Firstly, it must be accepted that the Haj subsidy violates the dictionary meaning of 'secular'. A truly secular state is 'not concerned with religion' and should not, therefore, specially encourage or promote any religion; a secular state should consider religion as a purely personal matter that ought not to be allowed to interfere in matters of state.The fact that the Haj dole was introduced by the Narasimha Rao government subsequent to the demolition of the Babri structure in December 1992 is proof enough that the subsidy was an act of blatant appeasement of the Muslim community.
There is the fact, too, that the Haj subsidy has now ballooned into a pretty big lollipop to one exclusive religious community. Excluding the ministry of external affairs's annual expenditure on the Haj goodwill mission (mentioned but not quantified in the Union Budget), the Haj subsidy itself has grown from Rs 250 million in 1994 to Rs 1,370 million (as per the revised Budget 2000-2001) and to Rs 1,545 provided in the Budget 2001-2002.
RE:Haj Subsidy
by Godfather on Jul 02, 2008 03:17 PM Permalink
This giant leap of over 500 per cent in just seven years is an alarming, non-secular appeasement of one religious community when one considers that the Indian government is so desperate to reduce food grains and fertiliser subsidy to the large and poor farming community. The nation would thus have frittered away some Rs 5 billion on Haj subsidy by this time next year.
Would this amount not have served a truly national purpose if, instead of being given away for mere pilgrimage of a particular community, it had been employed to, say, provide drinking water facilities to women and children in Rajasthan and elsewhere who trudge over two miles a day to fetch a bucket or two of that essential commodity?
What's more, there is a discriminatory element in the present Haj subsidy. As doled out till now, it is given by the Union civil aviation ministry to Air-India towards its charter operations for the Haj pilgrimage. In other words, only those Muslims who choose to go to Mecca by air avail of the subsidy. As per one newspaper report, of the 120,000 Indian Muslims who went on the Mecca pilgrimage this year, some 70,000 were to go by air and, therefore, got the subsidy at rate of more than Rs 20,000 per head.
RE:RE:Haj Subsidy
by Godfather on Jul 02, 2008 03:20 PM Permalink
A bigger irony is that the government of Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca, believes that any subsidy for the Haj pilgrimage goes against the spirit of the Shariat. In fact, Islamic religious authorities have been quoted to the effect that, strictly speaking, Haj is a religious duty only for those who can afford it and that the pilgrimage may not be 'accepted by God' if expenditure on transport to the holy sites and on food is not the pilgrim's own.An incidental, but critical, mystery is why our so-called Muslim scholars like Asghar Ali Engineer -- who dashes off an article in our 'secular' English media every now and then to project some or the other Islamic point of view and criticises the Sangh Parivar in the process -- have maintained silence on the continuation of the un-Islamic dole by the Government of India.
This silence can perhaps be traced to the mindset of 'grab what you get and demand more' created among the Muslims by Jawaharlal Nehru, patron saint of India's pseudo-secularism. Thus, instead of scrapping the Port Haj Committee Act, 1932, established by the British to woo the Muslims, Nehru got our Parliament to enact the Haj Committee Act, 1959. That piece of legislation is totally non-secular insofar as i
