Stand up for the constitution #Scrap CAB 2019 #NoNRC

New Delhi: Citizenship has been defined as the right to have rights. Citizenship in India is based on the non-negotiable principles of equality and non-discrimination. India, when it became Independent (1947) and thereafter when it firmly rooted itself in an inclusive and composite nationhood, in 1950, accepted that people of all faiths, creeds, castes, languages and genders, equally and without discrimination are Indian.
In sharp contrast to this foundational commitment and history, over the past six years, there are clear political moves to fundamentally assault and redefine this Constitutional basis of both Indian nationhood and citizenship. Especially now, with the newly drafted proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 (that is now proposed to be re-introduced in the 2019 Winter Session of Parliament) and second through a hurried, and not thoroughly debated all India-level NPR-National Register of Citizens (NRC) process.
Both these moves need to be categorically protested and condemned.
Courtesy “twitter/timesofindia” Courtesy “twitter/tv9gujarati” Courtesy “twitter/tv9gujarati” Courtesy “twitter/ndtv” CAB 2019 CAB (2019) makes a promise to entertain requests for refuge and citizenship to all those ‘persecuted minorities’ from three Islamic countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who reached India before either 2014 or later. The amendments by giving special privileges to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jain, Parsis and Christians from these three countries, single out Muslims for exclusion. For example, neither the Ahmadiyas, who are undoubtedly persecuted in Pakistan, nor do possible asylum seekers like the Rohingyas from Myanmar or Tamils from Sri Lanka have any place here.
For the first time there is a statutory attempt to not just privilege peoples from some faiths but at the same time relegate another, Muslims, to second-rate status. The proposed amendments to India’s 1955 citizenship law (Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019) need to be strongly rejected on these counts alone, in that they are divisive and discriminatory in character. The CAB, 2019 is at odds with Constitutional secular principles and a violation of Articles 13, 14, 15, 16 and 21 which guarantee the right to equality, equality before the law and non discriminatory treatment by the Indian state.
NPR, NRC This regime threatens to go further. Through the process of enlisting for a National Population Register (NPR) and thereafter a National Register of Citizens(NRC), the present government appears intent on causing huge upheavals within Indian society. Assam has, especially since 2013 been reeling under the impact of this ill-conceived exercise. Apart from the huge material costs, the human costs have been immeasurable. Death, families torn apart; detention camps and foreigners’ tribunals; fear, the spectre of statelessness – this is what the ordinary people, especially minorities, Dalits, women, children and the poor have had to suffer and continue to suffer. The worst impacted are women and children.