CAA-A necessary evil or a framed Hornet’s Nest?

Waves of dissolution, washed the shores of Democratic Indian Republic on 9th December 2019, when words of “Citizenship”, “Persecution” & “Minority”, oozed out of the mouth of India’s Home Minister in Lok Sabha.

A bill was announced, that’d arrange the above three quoted words in a structured document & purvey asylum to those who reek of misfortune, religious intolerance imposed on them & living in denial of basic human rights. Speaking of rights, the far-left or the secular left, was quick to reach the vicinity, where the waves had crashed hard, and there they erected the flag of victim-hood, to set a precedent of injustice, being deliberately done on one particular community. In doing so, they only managed to corner a simple correction of a historical blunder, by bordering it with conundrum walls.

“Citizenship Amendment Bill, will provide homage to the persecuted minorities of Afghanistan, Bangladesh & Pakistan, who have been living in India as refugees, the communities included are Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, Jews & Sikhs”. These words by Home Minister Amit Shah, traveled faster than a kid returning from school, before the start of summer vacation. It was evident on what was missing, who were missing & going by the precedent, we assumed was set by BJP, we missed out on learning why they were missing. Labels of “Unconstitutional”, “fascist”, “Hindutva terrorism”, were lamented through streets of every city, on anyone who had even remotely supported the current government. Ironically, these labels were distributed by secular modernists, who refuse to learn from history, the horrors of pseudo-secularism & liberalism.

While this bill may indeed appear unconstitutional, when seen through the rosy tinted glasses of secularism, history tells otherwise. Let’s go back all the way to the day, a massive chunk of a newly independent India’s land, was given to Islamists, who didn’t wish to live with the “Kaafirs”.

It isn’t a new finding, that the partition of India, was centrally based on the grounds of religion. However, words exchanged between Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first PM & Liaquat Ali Khan, his Pakistani counterpart, during the partition, have recently surfaced.

A pact was signed between the two PMs to protect & shelter their minorities, Hindus in Islamic Pakistan and Muslims in…well, Secular India. The treaty was infamously known as Nehru-Liyaquat Agreement, equally owned by both the countries on 8th April 1950. In the backdrop of CAA being effective, it is pretty evident which country has masqueraded as a rolling ball of doldrums in terms of minority protection & which nation has put up pedestals, to host Deobandi & Barelvi alike.

The Great Mahatma Gandhi, an unequivocal denigrator of the Two Nation Theory, was often found under the same umbrella as Jinnah, when it came to the genesis of the newly created Islamic Republic, and all the subsidy it could garner as an underpin from India, to survive & ascend. Not to mention, it was Mahatma’s decision to fast till death, in order to refute India’s decision to uphold financial aid to Pak, which led to his unfortunate assassination.

When the clouds of grey were covered with shades of darkness, and the storms were strong enough to breach Gandhi’s umbrella, to drench him & Jinnah with culpability & delinquency, it was then the Mahatma saw Jinnah run away, it was then he witnessed the harrowing consequences of his own doing, it was then his eyes engulfed the mass persecution of Sikhs & Hindus. Much to his dismay, his idea of a theocracy based Muslim country, had dissolved into a canvas portraying religious persecution, coloured with the blood of minorities.

So The Father of Nation wrote, “It is the bounden duty of the majority in Pakistan, as of the majority in the Union, to protect the small minority whose honour and life and property are in their hands….

To drive every Muslim from India and to drive every Hindu and Sikhs from Pakistan will mean war and eternal ruin for the country. (H, 28–9–1947, p. 352)

So to say, Gandhi would have been ashamed to the core, had he lived to this day to see the bill being enacted, is a fallacy & a contradiction to the Great Man’s ideology, who acknowledged the wrong doings imposed on the minorities of Pakistan & was very specific about Sikhs & Hindus to be given refuge in India.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the pilot of Indian constitution, had a very resolute solution to this quandary. The man who understood the greater devil rising both sides of the border, post partition, saw through the trepidation & thus passed an absolution: Population exchange. He wanted Muslims of India, to be exchanged with Hindus of Pakistan, to dissolve the communalism he could see forming, once and for all. Dr Ambedkar wrote:

The Musalmans are scattered all over Hindustan — though they are mostly congregated in towns — and no ingenuity in the matter of redrawing of boundaries can make it homogeneous. The only way to make Hindustan homogeneous is to arrange for exchange of population. Until that is done, it must be admitted that even with the creation of Pakistan, the problem of majority vs. minority will remain in Hindustan as before and will continue to produce disharmony in the body politic of Hindustan..(An excerpt taken from his book ‘Pakistan or Partition of India’)

The idea of the great visionary, was rejected by Pandit Jawaharlal “Secular” Nehru, as does the current ‘Jai BHIM Jai Meem’ lobby, unaware, repudiated of history, facts, research & works of India’s Constitution drafter, whom they so proactively use as a tool to deflect BJP’s agendas, ironically, going against everything he stood for.

Let us understand the bill, which later became an act, in depth & analyze the pros & cons if any. It was Manmohan Singh, who felt it was India’s moral obligation, to offer asylum to the minorities of our neighboring countries(Afghanistan, Bangladesh & Pakistan to be referred as ABP), suffering from the atrocities committed on them, in the form of religious persecution. For a man whose silence was often taken as sainthood, he was exclusively vocal about the issue in 2003.

So why do we hear loud echoes of “Fascism”, “Unconstitutional”, “Islamophobe” etc. when BJP was able to pass in Rajya Sabha, what was started by Manmohan Singh and co in 2003-4?

