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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Re: [mukto-mona] Indians Angry at Trump’s Ban on Muslim Refugees Should Look at What Modi is Doing



Darshana Mitra is confused; but she realizes that "Interestingly, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 goes a step beyond the "persecuted Hindu" to include Buddhists and Sikhs and Christians as well. All, except Muslims, in fact."

The religiously persecuted minorities of Pakistan and Bangladesh that migrated to India should have been helped by Indian parties that do not persecute people based upon religion. And who are they supposed to be? Congress and CPI/CPM. However, those secular-claiming parties have miserably failed to help those persecuted people from Pakistan/Bangladesh. It is unconscionable that the honest ones among those victims could not get Indian citizenship even after staying in India for 20, 30 years. Isn't it sad that victims of Islamic fanaticism could not be helped by secular forces of India, and that it is taking a Hindutwa-tainted party to do that?

SuBain

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On Tuesday, January 31, 2017 6:15 PM, "Farida Majid farida_majid@hotmail.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


 
Very good article by Darshana Mitra


India is also making discrimination against Muslims a key ingredient of its refugee and immigration policy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. Credit: Reuters
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. Credit: Reuters
 

<<  If the Narendra Modi government wants to provide protection to religious minorities in neighbouring countries from persecution  – a laudable objective – then it need not have looked further than the existing international frameworks of refugee law. Central to the definition of a refugee in the 1951 Refugee Convention is a well-founded fear of being persecuted on the grounds of religion, race, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion by the country of one's nationality. Till now, India has consistently refused to promulgate a central legislation on refugees, or be a signatory to the 1951 Convention, treating the decision to grant refugee status as a matter of political expediency. Even if it does not want to sign the 1951 convention, nothing prevents it from enacting a domestic law that incorporates its principal features. The fact that the government is not interested in doing so means granting protection to victims of persecution is not its primary objective.
What does that leave us with, then?
The Bharatiya Janata Party's 2014 election manifesto gives us the answer.

Page 37 of the manifesto states that "India shall remain a natural home for persecuted Hindus and they shall be welcome to seek refuge here". Why should India be a natural home for persecuted Hindus, as opposed to persecuted Muslims or Christians? Invoking the image of the "persecuted Hindu" is a masterful way of pushing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's notion of India as a 'Hindu nation', and an embattled one at that. Just as the claim of a threat to national security, and the myth of a "white minority", is used to push xenophobic, Islamophobic  policies in the US. Interestingly, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 goes a step beyond the "persecuted Hindu" to include Buddhists and Sikhs and Christians as well. All, except Muslims, in fact. >>>






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Posted by: Sukhamaya Bain <subain1@yahoo.com>


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