Rights groups seek disqualification of Pragya as MP over hate speech

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: An open letter has been sent by various activist and rights organisations, such as Campaign against Hate Speech, Bahutva Karnataka, All India Lawyers Association for Justice and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties – Karnataka, to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, asking him to disqualify BJP MP Pragya Thakur and take all other appropriate action.

“Keep weapons in your homes; if nothing else, at least keep knives used to cut vegetables sharp. If someone infiltrates our house and attacks us, giving them a befitting reply is our right,” Pragya Thakur had said on 25 December, urging Hindus to keep weapons in their homes, while speaking at an event in the state’s Shivamogga city. \

“She spoke with the clear intention to disturb communal harmony and national integration,” said the letter and noted that she referred to the entire Muslim community as the enemy, thus targeting them.

“Ms Pragya Thakur has violated settled norms of international law which governs all nations, namely the prohibition against the incitement to genocide. If homicide is the killing of one person, genocide is the elimination of an entire group. Any call to eliminate an ‘ethnic, national, racial or religious group’, in this case, Muslims, therefore amounts to a call to genocide and is what international law considers the ‘crime of crimes,’” the letter read.

The letter also says that her speech violates existing provisions of Indian law, which prohibit the promotion of communal disharmony, incitement of enmity between communities and the impeding of public tranquillity.

“By making a call for violence, Pragya Thakur has violated her oath taken under the Third Schedule of the Constitution when sworn in as a Member of Parliament,” the letter continued and demanded the speaker to immediately disqualify her from her membership of the Lok Sabha and take all other urgent and immediate action against her for violating her oath to ‘bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India’.