When Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Khattar Broke Down And Wept: An Open Letter

CPI(MR) Press Release

01 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Dear Shri Manohar Lal Khattar,

It is indeed a sad day for all of India when one reads that you, as the Chief Minister of Haryana, broke down and wept over the senseless violence during the recent Jat agitation demanding reservation. The targeting of members of your own Punjabi community as well as other OBC communities, the looting and arson as well as alleged incidents of rape that have been reported are a matter of shame for the entire country.

You have accurately referred to the violence as being similar to what occurred during the Partition of India - when people were murdered or attacked for merely belonging to one community or the other. It is especially painful that such atrocities were indulged in by sections of the Jat community who have been peasants and soldiers serving the country for long and all of us need to understand what compelled them to act in this manner.

First of all I would like to say, while your government could have anticipated the trouble much earlier and taken steps to defuse the crisis. I suppose you and your party were far busier trying to arrest, harass and crucify some young people in a university in Delhi for allegedly shouting 'anti-national' slogans or holding political views that you don't approve of.

It is also true perhaps that the anger of the Jats was not entirely your or your government's fault. Their anger has been building up for some time as they are victims of the larger economic policies that have been followed over the last two decades by successive regimes that have cared little for the well-being of farmers, rural people in general or those outside the service sector. Some of these problems stem also from the global financial system too, which has turned a giant casino controlled by a handful of money manipulators sitting in their citadels in Western capitals.

What is very distressing however is that despite your evoking memories of the Partition of India and its horrors you have not reflected on the fact that you are part of the RSS, which in word and deed has been working towards creating a similar holocaust in this country ever since the country's Independence. Has it not occurred to you that the hatred against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis and political opponents that your party men are stoking on a daily basis these days will lead to exactly the same kind of barbaric violence carried out by some of the Jat protestors in your state recently?

While I can sympathise with your pain and sorrow at members of your own community being attacked can't you also spare a thought for the millions of ordinary people in this country who are being demonised and primed for a massacre solely on the basis of their identity or opinions they hold? Are they not human beings at all, apart from being citizens of India who have the same Constitutional rights to life, freedom of faith, speech and livelihoods? Do they not have families to protect, children or parents to look after while, somehow struggling to survive in this harsh jungle economy that the moneybags who fund your and other political parties have created?

In this moment of sorrow you are undergoing if you can seriously introspect on the consequences of your own political ideology and activities for the welfare of fellow citizens and the country it will surely make you a better Hindu. More importantly it will also make you a better human being.

I sincerely hope you will take this letter in the right spirit and not as another instance of scoring political points as the time for such games well past and without a genuine change of direction we as a nation are surely doomed.

yours truly
Chairman Rafi
CPI (MR)