Ashwini Upadhyay

Pragna Bharati Talks
30th March 2024
6pm
Visweswarayya Bhavan, Khairabad, Hyderabad

National Population Policy – for Prosperous and Powerful Bharat

Ashwini Upadhyaya, Supreme Court lawyer, ‘India’s PIL man’.

The chief guest Sri LV Subhramanyam, former Chief Secretary, Govt of Andhra Pradesh, in his opening remarks stated that it is important to have a National Policy on Population as well as Skill Development plan to ensure that people get enough work to sustain not only themselves but also contribute to the national infrastructure and economic development. A country this size needs a well articulated policy. Today we consider the population as a Human Resource and not as a population burden. Similarly we also need Youth policy to propel the country during the Amritkal period until 2047. He congratulated Sri Ashwini Upadhyaya who has worked on the issue and is in Hyderabad to talk about it.

Sri T. Hanuman Chowdary, Chairperson of Pragna Bharati in his address stated that he’s urging the NHRC to look into the functioning of madarsas as many of them are violating Human Rights. Regarding demographics, he said that the muslim population which was less than 9% in 1947 is today over 17%. The muslim population and fertility rate has always been more than Hindus, Muslim fertility rate was upto 30% more than the Hindu rate. He appreciated Shri Ashwini Upadhyaya as a great warrior of people’s rights, and as a lawyer who filed 94 PILs in the courts.

Smt Vijayabharati, Vice President Pragna Bharati and member, National Human Rights Commission briefly explained her experiences in sandeshkhali, West Bengal, where a team of members from NHRC went to investigate the horrendous sexual crimes against women, perpetrated by TMC supported Mafia including the mafia don Shahjehan Sheikh. They visited the house of Smt Rekha Patra (who is presently nominated by BJP as a contestant in loksabha elections slated during April- May 2024), and other women, who have been subjected to inhuman crimes. She explained that they met dozens of women, recorded their statements and the documents were submitted to the authorities.

Supreme Court lawyer and ‘PIL Man’ (Public Interest Litigation) Shri Ashwini Upadhyaya in his keynote address stated that there are certain problems unique to India – such as illegal infiltration across porous borders, corruption, black-money, excessive population and other issues. It shows that either the problem is with the doctor or medicines. Even if the leadership is strong, if the laws and rules are inadequate, we won’t arrive at solutions. Similarly, the leadership in the country is changing, but the mechanism remains static.

Vested interests are getting exposed regularly thanks to social media, today a mafia don was buried and more than 50000 people of a particular community attended. Afghanistan, Pakistan, and many Gulf countries today have the same problem of extremism, which we too are facing, all the countries have a common factor, which we are all aware of. There are more than 200 districts where the demographics have changed drastically. Shri Upadhyaya said he filed a PIL on this issue.

When an industrialist started free data, all telecom operators were also forced to give free data. Things started changing in the country during the last 10 years.

With 2 % landmass, 4% water resources, the country has almost 20% of the world population, which is almost 150 crores or 1500 million. No leadership can hope to eliminate unemployment in such a vast country with such a humongous population; by the time we create 2 crore jobs, 10 crore people are born. 50% of our problems have the same root cause, which is population. Whether it’s pollution, jobs, lack of land availability, food and water resources, contamination, crime rates etc are all due to excessive population. We need ‘hum do, hamare do’ policy uniformly for all.

Bhagwan Srirama and his brothers too married only once, and each of the couples had two children only. In human history, Bhagwan Sriram was the first to implement ‘hum do, hamare do’, ‘uniform law’ and ‘uniform education’ policies. If we want to emulate Srirama with the aspiration of achieving Ramarajya, we need to follow certain uniform policies.
Unfortunately, we didn’t learn from Bhagwan Sriram, from our own history, or our own texts like Ramacharita Manas or from experiences of other countries in the world.

Ramacharita Manas described Ramarajya, where everyone lived with sukha-santhi, as everyone had work. If we want Ramarajya, we need uniform population policy in the country. Central govt has set up a committee to look into the population-control policies.

