By TCN News,
New Delhi: Eminent civil rights activist and Member, National Integration Council (NIC), Shabnam Hashmi has resigned from the NIC protesting against the entry into the council of Shiv Sena leader and son of Bal Thackerary, Udhav Thackeray. Hashmi, who heads ANHAD NGO, has called Udhav’s entry into NIC as “a cruel oxymoron.”
In a her resignation letter to the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Hashmi expresses surprise over the inclusion by the Prime Minister of a person whose whole life is based on “divisive and hate politics.”
“The news of Mr. Udhav Thakre being included in the National Integration Council today has left me quite shocked. Mr Udhav Thakre’s whole political life is based on divisive and hate politics. His entry into NIC is a cruel oxymoron,” said Hashmi in the letter written on June 5.
“His brand of communal politics is against the secular and plural value system that the Council upholds. It was bad enough to have highly communal people on the NIC by virtue of being Chief Ministers. Udhav Thakre’s entry into the Council will further derogate the high credentials and stature of the body forever.”
Talking to TwoCircles.net, Hashmi said “the entry of such people or people like Modi in the organization like NIC will jeopardize the idea of the formation of the council.” On why Prime Minister included a person in the Integration Council who talks about disintegration, she said only the Home Ministry could answer this question.
The NIC under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister has been reconstituted on April 5, 2010. “Shri Uddhav Thackeray, Executive President, Shivsena has also been nominated to the reconstituted NIC in the category ‘Leaders of Regional Political Parties’, vide order dated June 3, 2010,” said the Home Ministry release on June 5.
The National Integration Council was formed in 1961 under the leadership of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to find ways and means to combat communalism, casteism, regionalism and linguism.
“The whole idea of Nehru behind the formation of NIC will simply disappear,” she said.
At the end of the letter she urged the Home Minister to accept her resignation. “Please accept my resignation from the NIC.”