Regarding Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), one misleading argument is that it will not affect Indian Muslims. Under the National Register of Citizens (NRC), proving citizenship will come down to production of documents, which many Indians, especially the poor and illiterate people in rural areas, may not have. If two families — one Hindu and one Muslim — thus get excluded, the Muslim family will be left more vulnerable. The Assam exercise, where a soldier who fought the Kargil war and an ex-President’s relatives were left out, is an example of how such an exercise is bound to cause unfair exclusion. Since 2014, all this government has done is asking the citizens stand in lines, first to deposit notes now to submit documents. Earlier, citizens were asked to prove that they don’t have black money; now, they are being asked to show that they are not infiltrators.
D.C. Dias,
Taleigao, Goa
The CAA-NRC combination is no doubt against Indian Constitution and against the vulnerable sections of our society who may not be able to produce documents. The government should have instead focused its attention on finding solutions to issues like economic slowdown, unemployment and Non-Performing Assets in banks. Hope the nationwide protests allow better sense to prevail and make the government take back the legislation.
Tarunpreet Malhan,
Ludhiana, Punjab
The main issue with the CAA concerns the North-Eastern States; their composition, culture, languages, tradition, everything is at stake. Many Indians living there see migrants as a threat to their existence. The Act is possibly the result of the Assam NRC, where many long-time residents were not able to produce sufficient documents and are now on the verge of being rendered stateless. The Central government’s rigidity has not helped matters.
Riya Shukla,
New Delhi
“If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind” — this adage explains well the country’s situation after giving a majority to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The insensibility of the ‘despotic duo’ to the concerns of citizens is alarming. It is shameful that the entire India has to now prove that they are citizens. Ideally, the onus should be on the state to prove that we are not citizens. An NRC will not only affect the Indian Muslims but also the political marginals across the country. Such an exercise, coupled with the CAA, will trigger a country-wide crisis and bring in its wake untold hardship and misery to the people.
M. Jameel Ahmed,
Mysuru
Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have failed to grasp the pulse of the people. Perhaps for the first time in the post-Independence era, we are witnessing the students and the youth coming to the centre stage with people from all religions, castes and creed joining hands to oppose the CAA-NRC combine. Unlike the civil movement led by J.P. Narayan, the present stir has surprisingly been leaderless, with people from different parts of the country agitating in unison. The government would do well to desist from stifling sane voices like Ramachandra Guha, who was detained while protesting peacefully. It is rightly articulated in the editorial “Protest and order” that the BJP leadership should urgently dispel the fears of the public over the implementation of the new naturalisation law.
Syed Sultan Mohiddin,
Kagithalapenta, Andhra Pradesh
There is no coming to consciousness without pain; now, we have a direct first-hand experience of the harm that the Hindutva-oriented right wing does to the close-knit fabric of our society. Promise vikas and acche din to come to power and, once in power, implement the divisive Hindutva agenda; now, people see the BJP’s true colours. Now, people have begun to realise how support to the Hindu right would prove to be an act of self-inflicted suffering. If they had known what lay in store for them under Modi 2.0, they may have never voted the BJP to power for the second time. The country’s impoverished people do not know what the NRC holds in store for them.
It needs reserves of strength to resist attempts by the ruling elites to rob the country of its uniqueness as a land of disparate races and religions with equality as a defining feature. The protesters risk being lathi-charged, tear-gassed, water-cannoned and taken to custody and listed as ‘trouble-makers’ and ‘miscreants’ despite being imbued with love of their country; they are unlike people who do not come out to vote because of bad weather or some prior engagements. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unguarded remark that the ‘rioters can be identified from their clothes’ was not only reflective of his flawed personality and tunnel vision but also his politics of polarisation. It has lowered the dignity of the exalted office he holds. Indian Muslims can now take comfort from the fact that secular-minded Indian Hindus in large numbers make common cause with them in opposing the CAA. The protests on this scale must have come as a rude awakening to Modi-Shah duo. Thankfully, Amit Shah has not yet claimed that the CAA has the ‘endorsement of all the 130 crore Indians’.
The protests are a signal to the Hindutva brigade to realise the futility of efforts to mutate India from a secular democracy into a Hindu rashtra. Making it a government-versus-people fight will be BJP’s undoing. No party or government, however powerful it may look, can quell the country’s democratic instincts. Wiser counsel must now prevail. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are now well advised to revoke the CAA and NRC and stop shooting themselves in the foot if they care to normalise the situation and improve their somewhat tarnished public image. This is the only option before them.
G. David Milton,
Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu
