If misguided youths decide to burn public properties, will it cover up hard truths, if the social media in organized manner trends “police atrocities”, highlighting only the counter-action taken by the police to contain unruly hooligans, engaged in rampant public property destruction, will it hide the hard truths which led to the enactment of Citizenship Amendment Act. Before believing in the selective videos spread over the Nation for creating fear and chaos in the minds of Muslim minority by those who eye on vote bank politics, one needs to turn the pages of history to understand why the Indian Parliament enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act.
India has a glorious tradition of protecting the weak, this tradition has been rooted in its immemorial past, it’s not a new age phenomenon, but which is part of the great Indian tradition and culture. Our Nation won Independence in 1947, but the freedom was gifted with deep bruises, the Nation had to pay a price for the freedom, the two Nation theory staunchly advocated by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, coupled with the little resistance from Indian National Congress, to the divisive agenda propounded by Jinnah resulted in partition. Jinnah became, Quaid-i-azam, and the first Governor General of the Pakistan, the bloody battle for a Muslim state became a reality. When India retained its character as a Nation, graced with its inherent qualities, inherited from its rich and diverse past, which essentially included protecting its minorities, Pakistan became a synonym for religious persecution of its minorities. The religious minorities faced, severe persecution based on their religious identity, the places of worship, their lives were all left on the altar of mercy of the majoritarian Islamic State. When we look into the very genesis of the Pakistan, it’s a state born out of immense hatred and enmity to the fellow beings, its very birth is rooted in a separate religious identity, it’s fathers, propagated that they could never live with the Hindus and essentially there has to be a division of the population on religious lines. India, retained its rich culture of preserving diversities, while no such attempts took place in Pakistan, resulting in the concretizing, of a more hardened Islamic Country. As the Islamic identity of Pakistan kept on hardening under various regimes it had, the minorities of Pakistan, especially the Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus were at the receiving end.
The “right to life” degraded, the rampant forceful religious conversions of Christians and the Hindus, the attacks on the religious worship places of Christians and the Hindus and the other minorities, made life hell. Along with Pakistan, the sub continent also witnessed, religious persecution in Afghanistan and Bangladesh as well, these countries and its treatment of religious minorities raises a million-dollar question, why the religious minorities are persecuted here in these three Countries? Why exodus of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus take place quite often and thirdly, why the persecuted minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan seek asylum in India? The answer is, it’s because of the faith in India as a Nation, capable to protect diversity, inherited from its immemorial past, which drives the minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, like, the Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus to seek protection to their lives in India. The Parliament has enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act within the Constitutional parameters, to extend the protection to the minorities who are at the receiving end due to religious persecution, the argument that the majority community in these three countries should also be included in the purview of amendment is a highly fallacious argument, its only because of the lack of sensitiveness to the minority communities rights in those countries, they seek asylum in India
The genocidal action in these neighbouring countries had even touched the Former Prime Minister, Shri. Man Mohan Singh, who too had strongly advocated a liberal approach in granting citizenship to the persecuted minorities in these neighbouring countries if circumstance demands, in the light of said statement, the present hue and cry over the Citizenship Amendment Bill by a section of opposition parties are all sound and fury signifying nothing. The amendment does not take away the rights of any Indian minority communities, on the other hand it is offering protection to the right to life of minorities, who are subjected to in human cruelties, the spirit of Constitutionalism is being held to a new high by the Government of India, rising up to its responsive role as a Nation committed to the rights of religious minorities and committed to the International treaties in this regard.
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