WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/48398
Dear Mr Ray,
This is an issue that I have long worried about since the Government
of India passed the 44th Amendment Act of the Constitution in 1978 to
remove the Right to Property from the fundamental rights that the
writers of the constitution had assured the people of independent
India. The right was removed as a ploy by the Indian government on an
assurance to poor land labourers that they would be given land that
belonged to the erstwhile zamindari class and the royal families
whose possessions were taken away when Privy Purses and Previleges
were abolished. In fact, this was only a means to deprive those who
were politically weak and lacked influence of their possessions.
The concent pf "eminent domain" is one that has been in practice
among capitalist societies and ancient monarchies like Britain alike,
for centuries, where either the crown or the state has a right over
all property within a country's borders. Historically this was always
a pretext on which rulers could take properties over if they wanted
them. Eminent domain was only a legal excuse that they offered to
justify plunder. While there have been arguments made that this is
justified in the "national interest" in the USA, the US Supreme Court
has allowed the taking over of the house of a retired teacher to
build a shopping mall on the premises, saying that the taxes that the
town would gain from the mall justified rendering the teacher
homeless. Similarly, the influential owners of the New York Times
have managed to take over a restaurant in New York in order to build
their headquarters on the premises. These laws have only been a means
to deprive the poor of their property whether it is Nandigram or
Singur where the CPM government used the 44th Amendment to take poor
farmers' land away or in Massachussetts where the teacher lost his
home or finally in New York where a poor restaurant owner was
victimised. Nobody in West Bengal is going to take over Chandan
Basu's property, in Massachussetts Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are unlikely to lose their homes and in New York, the $ 95 million estate put up for sale by the Sulzbergers who own the New York Times, will never be taken away for public purposes.
If India is to be anything better than yet another petty tyranny, it
needs to throw the 44th Amendment of the Constitution in the dustbin
and look seriously at repatriating land to the many poor across the
country who have been deprived of the only thing that they own.
Best wishes,
Mehul Kamdar
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