His full-half glass

...

Time changes. And it is very evident at the Capital8217;s 1, Jantar Mantar Road. Like its allottee A R Antulay, the bungalow has suddenly come back to life. The masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and gardeners are busy sprucing up the premises. The new minister is busy meeting stream of visitors 8212; from long lost friends to acquaintances 8212; inside a room crammed with bouquets.

First dogged by controversies and later overtaken by younger Congress leaders, the former chief minister of Maharashtra finally looks a happy man. All smiles, he is enjoying his resurrection after most people had almost written him off.

Picked up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to head the newly-created Ministry for Minority Affairs, Antulay is on the threshhold of discharging a crucial role to buttress the efforts to mobilise minority support for the party.

However, Antulay is discovering fast that his task is not easy. He has to find himself an office room, and then, a clearly defined ministry to get cracking. The officialdom is currently scanning all ministries to identify minority-related work to transfer it to the new ministry.

8216;8216;If allowed to rechristen, I would call it the Ministry for National Integration,8217;8217; Antulay says, protesting, 8216;8216;Why should minority mean just Muslims? This concept of the minority being synonymous with the Muslims is absurd when even the majority Hindus are in a minority in the Muslim-dominated Jammu and Kashmir, Sikh-dominated Punjab and Christian-dominated Nagaland and Mizoram in the North-East.8221;

lsquo;Either way, Pawar is no threat to usrsquo;
Excerpts from an interview with Minority Affairs Minister AR Antulay:
8226; Would this blatant attempt to counter Sharad Pawar by taking three Cabinet ministers from Maharashtra help the Congress?
He is our friend and partner in the Government. Why should we coniser him a threat? However, even if he was not be aligned to us, he would not be any threat to us.
8226; If everyone can see through the Congress game, Pawar can surely do so. Would it not affect the relations between the two allies?
We are not blind either. They the NCP have unofficially fielded their candidate, Ali Sheth Kauchali, in an Assembly by-election from the Srivardhan Assembly constituency of Maharashtra. State-level NCP leaders accompanied him when he went to file his nomination papers.
8226; Did you feel threatened by the NCP strength in the Maharashtra Assembly that you had to rope in Shiv Sena rebel Narayan Rane to shift the balance in favour of the Congress?
The NCP also made former Shiv Sena leader in Rajya Sabha, Satish Pradhan, cross over to its side. Nobody interpreted this the way as they interpreted Ranersquo;s induction. Besides, Raj Thackeray has chosen to launch his own party. Not everybody leaving the Shiv Sena is coming to join the Congress. mdash; PK

Determined to operate on a wider canvas, he wants to take not just religious minorities, but also linguistic minorities into his ministry8217;s fold.

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8216;8216;My aim is to get all communities into the national mainstream, that is my concept of Akhand Bharat,8217;8217; Antulay says, lifting a key phrase from the Sangh lexicon.

He is gearing up to take the battle right in to the Sangh camp by taking up cudgels on behalf of Hindus of the Kashmir Valley. Dismissive of the BJP-charge of Muslim appeasement through the creation of the new ministry, he asks: 8216;8216;What service did they the Sangh render to the Hindus who were forced to flee their homes in the Valley?8217;8217; His advice to the BJP: Hold on, watch me perform for six months and then judge me by my actions.

Antulay is reluctant to share his ideas about his future plans, arguing that he would rather wait for the Presidential notification on the scope of his ministry. He is not inclined to hurriedly position himself as a messiah of minorities cast in the role Arjun Singh by giving any knee-jerk response to the AMU minority-status issue or the Andhra reservation for the minorities.

However, the next minute, even a hypothetical question evokes a sharp response. 8216;8216;What would you have done as the Union Minister for Minority Affairs during Gujarat violence?8217;8217; He says: 8216;8216;I would have gone to Ahmedabad, sat with Chief Minister Narendra Modi and told him: Since the situation has gone out of your hands, innocent people are being devoured by violence in the presence of those who are supposed to protect them, please summon the military to protect them.8217;8217;

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And what if Modi had disagreed with his perception or dilly-dallied, Antulay feels 8216;8216;the President of India, as the supreme commander of the Armd Forces, should have summoned the Army and Air Chiefs and directed them to restore peace in the state.8217;8217;

Asked if it could be possible without dismissing the state government, he says, 8216;8216;Please credit me with some understanding of the Constitution. The President, being the Supreme Commander, can do it.8217;8217; A barrister of note and author of books on the Constitution, Antulay claims the President would not have required even a Cabinet advice on this.

The veteran politician is not prepared to buy the criticism that the Congress leaders were at best mute spectators to the anti-minority violence. 8216;8216;There would be a civil war had we left it to the citizens to fight it out on the streets,8217;8217; he says.

At 77, Antulay refuses to say if he was sore over the way the high command treated him all these years: 8216;8216;Allah willed so, that8217;s how I look at it.8217;8217;

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But the context leads him to Omar Khayyam: 8216;8216;Mujhe aadha gilaas kyon mila, mat bolo. Bolo, mujhe poora aadha mila Don8217;t ask me why did I get half the peg. Rather say I got full-half.8217;8217;

Antulay thanks his leaders 8212; the party chief and the Prime Minister. 8216;8216;There are innumerable Congress people who haven8217;t got even a drop, compared to half the peg that I have,8217;8217; he returns to Omar Khayyam.