India had been working on the citizenship list for the north-eastern states for some time. By the end of August, it was reported that India had excluded almost 1.9 million people from the list. However, they all have been given around 4 months to take their voices to the court.
Recently, the ruling right-wing party of India, Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) demands that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be implemented nationwide. Prominent leaders like the Home Minister, Amit Shah, often considered as one arm of Prime Minister Modi, have been a supporter of this.
BJP is known to be a proHindu citizens party. As a result, the Muslim community feels that they are being targetted. Muslims in India contributes to 14% of the population which is almost 1.3 billion people in numbers. Muslim scholars and leaders have urged all the Muslim communities to keep their documents safe and prepared for the NRC.
Equality for all citizens of the country
However, the main concern arose when the leaders of the ruling party openly said that the Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists should not mind this at all. This somewhat gave birth to the panic amongst the citizens of the Muslim community.
People have not failed to notice that Shah had called the Bangladeshi immigrants as “termites”, and was found later defending what he said. Common people find this move by the party to be bizarre because a lot of people, especially the rural ones, will face a lot of troubles proving their citizenship.
People that came to India during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war have lived here for almost 60 years now. They have seen 3 different generations growing up in this country and now consider India as their home. Besides Bangladesh, refugees come to India from Sri Lanka and Tibet too.
As of a report by the United Nations report, India is a host to almost 200,000 refugees by 2017. However, BJP claimed the number to be 300,000 in a parliamentary session. Despite all of this, BJP spokesperson has assured that authentic citizens of the country should not be bothered about it.
