‘HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME’ said Fidel Castro, famously, in 1953, as he was arrested for the alleged attempt to overthrow the Batista regime in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Perhaps all over the world, freedom fighters who were incarcerated or were confiscated of their civil rights have made similar statements. It appears that the time has come where one has to learn to face such assaults on liberty, through arrests and deprivation of constitutional office, without trial or without verdict.
Amit Shah, the Home Minister, has recently introduced, in a brazen manner, the 130th Constitutional Amendment Bill which aims to disqualify elected ministers (including even the Prime Minister) for the only reason that they were detained in custody beyond thirty days. The home minister has gone around town parroting the question: “What is wrong in a universal morality being enshrined in a legislation?”. He also posed that the Chief Secretariates and the Director General of Police must not take orders from the central prison where the arrested chief minister, who has failed to come out on bail within thirty days, is sheltered.
The posed question may look attractive if one doesn’t see the greater malaise hidden in the proposed new law. What exactly is the motive behind the ruling regime attempting to bring such a law and passing it in haste?
