Thiruvananthapuram joined the protests happening in various parts of India, against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, which was passed in the Lok Sabha and is being tabled in Rajya Sabha. At the Tagore Theatre, the main venue of the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), a mostly-young group of delegates and activists carried placards, shouting slogans against the bill and burning copies of it.
‘Eligibility of citizenship not religion’, ‘Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is against the Constitution’ and several other messages were carried by the protestors. “They are trying to sell out and destroy the freedom, democracy and secularism of our country. Withdraw the bill!” the protestors shouted their slogans.
CPI(M) Politburo member MA Baby, who was attending the film festival, also took part in the protest and spoke about the controversial bill, that makes people belonging to certain religions eligible for Indian citizenship. The bill amends the Citizenship Act of 1955 to make Hindus, Parsis, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs from the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who came to India before December 31, 2014, eligible for citizenship. But not Muslims.
“I am standing in a place where a hundred years ago, (social reformer) Sree Narayana Guru said that man does not need religion or caste. One’s religion is the human religion and caste is the human caste, he said. The danger in the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is that for the first time in India’s history, religion will be considered as one of the criteria needed to qualify for Indian citizenship. Here in Thiruvananthapuram, it is considered wrong to even ask someone's religion. The Indian Constitution incorporates this,” MA Baby said.
Everyone, believers or non-believers have a right to citizenship, the Communist leader added. “India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru believed in that. He said that when he died, his body should not be submitted for any religious rituals. It is such an India that the (central) government is ‘Talibanising’ now.”