Who gets to reside in a country, to access benefits provided by a representative elected body? I ask this in the wake of Citizenship Amendment Act recently legislated in the Indian parliament. It "provides a path to Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities fleeing persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan." It is aimed to work in conjunction with the National Register of Citizens. The latter informs the government who to remove and the former hands it the tool to do so legitimately without risking to lose the Hindu vote bank that it wants to appease.
This act, which is now a bill, excludes Muslims from the proposed faster process of naturalization. I think about my friend from Afghanistan, half of whose family fled to Canada, and the other half to India. They ran from the devastation spread in Kabul by Al-Qaeda, propelled by the US. What would her father be thinking about this new legislation? All those other minorities within minority that flee to find a safe haven from persecution along various lines like sect, caste, sexuality, beliefs. If Canada did such a thing, discriminating against immigrants who weren't from a European descent, what would happen to all these Indians that have come here to make a new life?
What ultimately does the Modi-Shah duo want? Compare their denigrating views to those of an earlier Gujarati that they often quote - Mahatma Gandhi. Maybe since he had lived in foreign countries where he was a minority he realized the difficulty of not having the first class rights exercised by majorities. This may have informed him to have a holistic view and instill a message of unity.
Is this all for political gains? India will severe its political ties with Afghanistan and Bangladesh, if not Pakistan, which have been amicable relationships. One thing to commend is that this duo very well knows how to play the law, and that comes with deep knowledge of loopholes. Their trickery is indicative of their fickle mind. They do not bring reforms through the usual process of democracy (see the abrogation of article 370), but through use of authority. If they were righteous and were installing beneficial changes, democratic checks and balances would have proved them to be so. Their term has just begun. Four more years and this country will have gone through immense inhabitable changes. It is just a matter of time that India's official religion is announced as Hinduism.
People have been protesting about the discriminatory exclusion of Muslims. Also excluded are minorities from Sri Lanka, Myanmar and China. Even if the Supreme Court, which is just one of the institutions that has allowed itself to collapse under NDA, deems the CAA as constitutional, the fight today is about the change in the fabric of the nation that this law will bring. It promises to destroy the pluralistic society that our constitution makers envisioned. Students have been on the forefront of the agitation to not let this happen.
In the first week of the new decade, peacefully protesting students of Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) were attacked by masked and armed goons. The Delhi Police did not intervene to stop these attackers, and even let them leave out of the campus. Even up until now, no FIRs have been made by the police against any of the already identified people from various videos circulating from the night.
The other group that has been very vociferous in their dissent of the government is women. Women of Shaheen Bagh have inspired so many around the country to rise in order to protect the dream enshrined by India's constitution. Although there have been attempts to malign protesters by calling them all types of names, slandering their intentions and motivations, police clamp down.
But it is evident that the government is scared. If they stop talking about Citizenship, they will have to talk about emergency issues like economical crises, booming unemployment and inflation.
My friend today said he would of course feel angry if infiltrators entered his house. BJP's IT cell is too good a propaganda machine.
This act, which is now a bill, excludes Muslims from the proposed faster process of naturalization. I think about my friend from Afghanistan, half of whose family fled to Canada, and the other half to India. They ran from the devastation spread in Kabul by Al-Qaeda, propelled by the US. What would her father be thinking about this new legislation? All those other minorities within minority that flee to find a safe haven from persecution along various lines like sect, caste, sexuality, beliefs. If Canada did such a thing, discriminating against immigrants who weren't from a European descent, what would happen to all these Indians that have come here to make a new life?
What ultimately does the Modi-Shah duo want? Compare their denigrating views to those of an earlier Gujarati that they often quote - Mahatma Gandhi. Maybe since he had lived in foreign countries where he was a minority he realized the difficulty of not having the first class rights exercised by majorities. This may have informed him to have a holistic view and instill a message of unity.
Is this all for political gains? India will severe its political ties with Afghanistan and Bangladesh, if not Pakistan, which have been amicable relationships. One thing to commend is that this duo very well knows how to play the law, and that comes with deep knowledge of loopholes. Their trickery is indicative of their fickle mind. They do not bring reforms through the usual process of democracy (see the abrogation of article 370), but through use of authority. If they were righteous and were installing beneficial changes, democratic checks and balances would have proved them to be so. Their term has just begun. Four more years and this country will have gone through immense inhabitable changes. It is just a matter of time that India's official religion is announced as Hinduism.
People have been protesting about the discriminatory exclusion of Muslims. Also excluded are minorities from Sri Lanka, Myanmar and China. Even if the Supreme Court, which is just one of the institutions that has allowed itself to collapse under NDA, deems the CAA as constitutional, the fight today is about the change in the fabric of the nation that this law will bring. It promises to destroy the pluralistic society that our constitution makers envisioned. Students have been on the forefront of the agitation to not let this happen.
In the first week of the new decade, peacefully protesting students of Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) were attacked by masked and armed goons. The Delhi Police did not intervene to stop these attackers, and even let them leave out of the campus. Even up until now, no FIRs have been made by the police against any of the already identified people from various videos circulating from the night.
The other group that has been very vociferous in their dissent of the government is women. Women of Shaheen Bagh have inspired so many around the country to rise in order to protect the dream enshrined by India's constitution. Although there have been attempts to malign protesters by calling them all types of names, slandering their intentions and motivations, police clamp down.
But it is evident that the government is scared. If they stop talking about Citizenship, they will have to talk about emergency issues like economical crises, booming unemployment and inflation.
My friend today said he would of course feel angry if infiltrators entered his house. BJP's IT cell is too good a propaganda machine.
Dear friend, today the infiltrators are Muslims. They have moved to Dalits. Soon they will make Christians the state enemy. If you keep supporting this so called nationalism that excludes even a single community, one day you will see my Sikh brethren being stripped off of their citizenship. Is that when you will realize you lived through the same bigotry spread by Nazis, that you once felt so bad about the Jews?Received on WhatsApp. Sometimes that Alternative University gets it right. pic.twitter.com/YYHJRJ81H4— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) January 22, 2020