The party’s national secretary contradicted the Centre’s stand that a refugee of any faith can apply for citizenship.
The Wire Staff 31/Dec/2019
New Delhi: Even as protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) have spread across the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government and its supporters have stuck to their position that the law, by granting citizenship to persecuted people, showcases the humane side of India.
When faced with the question of the conspicuous exclusion of Muslims from the religious communities that the law gives citizenship to, they have repeatedly said that while the Act only fast-tracks citizenship for the listed minorities, people of all faiths are still eligible to apply for Indian citizenship.
However, at least one BJP national secretary, Sunil Deodhar, doesn’t think so. The saffron party’s state-in-charge of Tripura and Andhra Pradesh, at a meeting in Anantapur on Sunday, said “that there will be no humanity shown towards Muslims coming illegally into India” even if they are “persecuted” in the three Islamic countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – that the CAA takes into account.
The Hindu reported Deodhar as saying that the BJP would not allow India to turn into a “dharmashala” (hospice) and that Muslims from Muslim-majority nations were not welcome, and that no citizenship would be offered to them.
Also read: The Bias Against Muslims in the CAA-NRC Fulfils a Promise the BJP Made in 1996
“It is the responsibility of those three nations to take care of their majority population as ‘partition’ of the country happened on the basis of religion. Only minorities in those countries subjected to persecution will be considered for citizenship, which was proposed by the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but never became a reality,” the party leader said.
However, while Deodhar seemed to refer to the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of 1950, he did not divulge its context and content. The pact was designed to avert another war between the two countries. Both countries agreed to allow partition refugees to dispose of their properties and pledged to treat minority communities with dignity by granting them their fundamental rights.
Deodhar further said that the Jan Sangh’s manifesto, and the BJP’s, had promised to bring the CAA, abrogate Article 370 and build a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
“Congress and the Communist parties always wanted citizenship given to persecuted minorities. But never made it happen, though the then Congress chief minister Tarun Gogoi of Assam had written to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,” the BJP leader said.
Also read: ‘Pakistan, Tukde Tukde Gang’: BJP Leaders Refuse to Engage With Anti-CAA Protestors
While the Congress and other opposition parties have specifically objected to the exclusion of Muslims in the CAA, and not to the idea of providing citizenship for refugees, Deodhar still went on to slam Rahul Gandhi by equating his statements on the issue with that of Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan.
He also thanked Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Aditynath for trying to recover money from protestors who had allegedly destroyed public property. Given that the BJP has often branded the Congress as a “party of Muslims”, Deodhar, in that context, invoked the grand old party’s support to the Khilafat movement in the pre-independence era to say that such alliances with Muslims were in the “genes of Congress leaders”.