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Amid the rising political interest and criticism of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) from the US and other parts of the globe, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said it is important to put it in the context of the Partition and underlined that there are a “number of examples” in which many countries have fast-tracked citizenship.
US Ambassador Eric Garcetti said on Saturday that the principles of religious freedom and equality under the law are a cornerstone of democracy. “And that is why we look at these things; it will be easier not to look at our friends. We invite you to do the same with our imperfect democracy; it is not a one-way street. But you cannot give up on principles, no matter how close you are with friends,” he said during India Today Conclave 2024.
Responding to this, MEA Jaishankar said: “I am not questioning the imperfections or otherwise of their democracy or their principles or lack of it. I am questioning their understanding of our history. If you hear comments from many parts of the world, it is as if the Partition of India never happened, there were no consequential problems which the CAA is supposed to address.”
“So, if you take a problem and “remove all the historical context from it, sanitise it and make it into a political correctness argument”, and say, ‘I have principles and don’t you have principles’, “I have principles too, and one of them is an obligation to people who were let down at the time of Partition,” he said while speaking at India Today Conclave.
Minister S Jaishankar countered by highlighting similar instances in US policies, citing amendments fast-tracking citizenship for minorities like Jews and Christians.
Minister S Jaishankar said he has a problem when people don’t hold up a mirror to their own policies. “Have you heard of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was about Jews from the Soviet Union? So you would ask yourselves, why only Jews?”
“Then there was this Lautenberg Amendment, which was about Christians and Jews in 1989. There was Specter Amendment…there was a law which was about a particular ethnicity from Vietnam because they had fought alongside Americans, there was fast-tracking of Hungarians after the Hungarian revolution, there was fast-tracking of Cubans in the 1960s.” “So, if you were to ask me, have other countries, other democracies, fast-tracked on the basis of ethnicity, faith, social attributes, I can give you any number of examples,” the Foreign Minister said.
Foreign Minister sought to put the context of the 1947 Partition, which cleaved the Indian subcontinent into two independent nations, India and Pakistan, and led to massive bloodshed, resulting in large-scale migrations across the border. “Now, if I were to also say, after all, why is the situation important, because very often when you have something very cataclysmic, something really very major, it is not possible to deal with all the consequences right then and there.
“The leadership of this country had promised to these minorities, that if you have a problem, you are welcome to come to India. The leadership thereafter didn’t deliver on the promise,” he added.
Minister S Jaishankar said it is “not just our predicament. If you look at Europe, many European countries fast-tracked citizenship of people who were left behind on the World War or in some cases much before the World War some historical issues which were not addressed…I have a moral obligation to that community”. “So, the world is full of examples, and to me the context therefore is very important,” the Minister said.
Therefore, the Indian Government’s stance on the CAA seems unapologetic and unwavering. They are ready to play hardball with the global narrative builders.
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