The Citizenship Amendment Bill set to be tabled today aims to give citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. While BJP has shown full faith and commitment to the bill, the ‘secular’ parties have been troubled with it simply because it aims to give citizenship to persecuted minorities of Islamic nations, therefore, doesn’t include Muslims. Shiv Sena, having recently turned ‘secular’ has certain issues with the bill as well.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut took to Twitter today to say that illegal intruders should be thrown out and immigrant Hindus should be given citizenship but they should not have voting rights since that would benefit BJP electorally.
Illegal Intruders should be thrown out . immigrant Hindus must be given citizenship,but @AmitShah let’s give rest to allegations of creating vote bank & not give them voting rights,what say ? And yes what about pandits,have they gone back to kashmir after article 370 was removed
— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) December 9, 2019
He asserted that there have been ‘allegations’ that BJP is giving citizenship to persecuted Hindus to “create vote bank” and to allay these fears, persecuted Hindus from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who seek citizenship of India must not be giving voting rights.
Further, in another insensitive remark, tagging Amit Shah, Sanjay Raut asks if the Kashmiri Pandits have gone back to Kashmir after the removal of Article 370.
This is essentially a hairbrained idea by Sanjay Raut since any Citizen of any country has voting rights. In fact, voting rights is one of the main pillars of citizenship for any individual and is a basic right that comes along with the citizenship of a nation.
While there were reports that Shiv Sena might defy the Congress High Command and support the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the parliament, this tweet by Sanjay Raut show how hollow their ideology is and how hollow their concern for Hindus is.
Read: India: A land with Hindu consciousness, which will forever be a natural home for Hindus
While Hindus in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are facing the worst sort of persecution, it is unfortunate that the main focus on an erstwhile Hindutva party would be that of BJP accruing electoral benefit rather than giving persecuted Hindus full citizenship of India with honour.
The opposition to CAB has come in many bizarre forms. The most prevalent argument against CAB is that it is anti-Muslim because it doesn’t give citizenship to ‘persecuted Muslims’ from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. What this argument fails to take into consideration is that the bill aims to give citizenship to persecuted minorities of that nation and thus includes Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians. Muslims are not a persecuted “minority” in Islamic nations and hence, it does not make sense to give them citizenship under a bill that aims to protect minorities of Islamic nations.
