan says:

    How can this evil intent be nipped in the bud.Will the liberal voices speak against this as vociferously and with as much passion as they speak about the after-Godhra incidents ? I will be surprised if they do.

  3. B Shantanu says:

    From Congress back with Communal Violence Bill by Sandhya Jain, April 27, 2013, some excerpts

    The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, shelved nearly two years after an unexpected multi-party resistance in Parliament, seems likely to resurface as part of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s desperate bid to sew up minority support in the event of an unexpected election.

    For instance, if five streets of a colony are involved in rioting, the rioters and the victims will be different on each street. Justice involves identifying the culprits and dealing with them as per the extent of their crimes. Yet, under the proposed Bill, separate laws will apply to separate community victims when the cases come to trial, though all crimes are committed as part of the same riot!

    The Bill rests on the faulty and divisive premise that India’s religious and linguistic minorities and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who together constitute a formidable 40 per cent of the population, are a focus of targetted violence at the hands of the remaining 60 per cent which has been clubbed together as the majority community despite its diversity.

    Some apologists of the Bill realised that this is a staggering allegation, and offered the sop that the miniscule Hindu community in Jammu & Kashmir could benefit from its provisions. Perhaps they did not realise that the Bill does not apply to Jammu & Kashmir unless the State Assembly passes an enabling legislation. They also added that Hindus are a religious minority in Punjab, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Andaman-Nicobar, and a linguistic minority in many States – meaning States where the majority Hindu community has a regional mother tongue! Can anything be more perverse?

    There is no reason why the Scheduled Castes and Schedules Tribes have been clubbed with religious minorities under this Bill except to dilute its communal taint. The statute already contains the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Rules, 1995.

  4. B Shantanu says:

    Adding this here for the record: Arun Jaitley on Draft Communal Violence Bill