Jayalalitha and her salary
Jaya likes to make political statements by doing innovative things with her (official)salary. Last time around..she spent the five years in office receiving one rupee a month!!!!, or that is what she claims. At the end of it all ..she found herself barely managing stay afloat in a sea of cases - "disproportionate assets" being one of them . See this old article from Frontline . for a list of some of those cases (these days..not many remember everything). Ofcourse, political vendetta was involved in the framing of these charges .. but no sane person would believe that Jaya was above the board. Well.. that is history.
Now, Jaya is back to her ways and this time..her salary goes to the temples for annadhanam.(the practice of giving food free of cost to the needy). See this Hindu report.
Clap people, clap! That is what she wants us to do.
No harm with charity..but why call all reporters to your office and make your way to the newspapers? And I heard that religion needs to be kept away from politics. Why not give something to the many muslim and christian organisations which do a lot of charity work? But I must admit that I found her unexpectedly sane during the last 1/2 years of her stay at the office. She did many things with surprising speed : getting veeranam water for chennai, making rain water harvesting popular in chennai etc. This is not to say that she has changed. The attack on the Hindu office and the recent attempt to cancel the TNPCEE showed her true self. With the elections looming over and the notification time not far away.. we are probably in for more surprises!
11 Comments:
Atleast theoretically she is only using her salary - which would mean that is her personal money. So why should she be expected to give any of that to christian and muslim organizations?
Anyway Haj subsidy is from government money and the government does take money from hindu temples.
May be one can question the decorum of using secretariat space and time for such activities ( which precipitated the newspaper attention ) but there are more serious breaches made in the other direction. Hope you protest against them too.
And as you said Jayalalitha has implemented some very good administrative schemes - cradle baby scheme, bicycles for backward girl students etc. However corrupt she might be she is considered an efficient administrator.
Ya sure.. u can sure have personal choices. My problem is precisely with publicising the whole thing. There is a photograph and the report talks of a "release" for the press. So the motives are pretty obvious. There are people who contribute much more to these organisations in terms of money and time..and their aim is not to get into the papers.
And as reg Jaya's other actions, I never said that this is her *worst*. I will certainly protest against other actions which are un-becoming of a CM.
No, I did not imply that you said this is her worst. I was referring to worse actions by Indian politicians and governments "in the other direction" - i.e., anti-hindu, pro-christian/muslim etc. - like the Hajj subsidy. So I was saying that unlike usual left-liberals you should protest against those too. Hope you don't dispute the fact that politics should be separate from religion - that the governments should even stop identifying people as hindu, christian etc.
In an ideal situation, yes- there should not be any concessions from the govt, given out on the basis of religious identities.(as reg haj..i can't comment as I am not sure of what the govt does in ,say, Anantnag for pilgrims..how much it is subsidised etc..) But in a fundamentally biased society, strict adherence to this isn't possible. An anti-conversion bill,though seeking to achieve a utopian equality, in the hands of a majority-hindu state , it is surely an anti-muslim /anti-christian weapon. That is the problem.
I don't know if and how much there is Anantnag subsidy but in all probability it is along the lines of
this where Varsha Bhosle compares the huge Hajj subsidy with the much lower Kailash-Mansarovar subsidy. Note also that the hindu temples generate much more money than what seems, from the article, to be the government expenses for Kailash-Amarnath.
But you are choosing to protest only on selected issues such as this Jayalalitha one, rather than uniformly for all religious subsidies including Hajj. I will appreciate your stance if you criticise both Hajj and Anantnag subsidies instead of shying away from one citing the other.
And how are you so sure that anti-conversion bill is an anti-muslim/anti-christian weapon? Based on empirical data regarding its misusage or mere speculation?
Also have a look at this
Best regards,
froginthewell
I did not comment as I was not sure of the facts. All religion-based subsidies like Haj,Anantnag etc. must go.
And when there is always a possiblility of people who did this, coming to power, I certainly don't want them running around with a new weapon called the the "anti-conversion" bill. This is more than enough 'empirical evidence'.
Whatever the facts are, my point of view is that one should always oppose all government discriminations based on religion. There is bound to be some injustice, and always some community will be unhappy. Also what about atheists, agnostics, those who consider themselves "1/2 hindu 1/2 muslim" etc.?
Religion is a private affair and the government has no business worrying about it. Something like this would be a welcome step in that direction.
And I never see leftists ever championing such a cause or related ones like uniform civil code. The only motive I can see is that leftists do not want pure secularism : they want the gap between religions to persist, so that they can take political advantage of it. That is why *no party wants true secularism*, because that would disarm them of an important political gadget.
As for anti-conversion bill - I am sorry, I can't accept that kind of a thing as "enough empirical evidence". In all those months when the anti-conversion bill was actually in effect, how many cases of misuse were there? That is the question. And there all the leftists seem to become silent.
My god..to me, Godhra (ofcourse..there are more)alone is more than enough. I can't bear to think of what "Mr. Modi + anti-conversion bill" would do. You can ofcourse.. stick to ur opinion.
In a society where people belonging to all faiths live harmoniously and trust each other.. an uniform civil code would sail through. But we are not in that state..today, Muslims live in fear (thanks to our beloved Togadia & co.) and in this context ,'uniform civil code' will do more harm than good. That is why it hasn't got much political support. Laws are important..agreed.. but in such emotionally sensitive issues, on-the-ground feelings of people are more important. It does not help if you press equality from the top when the majority community is holding the minorities in a grip of fear. This is not "pseudo-secularism".. it is the only sensible way we can proceed after we let the fanatics run riot.
And yes..govt must not poke its nose into religion...and if it stops running temples..great!
You have given absolutely no reason as to why uniform civil code will do more harm than good.
A uniform civil code and governmental noninterference in religious issues can only decrease the number of ways government can distinguish between people. In fact, it is the lack of uniform civil code that has been one of the shots in Togadia's arm to excite people.
As long as this distinction continues, whether we like it or not, political parties will continue to create and widen gap between religions by doling out various specific favours and creating discrepancies - that is how the economics for power operates. Taking away words like "hindu", "christian", "muslim" etc. from the constitution is one of the only hopes for India to achieve communal harmony.
If indeed Jayalalitha had such a motive in the anticonversion bill we would have come across widespread cases of its misuse. Which did not happen. Instead you quote some other incident in a different state altogether.
Bringing in the uniform civil code now would mean 'imposing' it on the Muslims/Christians. They don't want it because there is an air of mis-trust(which is prefectly understandable) .. any change from status-quo is going to be viewed with suspicion (however 'equal' it may sound on paper). Angering and alienating them more is the harm that I am talking about.This is unfortunate. But there is no quick way out of this.. u have to allow for the wounds to heal.. weed out the fanatics and only then hope to have a uniform civil code.
"Imposing it"? Any civil code should, if at all, contain only the very minimal set of regulations that are absolutely essential to maintain law and order and justice.
This is very much different from something like post-Godhra where there was destruction caused to a train containing karsevaks, to which the subsequent riots were a reaction. There is absolutely no reason to expect a similar kind of rioting, as a minimal common civil code is not going to desecrate any religious conviction. Why, the anticonversion bill did not even as much as create a minor skirmish?
There is no way to stop fanaticism other than
(i) improving economic status of everyone, which is not going to happen in the near future.
(ii)constitution derecognizing religion making it impossible for parties to play that kind of politics.
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