PROTESTORS across India, particularly in northeast India, set fire to tyres and cut down trees to block roads on Tuesday after lawmakers approved the government’s new citizenship bill. The legislation was placed before the upper house on Wednesday. It would fast-track citizenship for religious minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Earlier, India’s lower house passed the bill following a hot debate that witnessed one Muslim MP compared the government to the Nazis. Once law is passed in upper house, it will be easier for minorities, excluding Muslims, to become Indians. Modi’s government said Muslims are excluded because they do not face persecution in these three countries. Modi said this bill is in line with India’s centuries-old ethos of assimilation and belief in humanitarian values.
In protest of the bill that goes against India’s secular identity and diversity of unity, around 1,200 scientists and scholars published a joint letter expressing their ‘dismay’ at the legislation, saying the Constitution called for members of all faiths to be treated equally. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom Monday called for sanctions on Amit Shah, Chief of BJP and central home minister, while terming the bill as a ‘dangerous turn in the wrong direction’. The opposition said the bill is a violation of the Constitution – the Right to Equality, they claimed that citizenship cannot be given on the basis of religion. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said it violated the basic idea of India that religion can never be a reason for citizenship.
It’s very unfortunate for us that once a secular country India is now modifying itself in line with the extreme religious ideology. And that is done by BJP government led by Modi. As the 1947 refugee crisis following the great partition of the subcontinent is not yet healed, the new law might cause fresh instability in the region.
