Ministers Of Home Affairs India

"India's Home Minister Shri Shivraj Patil blamed the attack on "anti-national elements" who he said "have been trying to disturb peace and create panic among the people in various parts of the country." "The government will continue to deal firmly with such elements," Patel said in a written statement. "I am confident that security agencies will soon be able to get to the bottom of these incidents and the culprits will be brought to book.""

"The toll is likely to go up and we are just keeping our fingers crossed that everything remains calm."

"Anti-national elements... have been trying to disturb peace and create panic among the people in various parts of the country... I am confident that security agencies will soon be able to get to the bottom of these incidents and the culprits will be brought to book."

"I heartily congratulate the Government of Gujarat, and the state police in particular, for the important breakthrough they have achieved in busting a pan-India terrorist network responsible for the serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad and other cities in the country. The arrest of 10 people, including Mufti Abu Bashir, who is described as the mastermind of the terror network, is indeed a major accomplishment. I have spoken to Shri Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, today and congratulated him for his Government's success. This success shows what a Government determined to deal firmly with the menace of terrorism can achieve in a short time. It stands in stark contrast with the utter lack of clarity and will power that the UPA Government at the Centre has exhibited in handling the threat of terrorism."

"[L.K. Advani is] really one of the most able, cool-headed, courteous and clean politicians left today."

"Another spectacular occasion of imported explosives in action was the bomb attack against L.K. Advani in Comibatore in February 1998, killing over fifty BJP activists."

"But we cannot include in this paper a discussion of the awkward dishonesty evident throughout secularist reporting.. For now, we merely want to draw attention to what Mira Kamdar omits about L.K. Advani: that he has survived several attempts on his life. The most spectacular instance took place during an election meeting in Coimbatore in February 1998, where an Islamist bomb attack failed to kill Advani because he arrived late. It did, however, kill forty BJP activists present. Not being wealthy secularists, they were never put on alert by helpful "threats". [...] we find Prof. Hansen casting suspicion on L.K. Advani by describing him as "indicted in a massive corruption scandal in 1996" (p.266) without mentioning that the investigation cleared him completely of the charges (which were minor, the "massive" scandal mainly pertaining to dozens of Congress secularists, as Hansen fails to explain)."

"After all, the Congress party's defeat in the 1989 parliamentary elections was a major triumph for India's democratic forces. The gains of this victory needed to be consolidated. Towards this end, I took an important initiative at a function in New Delhi on 10 August, while releasing Koenraad Elst's book Ram Janmabhoomi vs Babri Masji: A case study in Hindu Muslim conflict. I offered to the Muslim leaders that I would personally request leaders of the VHP to relinquish their demand on the Hindu shrines in Mathura and Varanasi if the Muslim claim over Ramjanmabhoomi was voluntarily withdrawn, paving the way for the construction of the Ram temple. I was deeply disappointed when Muslim leaders rejected this offer."

"The recent Coimbatore bombing that killed a number of BJP workers was likened in the New York Times to the Reichstag fire which Hitler staged to gain power. The implication was that the BJP planned the bombing as an election ploy, even sacrificing its own members, and that they are as ruthless as Hitler. That Islamic terrorist groups were linked, was ignored."

"That is why I say the nation needs a leader. Dr. Manmohan Singh has not even visited all the states in the five years of his prime ministership, while Advaniji is a leader who has, at some point in time, spent a night in our 400 districts.... He knows the entire land, there is not a stain on him, he is blemishless, has vast administrative experience having served in various [c]abinets, and fulfilled his responsibilities to everyone's satisfaction, whether it was as the chief executive of the Delhi metropolitan council or as information and broadcasting minister or deputy prime minister. Advaniji rose from the ranks to become a mass leader, there's a world of difference between the two."

"Bullets for the kar sevaks, biryani for the Kashmiri militants."

"But we cannot include [here] a discussion of the awkward dishonesty evident throughout secularist reporting.. For now, we merely want to draw attention to what Mira Kamdar omits about L.K. Advani: that he has survived several attempts on his life. The most spectacular instance took place during an election meeting in Coimbatore in February 1998, where an Islamist bomb attack failed to kill Advani because he arrived late. It did, however, kill forty BJP activists present. Not being wealthy secularists, they were never put on alert by helpful "threats"."

"India should not betray its essentially Hindu personality."

"You were merely asked to bend, but you chose to crawl."

"We have received some clues about yesterday's incident, which shows that a neighbouring country, and some terrorist organisations active there are behind it."

