Scores of people, carrying placards and shouting slogans, gathered at Bengaluru’s Mysore Bank circle on Sunday afternoon to protest against the Centre’s move to bring in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).
The protest was organised by a Bengaluru-based techie Ashok Koyi and members of the All India People’s Forum and other progressive groups also joined the demonstration.
The protest comes after on Monday Home Minister Amit Shah announced that the NRC implemented across the country by 2024.
Opposing the NRC and the CAB, the protestors contended both these laws will destroy the secular foundations of this country. They iterated that the Constitution of India guarantees equality before the law and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, which the CAB and NRC will violate this.
Demanding that government withdraw both these bills immediately, several protesters likened the present ruling union government with ‘Nazi Germany’.
They said by offering only non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan citizenship, this Bill blatantly ignores the plight of persecuted Muslim minorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sri Lankan Tamils, Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and many other persecuted communities in the region.
Critics of the NRC, including former IAS officers and scholars, say while the NRC is anti-poor and against the migrant, tribal population, the CAB is unabashedly communal. Incidentally, in Assam, where the first such exercise was carried out, there were reports of retired soldiers being stripped off their citizenship due to lack of legacy documents.
Speaking to TNM, Ashok said, “There is a narrative thrown at us that so-called illegal immigrants are exploiting our resources. Even if that is the case, NRC and such exercises is not the solution.”
He asked, “If there is a rat in the house, do we burn the house down or find the rat?
He stressed many people who have been living in India for generations do not have any documents other than ration cards, voter ID cards. “What is the need for a poor landless person to have other documents?”
“So the only way for these people to exist for the current government is to bribe government officials or create fake documents,” he added.
Safeer Asif, another protestor, said, “We should be careful of the people we elect. While the government is expected to work for the welfare of the people, it is giving unnecessary trouble to the people. When they say everybody else from other countries will be allowed and only Muslims will be rejected, is it not wrong? We call our country as Bharat Mata and we call all of us as sons of Bharat Mata, then why are we being discriminated against?”