Clarion India
NEW DELHI – 65 former civil servants issued an open letter Thursday expressing “deep disquiet” at how ‘Indian state was closely associated’ with the opening of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya last month.
The Constitutional Conduct Group, terming religion as a private matter as per Indian Constitution, said individuals including public officials are free to practice their religious beliefs.
However, the letter stressed that public officials should be ‘mindful to carefully separate their religious beliefs and practices from their official duties.’
The Constitutional Conduct Group pointed out that this distinction is ‘especially important for a person holding the high constitutional office of prime minister,’ adding that ‘the leader not just of people of one religious identity but of all people of India of diverse religious beliefs.’
The consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir took place on January 22 led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the temple built on the site of the Babri mosque which was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, triggering communal riots.
The Constitutional Conduct Group alleged that PM Modi’s presence at the temple opening breached the separation between personal religious belief, practice and official duties.
The group pointed out the Supreme Court had observed, while granting right to construct temple in its 2019 judgment, that ‘structure of the mosque was brought down in a calculated act of destroying a place of public worship’.
Criticizing a Constructional functionary participating in a religious ceremony, the group said: ‘Given the troubled history of the last three decades, it would have been in the fitness of things if the consecration of the temple had been undertaken by heads of the Hindu religious faith rather than by a constitutional functionary, which goes against the basic credo of secularism enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution.’
The Constitutional Conduct Group felt ‘even greater concern’ about ‘developments’ at Maharashtra’s Mira Road after ‘show of triumphalism by certain elements from the Hindu community leading to reactions from elements from the Muslim community.’
