Ahead of the 22-day yatra in protest against the amended Citizenship Act and the proposed National Population Register, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha said on Sunday the deliberate exclusion of the Muslim community from the legislation was to ‘humiliate’ them.
The Rashtra Manch, an organisation helmed by Mr. Sinha along with two other groups, is undertaking a 3,000-km “Gandhi Shanti Yatra” that will begin from Mumbai’s Apollo Bunder on January 9 and conclude at the Raj Ghat on January 30.
“Many like me feel that by discriminating on the basis of religion the government has violated the basic structure of the Constitution. And the omission of the Muslim community from the legislation has been done to humiliate them,” Mr. Sinha told The Hindu.
Mr. Sinha said if the government’s intentions were right they would have included the ‘Rohingya’ community who had been forced to flee Myanmar. Pakistan, Bangaldesh and Afghanistan are not the only Islamic countries of the world. There are 54 members of the Organisation of Islamic Countries which have many Hindu residents, so why not include these countries too, he asked. The government had also chosen to ignore the long-standing refugee communities in our country comprising the Tibetans and the Tamil community from Sri Lanka, he said.
“The basic purpose of the government is to keep the nation and the people involved in this communal debate and not talk about the more basic issues of economy.”
The yatra will seek to re-direct the narrative on more pressing and basic problems of the perilous state of economy and the agrarian crisis, he said.
On the NRC, Mr. Sinha said the government was trying to create confusion with its double-speak. “The government has been lying repeatedly. Home Minister Amit Shah has repeatedly said both inside and outside Parliament that it will be implemented and all ghupaitye [infiltrators] will be weeded out. And now the Prime Minister says his government never spoke about the NRC. It’s a blatant lie,” Mr. Sinha said.
