BANGALORE, February 6: The Janata Dal in the State today assured the Muslim population here that it is totally opposed to the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya while the BJP State unit said that the party would take steps to build the temple only after holding discussions with members of the minority communities.The assurance on behalf of the JD was made by party spokesman and Chief Minister J H Patel's political secretary K H Srinivas, while the BJP stand was defended by legislators S Suresh Kumar and Ramachandra Gowda.
KPCC president Dharam Singh, however, said that his party had already punished P V Narasimha Rao for keeping mum when the Masjid was being demolished by denying him a ticket.
All of them were participating at an open forum of Muslim intellectuals with various political parties, under the auspices of the Anjuman-e-Islahe Mashira here today. Each party was given a chance to respond to queries from the participants in separate sessions.
While Srinivas said his party was infavour of a permanent solution for Ayodhya, so that it would not remain as a major irritant between the two communities, he however gave a non-committal reply on whether he favoured the reconstruction of the mosque. Suresh Kumar on the other hand said that his party would not flout any court order while building the temple, and would go ahead with its agenda only after getting a consent from Muslim leaders. The Ram temple would become a national monument, he added.
Meanwhile speaking for his party, Srinivas said the Janata Dal is committed to reservation in jobs and education for Muslims and will amend the law suitably ``under the present dispensation'' to ensure that the real intentions of the party in wanting to protect minority interests, get translated into action.
He however said that political reservation was a wholly different proposition and required serious consideration since it was likely to affect the ``whole political fabric of the country''.
On the women's reservation issue too there weretwo opinions within the party on whether it ought to be clubbed with the social justice parameter or not. The issue remained as yet unresolved, he added.
The party, he said, was also at present opposed to a Uniform Civil Code ``in the manner in which the BJP was trying to force it''. The party's manifesto had also stated that the personal codes of religious minorities will not be altered ``unless there was consensus for such a code'' he said.
Attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party he said, ``The BJP is the RSS, a fascist organisation with no democratic norms. They have manufactured truth to their benefit and used and misused it to poison innocent Hindu minds''.
He was replying to the charge that it was the Janata Party that first allowed the BJP to grow in the country. Denying that he said that in India there were only two or three national parties, and whether good or bad they were collectively responsible for it.
While he did not think that the Congress was non-secular, he said the party's failure wasin the fact that unlike the JD or the United Front they had received the kind of absolute majority that was not afforded to any other party. ``Therefore they are more answerable than any other party in this regard,'' he pointed out.
Responding to the charge that during the 18 months in power the UF government had betrayed the minority cause by doing nothing for them, he said they had survived on the whims and fancies of the Congress government and therefore could not take any independent decisions. Their committment was however not diluted or altered, he said.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
