At a rally prime minister Modi
tried to allay fears, but fact-checkers quickly found false claims
SAIKAT
DATTA, NEW DELHI
Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s first attempt at restoring calm over a controversial citizenship law has
ended up being compared to United States’ President Donald Trump’s many
factually incorrect claims since he has been in the White House.
Modi, addressing a massive
rally in Delhi in the lead-up to polls in January, claimed there had been no
move by his government to start a nationwide citizen registration to identify
illegal immigrants and also claimed no massive detention centers had been
built.
But his claims flew in the
face of repeated statements by his cabinet colleague and federal home minister
Amit Shah. For months Shah has been at the forefront of the citizenship debate
asserting that a nationwide exercise was on the cards.
The new citizenship law offers
fast track immigration to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and
Afghanistan. While this has been deemed discriminatory under India’s
constitution, there are fears this will target Muslims once a nationwide program
to identify Indian citizens start.
Many fear that if Muslims are
found to be “illegal immigrants” it could lead to permanent exclusion under the
nationwide registration of citizens. This has sparked protests across India
against the new citizenship act.
False claims
“I want to tell the 130 crore
(1.3 billion) citizens of India that since my government has come to power,
since 2014, there has been no discussion on NRC anywhere. Only after the
Supreme Court’s order, this exercise was done for Assam,” Modi said on Sunday.
What surprised many was that
Modi had stated the need for a national register for citizens (NRC) exercise
across the country in an interview to the TV news channel Times Now, just
before the general elections this year.
His deputy Shah has been
pushing the NRC for almost one year. In Parliament this month, while
introducing the contentious citizenship bill, Shah said the NRC
is coming soon.
“But you should keep this in
mind that NRC is about to come,” he said while responding in a debate. In fact,
his pronouncements over the coming NRC have convinced many people that the
exercise will follow the citizenship law.
In fact, in April this year
Shah described illegal immigrants as “termites” and pledged that his government
“would throw them out.” Not to be left behind, his party colleague and federal
defense minister Rajnath Singh stated on December 15 that the nationwide
NRC was on the cards.
Prime Minister Modi also made
another claim that has proved to be false. He said there were no
detention centers in India to incarcerate those found to be illegal.
In Assam
the detention center, a massive complex as large as seven soccer fields,
has already been built and another
one is nearly ready in the southern state of Karnataka. Both states
are BJP-ruled. A detention center has also been planned for Navi Mumbai, a
suburb next to India’s financial capital.
In fact, according to a
written response from the Home Ministry in Parliament on July 24, it
confirmed that a “Detention Center Manual” has been “circulated to all
state governments on January 9” this year.
The detention centers, as
detailed in the Parliamentary record, sound similar to concentration camps
built by the Nazi government after the Nuremberg laws were enacted.
“It provides for properly
segregated accommodation for male and female detainees,” the response says. It
is unclear what the government will do with the “illegal detainees” since the
countries mentioned in the new citizenship law are unlikely to accept them back
as their citizens.
“It is surprising that the
prime minister is not aware of what his cabinet colleague has been stating on
virtually every platform available,” a senior Congress leader told Asia Times.
“This was also stated in Parliament. Is the prime minister not aware of what
his government or cabinet colleagues are up to?”
“Following the standard
principles of accountability, PM Modi after his speech in Delhi, should fire
Home Minister Amit Shah. PM’s speech implies, without explicitly saying so,
that Minister Shah was lying when he spoke – repeatedly – of a nationwide NRC,”
said Ashutosh Varshney, professor of political science and director for the
Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University in the US.
Spiraling violence
Meanwhile, protests across the
country against the new law continued to grow, marked by violence in BJP-ruled
states. In the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, disturbing reports of
protesters being shot in the head emerged. So far, 21 people have died in
protest-related violence, all in BJP-ruled states.
In Bangalore, India’s
Information Technology hub, a crowd of nearly 300,000 people marched in protest
against the law. In Mumbai, about 100,000 protesters from Dharavi, Asia’s
largest slum, came out to protest. In Delhi, the national capital, sporadic
protests continued in several places and were likely to grow in coming days.
A move by the Uttar Pradesh
(UP) state government has generated fresh controversy. Police in the state are
scanning social media sites to identify protesters and those they accuse of
committing acts of violence and have been confiscating their personal property.
Legal experts are not sure under which law this is being carried out, but the
move has inflamed protests in other parts of India.
According to the Director
General of Police of UP, 879 have been arrested, 135 cases registered and 15
have died in the state. “Till now, 879 people have been arrested under
substantive offenses while 5000 persons who may instigate violence or vitiate
the atmosphere are bound down (detained) on basis of suspicion,” he said.
A team of medical volunteers
were also assaulted by Delhi police personnel on Monday afternoon. Several
doctors and nurses who had volunteered to help protesters were surrounded by
the police according to one of the volunteers. “The police surrounded us and
some women constables molested me and then detained some of us. They told the
doctors and nurses to leave the spot and threatened to detain them as well,”
Anusha Paul told Asia Times. She is part of a youth organization that is
affiliated to the Communist party in India.
The BJP has started marches to
counter the growing protests. In Delhi, BJP cadres marched on Sunday, shouting
that the protesters, who they called “traitors,” should be shot dead.
This has been the theme of
their counter-marches in support of the new citizenship law. The BJP leadership
has defended the prime minister’s claims, saying the rules and processes for
operationalizing the NRC are yet to be finalized. However, critics point out
that with detention centers already being built, this claim is “worthless.”
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