New Delhi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought Sunday to reassure India’s Muslims as a wave of deadly protests against a new citizenship law put his Hindu nationalist government under pressure like never before.
At least 25 people have died in 10 days of demonstrations and violence after Modi’s government passed the law criticised as anti-Muslim. More protests took place Sunday.
Addressing party supporters in New Delhi — who cried “Modi! Modi!” at the mention of the law — the 69-year-old said Muslims “don’t need to worry at all” — provided they are genuine Indians.
“Muslims who are sons of the soil and whose ancestors are the children of mother India need not to worry” about the law and his plans to carry out a national register of citizens, Modi told the crowd of thousands.
Accusing the main opposition Congress party of condoning the recent violence by not condemning it, Modi said opponents were “spreading rumours that all Muslims will be sent to detention camps.”
“There are no detention centres. All these stories about detention centres are lies, lies and lies,” he said.
The demonstrations have been largely peaceful but protesters have also hurled rocks and torched vehicles, while heavy-handed police tactics including the storming of a Delhi university a week ago have fuelled anger.
The law gives religious minority members — Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Christians and Buddhists — from three neighbouring Islamic countries an easier path to citizenship, but not if they are Muslim.
Islamic groups, the opposition and others at home and abroad fear this forms part of Modi’s aim to marginalise India’s 200 million Muslims and remould the country as a Hindu nation, something he denies.
Authorities have imposed emergency laws, blocked internet access — a common tactic in India — and shut down shops in sensitive areas across the country in an attempt to contain the unrest.
“The law does not impact 1.3 billions Indians, and I must assure Muslim citizens of India that this law will not change anything for them,” said Modi, adding that his government introduces reforms without any religious bias.
“We have never asked anyone if they go to a temple or a mosque when it comes to implementing welfare schemes,” he said. Modi’s nationalist party plans to hold more than 200 news conferences to counter the protests as anger grows over what critics say is an attack on the country’s secular constitution. Modi’s government says that the new law is required to help non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who fled to India before 2015 by providing them with a pathway to Indian citizenship.
But many Indians feel that the CAA discriminates against Muslims and violates the country’s secular constitution by making religion a test for citizenship.— Reuters
