India, Pakistan, Bangladesh must reunite: Katju

By
Maham Misbah
-
21
149

Ex- Indian SC judge terms partition an attempt to divide Hindus, Muslims

Press Council of India (PCI) Chairman Justice (r) Markandey Katju called for the unification of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into one secular state on Saturday.

He was delivering a lecture on the role of media in promoting secularism, organised by Lokmat Group of Newspapers.

“We must not be Hindu nationalists, or even Muslim, Sikh or Christian nationalists. We must all be Indian nationalists. India is a country of diverse people and can not be run for a single day without secularism,” Katju said while terming those dividing the country in name of caste or religion as anti-national.

When asked by reporters later whether he was referring to Narendra Modi he refused to comment.

Katju did not spare the media either. “Instead of attacking communalism the media promoted it when a segment of the media became part of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation instead of covering it. I would not like to name them,” he said.

Any of type of fundamentalism, be it Hindu or Muslim should be uprooted, said the former Indian Supreme Court judge.

“Look at the state of affairs in Pakistan. They wanted to have an Islamic state but it has turned into a ‘JurassicPark’. There are schisms between Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan provinces. Sometimes I feel it is not a country at all but just a creation of the British to divide Hindus and Muslims. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh should reunite into one secular country,” said Katju.

He said the media has been demonizing Muslims and that had alienated the community.

“Whenever a bomb blast occurs, within a short time many TV channels start saying that an email or text message has come from some Muslim organisation like Jaish-e-Mohammad or Indian Mujahideen claiming the responsibility. This demonizes the entire Muslim community,” he said. An e-mail or text message could be sent by any mischievous element. In fact, 99 percent of the people in all communities were generally good, said Katju.

Often an attempt is made to depict all Muslims as terrorist,” he said.

He termed Mughal King Akbar as the first secular leader who laid the foundation of modern India through his policy of universal tolerance. He was ahead of his times. However, even today most of the people in India were very backward in case of caste and communalism and even voted on these basis, said Katju.

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21 COMMENTS

  1. What a stupid we are!!!. British divided our territory and we are still fighting as they wanted. They became successful and all of us foghting our brother. I agree we should unite again like Germany and become a stronger, bigger and better nation.

    • Germans were forced divided by the super powers of time after 2nd world war. But India was divided by the will of people in elections of 1946. So there is no parallel between the 2 cases.

    • British did not divide India.Muslim league demanded division and said hat Hindus and Muslims cannot live as one nation.these are facts and British wanted to continue the Imperial rule as India was the Jewel in he Crown.It cannot be undone now and we have move away very far.Germany has a common cultural foundation and so easily became one. We are not and cannot be.As Samuel Huntington said there are civilisational fault-lines.Let us get along as good neighbours.

  4. This is what RSS has been saying all along. It was Nehru and Jina who were instrumental in division of India. Neither beef eater nehru was Hindu enough nor Jina was Muslim enough. These 2 brown sahibs were responsible for division of this country.

  5. What a stupid idea its only good on paper ? By joining failed States and terrorist States we will end up in hell much quicker. You will spend all your time and resources on fighting terror and finally be blacklisted internationally.

  6. More like India and Pakistan will be Muslim Bangladesh, The majority Muslim race in subcontinent are the Bengali Muslims 175 Millions. Larger then Punjabi Muslims and any other race.

  9. No, Bengalis are the second largest not Indonesians, only 54% of Indonesians speaks Javanese I.e. 130 million vs at least 180 million Bengali Muslims.

    • Bangladesh Muslims and West Bengal Muslims joined together around 175-180 Million mark, that would mean they are the largest Muslim group after the Arabs and second largest ethnic race in the world after the Chinese,

      So I agree with Mr Rehman.

  10. i am muslim khan mangal kurrom agency of parachinar we want fighat with india now.it,s my dession

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