"L.K. Advani, who had been the front man of the Ayodhya movement until he broke down in tears at the sight of the demolition... If the Indian media were not as corrupt as they are (power corrupts, and the media wield tremendous power, so), they would have found out and told us who exactly masterminded the demolition... But instead, the Indian media spurned the scoop of the year and insisted on the politically more useful version blaming Mr. Advani, somewhat like Jawaharlal Nehru's attempt to implicate Veer Savarkar in the Mahatma Gandhi murder."

"The blasts are reflective of the states' inability to preempt these strikes."

"Dr Koenraad Elst, in his two-volume book titled The Saffron Swastika, marshals an incontrovertible array of facts to debunk slanderous attacks on the BJP by a section of the media. About the Rath Yatra, he writes: ‘But what about Advani’s bloody Rath Yatra (car procession) from Somnath to Ayodhya in October 1990? Very simple: it is not at all that the Rath Yatra was a bloody affair. While in the same period, there was a lot of rioting in several parts of the country (particularly Hyderabad, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh), killing about 600 people in total, there were no riots at all along the Rath Yatra trail. Well, there was one: upper-caste students pelted stones at Advani because he had disappointed them by not supporting their agitation against the caste-based reservations which V.P. Singh was promoting. Even then, no one was killed or seriously wounded. It is a measure of the quality of the Indian English-language media that they have managed to turn an entirely peaceful procession, an island of orderliness in a riot-torn country, into a proverbial bloody event (“Advani’s blood yatra”). And it was quite a sight how the pressmen in their editorials blamed Advani for communal riots of which the actual, non-Advanirelated causes were given on a different page of the same paper. Whether Advani with his Rath Yatra was at 500 miles distance from a riot (as with the riot in Gonda in UP), or under arrest, or back home after the high tide of the Ayodhya agitation, every riot in India in the second half of 1990 was blamed on him’."

"I would demand the president's assent to the state laws of Gujarat and Rajasthan akin to the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) pending with the (central) government. The Gujarat law has been pending for the last four years."

"In this wave of terrorism against the BJP (a new high in a campaign of anti-BJP terror which has been striking now and then since March 1993), Reuters leaves its information consumers to guess who the victim was, and whether the BJP was the perpetrator or the target of the violence. Nothing in the 94-line report explicates that the violence was directed against the BJP, eventhough that was the first and only fact of which we could be certain right away... The policy seems to be, not to concede anything whatsoever to the Hindu movement, not even its martyrs."

"I want to clarify to everyone that I am an RSS swayamsevak and the PM is also an RSS swayamsevak. No one should have any problem in it."

"There is no other language which provides answers to complex philosophical questions like epics written in Sanskrit. Be it art, literature, science or technology, people are admitting Sanskrit is most useful."

"We must uphold traditional social values, which do not permit this kind of vulgar display of beauty. I will just not allow any beauty contest to be held in this state."

"First, westernisation of Indian youth should stop. The projection of Indian girls as Miss Universe or Miss World is a deep-rooted conspiracy to promote cosmetics in countries like India. Nudity and obscenity cannot be parameters for determining beauty."

"The RSS is the largest social and cultural organisation in the country and an aggressively patriotic organisation. The terrorists' bid is an attempt to attack the symbol of nationalism in the country's social life. It is also aimed at frightening the country's majority community, which is commendable."

"Pok, whose PoK whole Kashmir is of India."

"India is home to all the 72 ‘firkas’ (sects) of Muslims, which no other country has and it also has more Muslim population than Pakistan. India can be called more Islamic than Pakistan."

"Many times our media is confused. They say an US observatory has informed us about lunar and solar eclipse on a particular date. Don’t look at an observatory, ask any pandit next to you. They will open the 'Panchang' and tell you the dates of eclipses 100 year ago and 100 years hence."

"We will state (at an all-party meeting if it is called) that we support Section 377 because we believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act and cannot be supported."

"Mughal rulers understood that by killing cows and giving their open support to cow slaughter, they cannot rule for a long period. Even Babur, in his will, has written we can’t do two things at one time. Either rule the hearts of people or eat cow’s meat."

"Secularism is the most misused word in the country. Its misuse should come to an end. Because of the rampant misuse of the word, there have been instances of tension in society."

"The June 1984 assault on the Harmandir Sahib complex by government troops, which killed hundreds, put him in a difficult situation with the Sikh community—made worse by the violence against Sikhs that erupted following Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards four months later."

