Mr. Arif Mohammad Khan has made history. He has demonstrated that some Congressmen still possess a conscience which stirs on certain issues; since the early sixties it is difficult to recall the last occasion when a Congress minister resigned on an issue of principle. Mr. Khan’s action is historic on two other counts. First, he is a Muslim, and let us face it, Muslim ministers must feel even more helpless than Hindu ministers in standing up to the Prime Minister. Secondly, he has resigned in protest against a bill which on any reckoning enjoys significant, if not majority, support in the Muslim community. There can be no question that the Muslim women (protection of rights on divorce) bill is a wholly retrograde piece of legislation and that its introduction in the Lok Sabha represents a violation of the assurance the Prime Minister had given; he has not held the wide consultations he had promised and he has blatantly disregarded the opinion of educated Muslims. But the fact of support for it in the Muslim community cannot be denied. It is doubtless true that obscurantist mullahs and communalist Muslim leaders and organisations have used the supreme court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case to whip up emotions and put pressure on the government to exclude the Muslims from the purview of section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. But emotions have been stirred. So in the act of resigning on this issue Mr. Khan has also taken up a battle against entrenched conservatism among the Muslims. All in all he has shown a kind of courage which has become rare in the Congress party, indeed the country.
We have more than once expressed the view that change to bring the Muslims forward, though highly desirable in the interest of national integration, cannot be forced on them. But if there is a case for the government’s neutrality on the issue of a common civil code for all Indians which would do away with the Muslim personal law, there can be none for the government’s intervention in favour of retrogressive elements in the community. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has chosen to make precisely such an intervention. It is not possible for us to identify those in his entourage who have advised him and persuaded him to make such a humiliating surrender to the Muslim League and other forces of reaction. Perhaps not much persuasion was required; perhaps he was desperately keen to win back the Muslim vote which was supposed to have been alienated partly as a result of the Shah Bano affair. But whatever the factors at work behind the closed doors of the South Block, it is shocking beyond words that the Prime Minister, who had made “march into the 21st century” his battle-cry, should have endorsed a march into the seventh century for one-eighth of the Indian people. The measure must be scrapped.
Mr. Arif Mohammad Khan has not spelt out the reasons for his resignation. We know the main reason; we do not know the details. But as a Congressman he must find the acknowledgement by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi of the Muslim League as the spokesman of the Muslim community galling. This recognition is implicit in the government’s decision to prepare the controversial legislation at the urging of the League and its desperate anxiety to introduce it. This must worry every Muslim in the Congress and in every other secular political party. Indeed, it must worry every nationalist Indian. The Muslim League is a fact and it certainly enjoys influence among the Muslims, especially in Kerala. But no Prime Minister has ever accepted or can ever accept it or any other communal organisation as a spokesman of the community in question. Our parliamentary democracy is based on joint electorate; the founding fathers deliberately rejected separate electorates which has led to partition in 1947 and would surely have produced another disaster in independent India. This means that a legislator represents the whole constituency and not a section of it. The concept of sovereignty of Parliament cannot rest on any other basis. If Mr. Gandhi and his hand-picked aides are too young to have known the trauma of partition and tohave drawn the necessary lesson, there are in the Congress party old enough men to have done so. Mr. Khan has given them an opportunity to speak up; he has obliged the leadership to convene a meeting of the parliamentary party on Friday. They should use it to demand that a measure wholly offensive to the party’s nationalist tradition be scrapped. The expedient of a reference to a select committee of both houses of Parliament can provide the necessary face-saver.