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V SUNDARAM

        'Nothing can be truly great which is not right.' - Samuel Johnson

        In 1973-74, I had the good fortune of reading the autobiography of Mohammedali Currim Chagla (1900-1981) titled Roses in December which is one of the truly great autobiographies written by eminent Indians. Born in 1900 in Bombay, he became an eminent lawyer. He was appointed as Professor of law to Government Law College, Bombay in 1927. He worked for Mohammed Ali Jinnah as his secretary and the Muslim League before it became a separatist party. In 1928, the Congress asked Motilal Nehru to write a draft Constitution for India as a riposte to the Simon Commission Report. The Nehru Report spoke in terms of a secular India, a vision that was rejected by Jinnah. A disillusioned Chagla then left Jinnah for good.

        M C Chagla was appointed as a judge of Bombay High Court in 1941. After independence, Mahommedali Currim Chagla (M C Chagla) was elevated as Chief Justice of Bombay High Court in 1948 and held that post with great distinction till 1958. Later, he became Ambassador to the USA, Mexico, Cuba, Vice-Chancellor, University of Bombay, High Commissioner to England, Minister of Education (UGC pay scales etc. were his creation) and so on.

        On 25 September, 1958, H M Seervai, Advocate General of Maharashtra paid this great tribute to Chagla when he laid down the office of Chief Justice of Bombay High Court - 'The Bar is here today to express my Lord the Chief Justice the affection which everyone has for him and our pride and admiration for his work as a Judge and Chief Justice of the Court. It is a proud privilege to speak for the Bar, but I realise how inadequate my words must appear to this gathering, for, if I tried to say all that is in our hearts and minds today, I would not know where to begin or where to end.' But the thing which I admired most in you was that you were no dry-as-dust lawyer who looked upon the Law Reports as the last word in human achievement. You have been one of the most distinguished Indians to have passed out of Oxford University. I imagine no one who has been at Oxford can do so. Rather, to use the words of a great Oxford man, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, your Lordship always kept with you 'the company of great thoughts, the inspiration of great ideals, the example of great achievements, the consolation of great failures.' You thus brought to your work as a lawyer not only a first class mind, but a sense of form and values which is given by a broad and humane culture, qualities which were to prove invaluable for your work as a judge and for your work with great cultural institutions, in the Bombay University and the Royal Asiatic Society. Your elevation to the Bench in 1941 came as no surprise to anyone. Thus began a judicial career as fine as any within the memory of my generation and in 1948 when he became the Chief Justice, the whole Court felt the impress of your personality. I can best describe that impress by saying that you were determined to see that in the Court of which you were the Chief Justice, emphasis should be laid , not so much on the sternness and majesty of justice, as on its healing and protective power, for you felt that justice would be an unlovely figure if kindness and mercy did not go hand in hand with her. As to the Bar, it turned to you in all its difficulties and, I must say, it never turned in vain. You had a smile for all and frown for none and you made everyone feel happy and at home in your Court. All this could not have been achieved without self-discipline and natural goodness of heart.'

        When M C Chagla was holding the post of Union Education Minister (now called Union HRD Minister) and Chairman, Central Advisory Board of Education, he was asked as to how he envisioned his job and mission. He said that it was his mission to educate a generation of Indians who would not be surprised when they saw a Hindu as vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University while his counterpart at Banaras Hindu University was a Muslim. This poor — undoubtedly noble man probably never envisioned the day when someone like Arjun Singh would be sitting in the same chair and emitting the fumes of rabid anti-Hindu communalism in the name of pseudo-secularism! In one of his famous addresses, Chagla as Union Education Minister declared: 'No country can become really great unless it can produce men of the highest calibre. Democracy does not mean dead monotony; it does not mean that you discourage or discount talent or genius, After all, talent and genius is rare but it is the man of talent and genius that can make a nation great. Therefore, it is necessary that we should think of, producing men of high caliber who will carry on the great traditions we have in this country. Now, quality must be emphasised in all sectors of education, namely, the primary, the secondary and the higher or the university education.'

        The mute millions of India should compare and contrast this approach of M C Chagla with that of his successor today, I mean HRD (Human Resource Destruction!) Minister Arjun Singh who is known for his Himalayan wisdom and who decided last year that the best way of safeguarding Aligarh Muslim University's minority status is by reserving 50 per cent of the seats for Muslims. It is reported that this decision was taken unilaterally, without consulting anyone else in the Cabinet. His fellow Ministers chose to remain notably silent. Only the Left Front, which supports the Ministry from outside, came out openly against this move of Arjun Singh. There is a general belief that the move was taken by Arjun Singh, upon the secret dicta of Sonia Gandhi and silently abetted by Dr. Manmohan Singh, in a bid to woo Muslim votes for the Congress in the ensuing elections to the UP Assembly next year.

        Sonia Gandhi, Dr.Manmohan Singh, Arjun Singh, Shivraj Patil, Antulay, Ram Vilas Paswan and other known Global Tekhedars (contractors) of Pan-Pseudo-Secularism would be shocked to sudden cultural death by the following words of Chagla addressed to delegates to the first plenary session of the Bharatiya Janata Party at Samata Nagar, Bandra Reclamation, Bombay, on 29 December, 1980.

        'As for communalism, you may have read in the papers that while presiding over a conference of the Rationalist Society the other day, Justice Chenna Reddy, a very able judge and one of the judges of the Supreme Court, observed that it was the secular parties that had done the most to promote religious intolerance, religious backwardness and religious superstition. IN OTHER WORDS SECULARISM IN INDIA IS NOT REALLY SECULAR. IT HAS THE NAME AND THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE, BUT AT HEART IT IS COMMUNAL. It is my profound belief that all governments that have ruled this country have been communal. Our Constitution proclaims that we are secular, but our actions prove that we do not behave in a secular manner at all.'

        'The British believed in communalism in order to keep the Hindus and the Muslims apart so that they could govern the country for all time to come.

        Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India, said, 'Rally the minority, support the minority.' The Romans had said the same, and the British followed in their foot-steps to implement the 'divide-and-rule' policy. But thanks to Gandhiji, and thanks to the sacrifices of our people, their plans were foiled and we got freedom.'

        'What happened after freedom? Did we take to heart the real meaning of freedom?..........Personally I have always felt that the creation of Pakistan was a crime and folly, and could have been avoided if we had shown some sagacity. Unfortunately Pakistan is there and our motherland, our Bharat, has been divided when it should not have been divided. Look at the map of the world, look at the Peninsula of India, and we can see that the gods in their wisdom wanted this country to be one, wanted us to have one culture and spread it to the whole world. But after partition no minority in this country has a right to be called a political minority. The minorities have a right to their culture, education and religion. No other Constitution in the world has said so more definitely and more clearly. No minority can nominally say that its faith or its culture is in danger.'

        'After partition took place the minority that remained in India,that chose to remain in India and subscribe to our Constitution, is as much Indian as the Hindus, Christians or Parsis. The divisions between the communities are now at an end, and we are together the Indian Nation. Then why should it be divided into so many political minorities? The answer is that the Congress deliberately encouraged separate formation of minorities, because they wanted their votes. They have even coined the new expression 'vote bank'. To them the right to govern and the prestige that it brought were more important than the unity of the nation. As a result we are in the same position as we were before partition. There are Hindu parties and Muslim parties and caste parties, and people are selected to stand on the basis of caste or religion. They are also elected and are taken in the Cabinet on that basis.'