Yes, the former government didn’t specify which communities will board the ship, to avoid the sea of uncertainties, but is it a rocket science to understand, who would fall under ‘religiously persecuted minorities’, in an Islamic Republic?

With the creation of Pakistan, there was a communal shift which the entire country witnessed, while everyone understood, there’d be a rise in Muslim population in a country, specifically established for the Muslim community, no one expected the Hindu & Sikh population to deteriorate at such a mammoth magnitude. From being world’s second largest largest Hindu country on 14th August 1947, West Pakistan orchestrated a complete annihilation of Hindus, reducing the community to 1.9% during the start of 2000s.

While East Pakistan(Today’s Bangladesh), was a self declared secular republic till 1955, it made the world see one of the ugliest, bloodiest genocides of all time, massacring hordes of Hindu men, women & kids, reducing the number from 22% to <7%, post declaring itself an Islamic Country.

So the Non-Muslims, who fled from these Muslim countries, to avoid persecution at the hands of Islamists, came to India, should be sheltered as per Mahatma Gandhi, given refuge as per the moral obligation of India, acknowledged by Manmohan Singh, are instead witnessing buses being burnt, government properties vandalized, stones being pelted at police, just because a particular section believes, along with the prey, the predator must be given citizenship as well.

A burning question rises, Why No Shia & Ahemadiya are included in the bill?

To answer this, let’s dive back to the pool of history set in Black & White. Pakistan’s First Prime Minister, Liyaquat Ali Khan, was a Muhajir. Pakistan’s First Foreign Minister Zafarullah Khan, was an Ahemadiya. Father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was a Shi’a, who despite being a pork eater and alcoholic(two things strictly forbidden in Islam), was given the title of Quaid-e-Azam(Great leader in Urdu).

The ordinal status of the ministers kept increasing & the rulers became servants. Now Shias & Ahemadiyas are persecuted, wait hold on…. But they’re Muslims, why are they under the same scanner as Non-Muslims? Well, not exactly, they aren’t persecuted because of their religion, they follow the same religion as the Sunni majority of Pakistan. Couple of fingers are pointed at them, as they tend to practice their religion a bit differently than the majority.

So are they a persecuted minority in Pakistan? YES. Are they religiously persecuted? NO. Can they be included in the bill, which offers citizenship to minorities, suffering from religious persecution? NO. Can they avail Indian citizenship in the future? YES, the door is always open. I believe there are many who can sing a better melody than Adnan Sami.

Ahemadiyas & Shias are persecuted in Pakistan, because of Pakistan’s egregious governance. Their suffering, falls under the domain of secretarial persecution. A country, formed on the basis of religion, has shown us that, theocracy cannot exist as a single religious body.

It comes as a least surprise that, break India forces have existed in India, ever since Jinnah created Pakistan. The man left the country, leaving behind many planted seeds, those seedlings have turned into trees, mammoth enough to house anti-nationalists & Islamists. Citing out bigotry, hating on the country, labeling the government fascist, while drawing out communal differences has become second nature to them.

A hidden agenda has surfaced, with the last year’s Anti CAB protests. There was an observed daylight between, what the bill stands for & what the protesters understood of it, however banners of ‘I am Babari’ & ‘Free Kashmir’, in an Anti CAB protest suggested the sinister plotting, behind the big setup done by opposition, to frame & demonize the current government in front of the international media. What appears as an Anti CAB protest, is a masked vitriol against the Ram Mandir verdict & abrogation of Article 370, and in reality has nothing to do with the bill.

It can be understood & established that, while there’s nothing Anti Muslim about CAA, the major protests against CAA have all been Anti Hindu. From Khilafat 2.0(to remind of the Malabar Hindu Genocide, where 2500 Hindus were slaughtered during 1920 Khilafat Movement) being written on one of the walls of Jamia Millia Islamia, Alligarh Muslim University students chanting “Hindutva ki kabar khudegi AMU ki chati par”, to JNU students screaming loudly from their epiglottis, “Bharat tere tukde honge, insha allah”, it has been deliberately done to malign Hindus & shoot bullets at Hinduism in the name of protests.

This hatred towards Hindus, started getting magnified with each passing day, the extremism thickening & opacity thinning, from translucent to the agenda being transparent enough, for everyone, even for the ones with a clouded vision, to see what the protest is about. This was no more about being a democrat, this was no longer about fighting for constitutional rights, the day placards were replaced with petrol bombs, and a Hanuman Temple was desecrated in Bihar, during the protests, a small section of minorities, had already declared a communal war, which got cloaked by the fog of “secularism”.

Bigotry & personal attacks are no one’s firsthand property, nowadays one encounters umpteen number of liberals who take personal jabs at people, without even understanding what they hate. Spreading hatred against any organization or group of people due to one’s sheer ignorance, is as evil as doing it against a religion. An organization like RSS, which was started for service, and unlike major religions, don’t have deep pockets & funding, is hated on because many progressive liberals don’t know what they do.

Conclusion:

One needs to be open to constructive dialogue & discussion with both sides, without personally attacking the opposition. Spreading hatred in the name of attacking hatred isn’t a solution. Living in a bubble and having preconceived notions are understandable, but seeing beyond that is intelligence.

An act centrally focused on providing citizenship & with that human rights, to the defaulters of religious intolerance, should not be the reason a country burns. The country & the people of it, should see it as a long rope which binds their camaraderie, including the ones who had their hands chopped off.

So, is CAA a necessary evil or a framed hornet’s nest? Probably both, if you see through the glasses of secularism, remove the lenses & it boils down to a simple rectification of a historical blunder.

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