India under Modi is moving systematically with a supremacist agenda, says PM Imran

Published December 12, 2019
Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill is the latest of Modi's attempts to promulgate his supremacist agenda. — AFP/File
Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill is the latest of Modi's attempts to promulgate his supremacist agenda. — AFP/File

Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday that India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been moving systematically with a Hindu supremacist agenda.

The prime minister was referencing the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill passed by India's upper house amid protests on Wednesday.

The bill will let the Indian government grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants who entered India from three neighbouring countries before 2015 — but not if they are Muslim.

Modi's government — re-elected in May and under pressure over a slowing economy — says Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are excluded from the legislation because they do not face discrimination in those countries.

Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Imran stated that the bill was the latest of Modi's attempts to promulgate his supremacist agenda, "starting with illegal annexation and continuing siege of IOJK [Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir]; then stripping 2 million Indian Muslim in Assam of citizenship, setting up internment camps; now the passage of Citizenship Amendment Law; all this accompanied by mob lynchings of Muslims and other minorities in India".

He warned that bowing down to a "genocidal supremacist agenda", propagated by Nazi Germany, had once before lead to World War II.

"Modi's Hindu supremacist agenda, accompanied by threats to Pakistan under a nuclear overhang, will lead to massive bloodshed and far-reaching consequences for the world," he warned. "As in Nazi Germany, in Modi's India dissent has been marginalised and the world must step in before it is too late to counter this Hindu supremacist agenda of Modi's India [that is] threatening bloodshed and war."

The Citizenship Amendment Bill, seeks to grant Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh "because of religious persecution" before 2015. It does not, however, extend to Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar.

Home Minister Amit Shah said it was not anti-Muslim because it did not affect the existing path to citizenship available to all communities.

Amnesty India, however, said the legislation legitimised discrimination on the basis of religion and stood in clear violation of the India's constitution and international human rights law.

Opinion

Editorial

Ties with Tehran
Updated 24 Apr, 2024

Ties with Tehran

Tomorrow, if ties between Washington and Beijing nosedive, and the US asks Pakistan to reconsider CPEC, will we comply?
Working together
24 Apr, 2024

Working together

PAKISTAN’S democracy seems adrift, and no one understands this better than our politicians. The system has gone...
Farmers’ anxiety
24 Apr, 2024

Farmers’ anxiety

WHEAT prices in Punjab have plummeted far below the minimum support price owing to a bumper harvest, reckless...
By-election trends
Updated 23 Apr, 2024

By-election trends

Unless the culture of violence and rigging is rooted out, the credibility of the electoral process in Pakistan will continue to remain under a cloud.
Privatising PIA
23 Apr, 2024

Privatising PIA

FINANCE Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb’s reaffirmation that the process of disinvestment of the loss-making national...
Suffering in captivity
23 Apr, 2024

Suffering in captivity

YET another animal — a lioness — is critically ill at the Karachi Zoo. The feline, emaciated and barely able to...