New Delhi, April 26: Over 100 former civil servants have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a hope that he will call for an end to what they termed as “politics of hate” allegedly practised “assiduously” by governments under BJP’s control.
In an open letter, they said “we are witnessing a frenzy of hate filled destruction in the country where at the sacrificial altar are not just Muslims and members of the other minority communities but the Constitution itself”.
Former Lt Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, ex-foreign secretary Sujatha Singh, former home secretary G K Pillai and former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s principal secretary T K A Nair are among the 108 signatories to the letter.
As former civil servants, it is not normally our want to express ourselves in such extreme terms, but the relentless pace at which the constitutional edifice created by our founding fathers is being destroyed compels us to speak out and express our anger and anguish, the letter said.
The escalation of hate violence against the minority communities, particularly Muslims, in the last few years and months across several states – Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, all states in which the BJP is in power, barring Delhi (where the union government controls the police) – has acquired a frightening new dimension, it said.
The former bureaucrats said they believe that the threat is unprecedented and at stake is not just constitutional morality and conduct; it is that the unique syncretic social fabric, “which is our greatest civilizational inheritance and which our Constitution is so meticulously designed to conserve, is likely to be torn apart”.
“Your silence, in the face of this enormous societal threat, is deafening,” the letter said.
“We appeal to your conscience, taking heart from your promise of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas’,” it said.
“It is our fond hope that in this year of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, rising above partisan considerations, you will call for an end to the politics of hate that governments under your party’s control are so assiduously practising,” said the letter.
‘Letter is an attempt to create distrust in country’
The BJP on Wednesday said the ex-civil servants’ letter that urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to end the “politics of hate” in the country was written to spread misinformation and create an atmosphere of distrust in the country.
Over 100 former bureaucrats had on Tuesday written to Modi expressing concern over a “frenzy of hate filled destruction” in the country.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said the group never wrote about important issues, or welfare measures of the Modi government such as free ration to poor, opening of Jan Dhan accounts, and free precautionary vaccines for COVID.
Patra said the Modi-led dispensation is working with positive governance, whereas this group wants to spread negativity.
“There is a specific agenda behind this letter to spread misinformation and create distrust in the country,” Patra told reporters at the party headquarters. (PTI)