New Delhi: Former Union Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday expressed serious concern over the "deep polarisation" that is prevalent in the country now and the way debate has come to be framed on communal and other lines.
There were only three occasions when India was deeply polarised -- 1947 partition, 1992 after Babri Masjid demolition and 2015, one of the most polarised years, he said.
"2014 was a year of acrimony and I thought 2015 will be a year of acronyms but at the end of 2015 it is a most polarised year. Today the year has turned out to be deeply polarised. How polarised the Indian society has become. "Please talk to a Muslim, dalit, or a man of small land holding. There is great insecurity and fear as to where we are heading, towards a deeply divided polarised society. This is what we want we you to think about," he said at a function here.
Chidambaram was speaking after the release of his book "Standing Guard--A year in Opposition", a compilation of his Sunday columns published in the Indian Express in 2015. The function was attended among others by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, former Ministers Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh, Shashi Tharoor, former Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, CPM leaders Sitaram Yechury and T K Rangarajan and leading lawyers.
The Congress leader said that debate in Dadri was not whether a man had beef or mutton in his home but whether a mob has a right to lynch. It was not whether Rohith Vemula was a dalit or not, but how insensitive a university was in dealing with him.
The debate in JNU is whether a bunch of mis-guided youth allegedly raised anti-national slogans "What is a university. University is not a monastery. At my age, I have a right to be wrong. In a university I need not be profound, I could be ridiculous also. But how are you framing the debate in this country in a perverse manner," he said in an apparent reference to the BJP and the Sangh Pariwar making it a nationalism versus traitor debate.
Chidambaram said that free spee ch was being questioned now and not many were willing to speak up.
He said the narrative still excludes poor, the downtrodden and the under privileged. He said being in opposition was also a privilege like the ruling party occupies the ruling space given by the people.
"If I do my duty and criticise, I do not become an enemy of the government," he added.
Quoting from one of Saint Thiruvalluar's couplets, the former minister said that a king without a critic will fall even without an enemy.
Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said he had a good working relationship with Chidambaram for all of his six year tenure and disappointed that some of things they set out to do could not be completed. That included removal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from the state.
In his remarks, Chidambaram said when one is in the government there is an apprehension in doing something that one may fail.
It is not bad if one tries and fails and cited the example of Tripura where Chief Minister Manik Sarkar removed AFSPA and the state has not gone into the hands of militants.
Referring to Omar's regret that relations between rival parties have touched so low that civilised contact was not possible between each other, Chidambaram said that there was a time when Jawaharlal Nehru had taken R K Shanmugam Chetty, John Mathai and Hindu Mahasabha leader S P Mukherjee into his cabinet seeking talent from outside. But he cannot think of such a situation in the years to come.
Replying to a question on GST, he said the bill should not be passed on the basis of just numbers.
"It is a flawed bill and should not be passed in its present form," he said adding even the Chief Economic Advisor has acknowledged that there are faults.
JD (U) MP Pawan Verma, who was also on the panel, said he did not agree with Chidambaram who has written in one of his columns that defeat in Bihar assembly elections will have a sobering effect on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP.
He said he thought they (PM and BJP) will pause and pull back in case of defeat but now he felt that they would not give up tendencies to polarise on hyper-nationalism and communal issues till the next elections.
Before release of the book, Anant Goenka of the Indian Express Group said Congress's loss in the elections was a gain to Indian Express in the form of Chidambaram's columns.