General social awareness is not enough; only when laws are made and enforced, we will see change. Kerala which is highly literate, has many areas where there are more than 10 children per family, some areas in Hyderabad are no exception too. Law enforcement should be strict like Singapore and Japan. In Singapore, when a man was caught with 900 gms drugs, he was given capital punishment, later no one dared to indulge in such crimes.

All the classical images of Bhagwan Sriram, Bhagavad Gita etc from the Indian Constitution were removed and terms like ‘secular’ were introduced. The terms ‘socialism and secularism’ were added in 1976 during the draconian emergency period, and were back-dated to 1950. He said he also filed a PIL on the manner it was done.

To bring major changes in laws, we need a majority in a joint session of parliament, for which 404 members are needed, it’s important to choose and vote wisely.

Even though the Constitution was prepared by 26th November 1949, a decision was taken regarding the national anthem only before 26th January 1950. Both Vande mataram and Jana gana mana were decided as national anthems, but later rules were framed only for janagana mana. He said he filed a PIL regarding instituting Vandemataram too as national anthem.

Similarly we find that many political leaders speak lies everyday, we regard it as ‘paap’, but not a crime. Unfortunately, in only our country, uttering lies is seen as ‘freedom of expression’, in other democracies, lies are severely punished. For introducing certain caveats in the provisions of ‘freedom of speech’, a few articles need to be amended.

Uniform Education Policy and uniform curriculum is required for schools across the country, though the languages would be different in various states. Similarly we need a common National law against Religious Conversions. He said he also filed a PIL in the Tamilnadu case,where the young school girl Lavanya commited suicide, as she was severely intimidated by the conversion Mafia. The word ‘propagate’ needs to be removed from Article 25 of the Constitution. A central law to prevent religious conversions is also required, as it’s a threat to national security and is against religions which originated in our nation. Using the pretext of the term ‘propagate’, religious conversions are being carried out rampantly, which are against India’s own religions.

Similarly there are ‘Minority’ commissions, ‘Minorities’ ministry and ‘minority’ schemes all over the country, he said he filed a PIL to define who and what is a minority. Whereas, SC, ST, BC, EWS etc have been well-defined. People are deliberately writing ‘christian’ in the religious column, to get some monetary benefits like Rs 1000 etc. Then the individual starts wearing a cross, removes Hindu religious symbols, stops celebrating Hindu festivals; all these are nothing but state- sponsored religious conversions.

We also need Indian Judicial Services or something similar to indianize the legal system. Police force needs to be brought under Concurrent List, by amending Schedule 7 of the Constitution, so that the country can have a uniform police force all across.

Unfortunately, Parliament has passed more than 50 laws against Hindus. Waqf Act was passed by Nehru in 1954, strengthened by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi govts. The draconian 1993 Waqf Act by Congress govt was further amended and unbridled powers were provided in the Act by the outgoing Manmohan Singh govt in 2013. Waqf board has 12 lakh acres of land, which is more than the size of some countries. Any land can be claimed as waqf by its board. He said he has filed a PIL regarding this too. Similarly from the British period, the church owns lakhs of acres of lands.

To nullify the Ram Mandir movement, the then Congress govt brought in many laws between 1992 – 1995 which were against Hindus – Places of Worship Act, Minority Commission Act, and Waqf Act were enacted. All these were made possible because people were unaware of the ramifications, and had their own struggles in their daily lives. Unless there’s public awareness and public demand, changes wouldn’t happen easily. The issues which could have been settled easily in the 1950s, now have to be done putting in humungous efforts. Society will change as laws of a country change. Unless the laws are enforced stringently, and unless justice is delivered within an year in all cases by the courts, the problems wouldn’t be resolved.

Shri Ashwini Upadhyaya concluded his address by urging the participants to vote wisely to give the govt more than 400 seats in the forthcoming parliament elections. The session was attended by large numbers of people, who received the talk very enthusiastically.