Tahir Mahmood, outgoing National Commission
of Minorities chairman, is a satisfied man
Omkar Singh in New Delhi
Tahir Mahmood, who remits the office of chairman of the National Commission for Minorities on November 26, three years after he was nominated to the post by Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, is calling it a day on a satisfactory note.
"I have done my job to the best of my ability. I can tell you that all those who wrote to me asking for help have not gone disappointed. I received hundreds and thousands of letters from not just people belonging to the minorities, but also from members of the majority community. I can say with satisfaction that nobody went back empty-handed," Tahir Mahmood told rediff.com in an exclusive interview.
Mahmood denied criticising the government and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in a bid to pressure the Vajpayee government into giving him another term. "This is not true. I have not criticised the government at any point of time. I have not attacked the RSS either. On the contrary the RSS top brass has been making all sorts of allegations against me. They have attacked me for telling the Christians that they have a right to propagate their religion. They attacked me for telling them that they could hold religious meetings. I have at no point of time named any organisation in any of my interviews or public utterances. I do not recall having named the RSS even once during my three-year tenure."
Asked if he had met Union minister Nitish Kumar recently and persuaded him to write to Welfare Minister Maneka Gandhi to reconstitute the minorities commission, he said: "I have not even met the minister in last couple of months. I came to know about his letter from the media. I telephoned him to convey my appreciation for his gesture and congratulated him for the bold stand he had taken. Given a chance the present government would wind up the National Commission for Minorities," he said.
When asked about his recent demand that a separate ministry for religious affairs be set up, he said: ''This is my personal feeling. Bureaucrats think that Indian secularism is like the one which prevails either in the USA or Russia. This is not true. In India secularism means equality of religions. Every day there are problems which are essentially of religious nature. India is a deeply religious country. There are religious disputes, grievances. All religious communities including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims have their share of problems. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in having a ministry or a department which looks into the religious needs of the people of this country."
He claims to be the only Muslim scholar who knows the Hindu religion inside out. "I am expert in the Hindu law and jurisprudence and I have written six books on it. I think I know more about Hindu religion than millions of others who claim to know their religion," he claimed.
Did the Commission face any problems during the last three years? "No, I did not face any problem. I have worked with four governments and three prime ministers. I worked with complete autonomy. You are treated the way you want to be treated. I don't know how my predecessors were treated,'' he said.
According to Mahmood he was laying down his office without any sense of regret or guilt. "I have done the job entrusted to me with complete honesty and integrity. I took the oath on November 26, 1996 and I am happy that I am demitting the office exactly after three years with a deep sense of satisfaction," asserts Tahir Mahmood.
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