"Darabara Singh blamed him [when he was Home Minister] for encouraging Sikh religious leader, Jarnail Singh Bindranwale, in his militant activities. … Darbara Singh said that when Bindranwwale had visited Delhi with his gun totting supporters, arrangements were made to arrest him on the national highway on his way back to Punjab, but he [Zail Singh] as Union Home Minister, cancelled these orders."

"He named Gandhi’s son, Rajiv, to succeed her, but he soon fell out of favour with the new prime minister. He further inflamed the government by refusing to sign into law a 1987 bill permitting official censorship of private mail."

"He was an impotent bystander in 1984 when government troops stormed the complex of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, in an effort to apprehend militants who had been demanding autonomy for the northwestern Indian state of Punjab."

"He was tall, fair complexioned, well built, beautiful turban with white “achkan-churidar”, all-in-one form in his handsome personality. The only other to use the white turban was Dr Radhakrishnan|Dr Radhakrishnan. Dress in all white symbolizes purity. His love for a red-button rose which may be spontaneous reminds us all of [[Jawaharlal Nehru – Gandhiji’s political mentor who was never seen without a red-button rose."

"He overwhelmingly won election to the largely ceremonial office. There was much speculation, however, that Gandhi had selected him in order to mollify Sikh extremists in Punjab, who had since mid-1982 become increasingly militant in that state."

"He was surprised when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi made him Union home minister after her return to power in 1980. He must have been even more surprised when she chose him as the Congress party's candidate for presidency two years later. It was clear to all but the gullible that she wanted a thoroughly dependable president. Moreover, a Sikh in Rashtrapati Bhawan could be a mollifying factor with militancy on the rise in Punjab."

"He was a close political confidant of Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister from 1966-77 and 1980-84, who engineered his selection as President by the electoral college. Critics said this was a result of what they called his sycophancy, but the move was more widely seen as an attempt to calm Sikh militancy in Punjab."

"A veteran of the Indian independence movement against Britain, he was personally popular for his earthy humor and political skills."

"The honour has gone to a veteran soldier in the flight of freedom, and a man of the people. He is a man of humble origin but his achievements are impressive. Through unflinching devotion to the cause of freedom and development, and readiness to suffer for it, he has won the people’s trust. being so close to the soil and with his understanding of the weaker people's problems, and robust common sense, the President elect can be depended upon to serve the constitution with earnestness and dignity."

"Towards the end of May 1984, Indira Gandhi mentioned nonchalantly that some people had suggested to her to send the police into the golden temple complex to flush out militants entrenched therein, but he was not exactly convinced on this course as it was likely to have an unfavorable fall out. But at the same time, she said she could not see any alternative."

"Dissent was not a crime but the opposition must appreciate the good actions of the government. Politicians and politics without principles is poison. Casteism, regional chauvinism, communalism and the custom of dowry were the greatest enemy of welfare and progress of the country."

"I seriously pondered over Mrs Gandhi’s thinking. I told her that this course would not be proper, as it would have serious repercussions. The entry of police into the complex was bound to inflame the public mind. Plausible alternatives could definitely be considered. She positively gave me an impression that she agreed to what I said. I tried my best to persuade her not to take any provocative step, but to adopt subtle methods to dislodge the armed men from religious places. Reflecting over this suggestion, she said that she would certainly apply her mind to other means, but did not disclose how her mind was working."

"I am not in the habit of making forecasts; but when I do I am usually right. I forecast that he will be the most popular President that India had so far. He is first Sikh, the first Punjabi, and the first person belonging to the backward classes to occupy Rashtrapathi Bhavan."

"He claimed that even when he was the Union home minister, Indira Gandhi had been hesitant to discuss Punjab affairs with him and had given a free hand to Chief Minister Darbara Singh. The two had always been at daggers drawn."

"No one actually brought me any money. But there were many commitments made...Chandraswami said he knows some Sultan. He wanted me to contest for the second time. Somehow, this fellow had a dislike for Rajiv perhaps because Rajiv refused to encourage him."

"At one stage, Venkataraman had agreed to become prime minister but he never told me this directly.... Once the news of his being in touch with the dissidents was leaked out, he was offered the presidency and that was the end of it."

"The imperative need of the hour is to visualize the grave dangers not only to our cherished political and social system, but to the very foundation of our values, if there is not greater discipline in national life...Undoubtedly, the nation has registered progress, especially during the last two or three years, but we must accelerate the pace and increase the momentum. We need vigour and the will to rekindle the moral timbre to channelize our energies for constructive purposes. We must eschew communal frenzy..."

"Had he as supreme commander resigned at that time, there would have been chaos and Sikhs would have suffered immensely. It was because of his decision that Sikhs could become army heads and PM now."