In my opinion, there is nothing luxurious in having a nationality; it is just a basic human right. But, having said that, the Citizenship Amendment Bill is a fraudulent move that is being imposed on my country.
It is not just the attack on the soul of the Indian Constitution but it also puts the beliefs of the Great Swami Vivekananda into a garbage bag. Vivekananda was a personality who was extremely proud of the country for its universal tolerance, multiculturalism and multireligious demography.
How will I separate Bhagat Singh and Ashfaq-ul-ah Khan from each other, APJ Abdul Kalam and Atal ji, Bismillah Khan and his flute?
I learnt Hinduism, as a way of life, from my parents, family, friends and teachers. I never learned Hinduism as an ideology, but a way of life, so it doesn’t matter to me what any organisation thinks of Hinduism, as they are free to do so. And I am free to simply reject that.
I was never taught why others don’t follow Hinduism but I was told to follow my own beliefs by not making a mockery of others’ beliefs. Up to class 10th, I was not really aware of the word minority, because, I lived in a completely majoritarian and monocultural setup.
Now, this is my fifth consecutive year, in two minority educational institutes. I have learnt, here, in these two institutes, St. Xaviers College of Ranchi and Jamia Millia Islamia, how to treat minorities.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill is, of course, discriminatory and fills me with anger, because, whatever I was taught in childhood, now seems like fraud to me. I can’t get another childhood to learn hatred and bigotry. Religion should never be a criterion for citizenship in India.
At first sight, it may not seem that bad, but it’s binary with NRC, makes it dangerous, and I would be a lunatic to stand by that. If you are against infiltrators, be against them, no matter which religion they belong to. Also, by the government’s logic, they are weakening the voices of non-Muslim minorities in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It makes their position weaker in their respective nations. I believe this will yield multidimensional religious extremism, which obviously is regressive.
Finally, what about the feelings of the people of Assam? They have been used as a laboratory for experiments of this divisive idea of India. At the first go, the results didn’t suit the agenda of the ruling regime; will they now re-practice the process of citizenship in Assam? Just look at the economic cost of NRC. What will they do with people who won’t be able to prove that they are Indian? This is the worst that a state can do to its citizens – to ask them to prove their nationality. I am an Indian; why do I need to prove my nationality to anyone?