The kind of courage which Modi government has shown in not yielding to the political pressure coming from Assam over Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 and continued going forward in the right direction is really commendable and worth applauding. The bill is probably one of the first legislation of the independent India which will help the persecuted Hindus of the Indian subcontinent although the bill also covers other religious communities such as Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and Christians.
The bill implicitly recognizes the unfortunate reality that the reason of persecution of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan is due to the theology of Islam which mandates discriminatory treatment for kafirs, and especially pagans who aren’t even eligible for the status of Zimmi in Islamic jurisprudence except for Hanafi school of Sunni sect of Islam. The persecuted Hindus by Islam and its followers had no other country to go, and the land which they had venerated and worshipped for millennial was made legally inaccessible to them.
Although the myopic Assamese protesting over this bill due to linguistic chauvinism can’t differentiate between the Bangladeshi Hindu and Bangladeshi Muslim, Muslims don’t suffer from any such delusion. They know that linguistic identity is contingent to their Islamic identity and this was manifested when Bengali speaking Muslims killed Bengali Hindus en masse during the Direct Action Day of 1946 and similar action was repeated in Noakholi in present day Bangladesh. Rather than recognizing and appreciating the fact that a demography in the favour of Hindus will ultimately help them in the struggle against the ever increasing Muslim community, they prefer to get thrashed by the likes of Badruddin Ajmal. Second, they must understand the fact that the bill nowhere mandates that all the Bangladeshi Hindus will be compulsorily settled in Assam.
The bill will also help thousands of Hindus who have fled from Pakistan due to atrocity inflicted on them by Muslims and currently living in Rajasthan, Jammu, Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh struggling for citizenship. It’s one of the rare opportunities for us to mellow the wounds of Hindus who suffered the trauma of partition in the unimaginable proportion. Once again, the grit and determination shown by the Modi government in this regard are huge despite jeopardizing their political prospects in the Assam.
