IAS officer Shah Faesal took a dig at Pakistan on Tuesday after Rishi Sunak was appointed as the UK’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister. He cited his own journey as a civil services officer in India and said that nowhere else on earth do Muslims enjoy such freedom
“It’s possible only in India that a Muslim youngster from Kashmir can go on to top the Indian Civil Service exam, rise to top echelons of the government, then fall apart with the government and still be rescued and taken back by the same government,” he tweeted in a thread.
Shah Faesal, a 2009 Kashmiri IAS topper, had resigned from service in January 2019 and announced his decision to join active politics. He said that he resigned to protest the “unabated killings in Kashmir, the marginalisation of Muslims and subversion of public institutions” by the government at the Centre.
Faesal, who floated the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM) party after resigning as a public servant, had earlier been detained under the stringent Public Safety Act immediately after the abrogation of the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Before that, the doctor-turned-bureaucrat received flak for calling the country ‘rapistan’ while referring to the increase in the number of rapes.
“Rishi Saunak’s appointment might be a surprise for our neighbours where the Constitution bars non-Muslims from top posts in the Government, but Indian democracy has never discriminated ethnic and religious minorities from the rest,” Faesal tweeted on Tuesday.
“As equal citizens, Indian Muslims enjoy freedoms that are unthinkable in any other so called Islamic country.
Citing the ups and downs in his career as an IAS officer, Faesal said: “My own life-story is about a journey, shoulder to shoulder, with each fellow citizen of this nation of 1.3 Billion people, where I have felt owned, respected, encouraged and at times pampered at every step of the way. That’s India.”
“From Maulana Azad to Dr. Manmohan Singh and Dr. Zakir Hussain to HE President Droupadi Murmu, India has always been THE land of equal opportunity and the road to the top is open to all. Won’t be wrong if I say I have been to the mountain top and seen it for myself,” he added. (India Today)
