Over 100 ex-bureaucrats to PM: Your silence deafening, end politics of hate

New Delhi, April 27

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In an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, over 100 former bureaucrats have expressed hope that he would call for an end to what they termed as “politics of hate” allegedly practised “assiduously” by governments under BJP’s control.

In the letter they said, “We are witnessing a frenzy of hate filled destruction in the country where at the sacrificial altar are not just Muslims and members of the other minority communities but the Constitution itself.”

They went on to add that as former civil servants, “it is not normally our wont to express ourselves in such extreme terms, but the relentless pace at which the Constitutional edifice created by our founding fathers is being destroyed compels us to speak out and express our anger and anguish.”

Former Lieutenant governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, ex-foreign secretary Sujatha Singh, former home secretary GK Pillai and former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s principal secretary TKA Nair are among the 108 signatories to the letter.

“The escalation of hate violence against the minority communities, particularly Muslims, in the last few years and months across several states – Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, all states in which the BJP is in power, barring Delhi (where the union government controls the police) – has acquired a frightening new dimension,” the letter read.

Noting that it is no longer just the politics of an assertive Hindutva identity nor the attempt to keep the communal cauldron on the boil, they said, “All that has been going for decades and in the last few years had become a part of the new normal”.

In the letter, they also mentioned: “What is alarming now is the subordination of the fundamental principles of our Constitution and of the rule of law to the forces of majoritarianism, in which the state appears to be fully complicit.”

Contending that they believe the threat is unprecedented and at stake is not just constitutional morality and conduct, the ex-bureaucrats said, “It is that the unique syncretic social fabric, which is our greatest civilisational inheritance and which our Constitution is so meticulously designed to conserve, is likely to be torn apart.”

“Your silence, in the face of this enormous societal threat, is deafening,” in the letter it is said, while adding: “We appeal to your conscience, taking heart from your promise of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas’.”

“It is our fond hope that in this year of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, rising above partisan considerations, you will call for an end to the politics of hate that governments under your party’s control are so assiduously practising,” it said.