22 March, 2006

Dear Shri Bardhan,,

A new organization has been floated in Andhra Pradesh ‘to promote rational thinking in the Muslim community’, with the blessings of the CPI.

Your colleague Shri Sudhakar Reddy inaugurated it and Shri Shamim Faizee set the tone and tenor of deliberations to emphasize that the Muslims, as a community, were thinking irrationally.  There could not be a bigger slap in the face of any community.

It is one thing to oppose a particular demand or aspiration of a community as irrational but to term it irrational as a whole is to humiliate it and to damn it in the eyes of the public, to the cheers of its regular detractors.

Does the CPI dare to hold a convention anywhere in India to promote ‘rational thinking’ in the Hindu community or any sub-community of the Hindus?

I know the CPI is anxious to secure Muslim votes as any other party.  But who advised it to damn them as irrational and then seek their votes?  Indeed, they would be irrational if they voted for you after this public humiliation.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

 (SYED SHAHABUDDIN)

Shri A.B. Bardhan,

General Secretary,

Communist Party of India,

Ajoy Bhavan,

15, Kotla Marg

New Delhi - 110 002.