'Not Just Muslims, Citizenship Act, NRC Will Affect all of India'

Indian student leader-turned-politician Kanhaiya Kumar has accused Narendra Modi government of launching a two-pronged onslaught on the country through the amended Citizenship Act and the looming National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, saying that it will put every poor citizen who does not have his documentation in place at risk of being sent to detention centres.

"The (India) government says that the two initiatives will not affect the country's Muslim citizens. On the contrary, it will affect Muslims as well as every poor citizen who does not have the documents they will demand when the NRC exercise is launched. This will affect all of India," the Communist Party of India (CPI) leader told NDTV in an interview on Wednesday (Dec 18).

He said the amended Citizenship Act and the NRC should be viewed together to get a complete picture of the threat they pose to India. 

Kumar, who used to head the Jawaharlal Nehru University's student union before becoming a full-fledged politician, said it is this very concern that has made students cutting across states stirred up in protest against the amended Citizenship Act. 

"If the government does not give up its divide-and-rule strategy, all the people who love this country and its constitution will come out agitating," he was quoted by NDTV as saying.

His comments come at a time when students and opposition parties across India are up in arms against the amended Citizenship Act, which aims to make it easier for non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to become Indian nationals. 

While critics claim that the amended law is inherently communal, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders such as Himanta Biswa Sarma have already indicated that the amended Citizenship Act is meant to provide protective support to non-Muslim migrants when the NRC exercise is launched.

The CPI leader dismissed the argument that politics is best kept out educational institutions, pointing out that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were student leaders before they shot into prominence. 

"It's the responsibility of educational institutions to turn students into responsible citizens. And being a responsible citizen means protesting if there is an attack on the Constitution, if there is an attack on the unity or diversity of the country, or if there is an unconstitutional law being introduced to divide the people," he was quoted by NDTV as saying. 

The primary problem, he said, was with the center not listening to the country's Mann Ki Baat.

"It's very sad that the Prime Minister only cares to talk about what's on his mind. If he was ready to listen to what's on the minds of students, the country wouldn't have been fronting such a situation today. It is only when a government stops listening to the people's voice that they are forced to come out on the streets in protest," Kumar said. 

Source: NDTV.com