The introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 by Union Home Minister Amit Shah that seeks to provide citizenship to the persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, and Buddhists barring Muslims has ruffled a few feathers from the journalism fraternity. As a new result, many a ‘secular’ journalists have started raising up false alarms and preposterous assertions to criticise the tabled Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019.
Amit Shah says Partition took place on the basis of Partition. FALSE. It took place on the basis of secularism. One side chose secularism and one side rejected it. https://t.co/ri5kCiCWWm
— Shivam Vij (@DilliDurAst) December 9, 2019
One of the grieving journalist-Shivam Vij, known for his perpetually dithering opinions, seems to have been thoroughly rattled by the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019. In stark denial of reality, Vij claimed that the partition of undivided India happened on the basis of secularism and not on the basis of religion.
Vij posted a tweet repudiating Union Home Minister’s statement that the partition of the country happened on the religious line. “Amit Shah says partition of the country happened on the basis of Religion. FALSE. It took place on the basis of secularism. One country chose secularism and one side rejected it,” Vij tweeted.
Responding to the opposition’s claim that the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 runs contrary to the principles of equality and secularism enshrined in the Constitution, Shah lambasted the Congress party for being responsible for dividing the country on the grounds of religion.
“The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill wouldn’t have been needed if the Congress had not allowed partition on basis of religion. It was the Congress that divided the country on religious lines, not us,” Shah exclaimed in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the bill.
However, Vij, known for overtly harbouring sympathies for the Congress party, quickly came to its defence, by not only turning his back on the country’s recorded history but also unabashedly distorting it.
India was divided into present India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) because a significant Muslim population couldn’t stand the Hindu preponderance in the undivided country. Their insecurity and apprehensions were stoked by Muslim League’s rabble-rousing leaders with the aim to drive a wedge between the two communities. The Congress party, on the other hand, utterly failed in dismantling the Muslim League’s highly communalised propaganda and preserving the country’s territorial integrity. It gave in to the Muslim League’s demand for carving out a separate and secure homeland for the nation’s Muslim majority.
Muslim League wanted a separate nation for Muslims, and the Congress party agreed to it. Therefore, the partition happened because of religion, not secularism.
While many argue that the country was divided on the religious line because of the Congress’ refusal to share power with the Muslim League, a raft of historians believe that it was Jawaharlal Nehru’s thirst for power that emboldened Jinnah in his pursuit to create Pakistan.
The partition of the country, as Shivam would have us believe did not happen on the basis of secularism. In fact, it happened, on the premise of ubiquitous religious division. Millions of Muslims migrated to Pakistan, because they wanted to live in an Islamic nation while millions of Hindus were forced to shift to India because they felt threatened to live alongside Muslim supremacists who dreamt of having a ‘purged’ land for themselves.
Read: Shivam Vij is the ‘Kachcha Nimbu’ of ThePrint that gets to bat from both sides
This inter-community antagonism stemmed from the fact that India witnessed waves of communal riots following the advent of Islamic marauders in the country. The animosity between the two communities – Hindus and Muslims – widened when these Islamic rulers, who are often hailed by liberals as paragons of secularism, sanctioned, promoted and incentivised the massacres of Hindus just because they refused to embrace Islam. Hindus remained in the subjugation of the numerically inferior Muslims until the Mughal regime ended.
In fact, one of the founding principles of Pakistan was the revival of the “Islamic Glory Days”, referring to the above period of sprawling Muslim rule over the Indian subcontinent. However, for the liberal coterie, the continued subjugation of Hindus and the hegemony of Muslims is what secularism stands for. It is for this reason that Shivam claims that Pakistan was created on the basis of secularism and not on the basis of religion.
With this denial, Shivam not only attempts to distort the history, but he also proceeds to insult the deaths of millions of people who perished because of Pakistani leaders’ two-nation theory-a demand to partition India on the basis of religion.
