| Ms Mehbooba, was granting citizenship to Uyghurs, Tibetans in Kashmir not disgusting, appalling? | | Communal approach | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Jan 14: Last week, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed a bill, Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019. It sought to accord citizenship to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Ever since then, former J&K CM and PDP chief Mehbbooba Mufti has been attacking the Narendra Modi Government and suggesting that India under the BJP rule is going the Pakistan way.
"Granting citizenship on the basis of religion is appalling and disgusting in equal measure. We are full of venom when it comes to Pakistan but are matching some of its policies in spirit," she has been saying, adding that the Modi Government must refrain from doing what it has been doing to Indian polity.
While attacking the Modi Government, Mehbooba Mufti conveniently overlooks the fact that J&K Government itself granted citizenship to many Muslims from Xinjiang province of China and Tibetan Muslims.
It may unbelievable, but it is a fact that the Sheikh Abdullah-led government in the state granted citizenship to numerous Uyghur Muslim families in 1952 and settled them in the Eidgah area of Srinagar with full citizenship rights. The Uyghur Muslims migrated from Xinjiang province of China to escape the Communist Beijing's wrath.
Not just this, the Government of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, which replaced the Sheikh Abdullah Government in August 1953, accorded similar treatment to the Tibetan Muslims who migrated to Kashmir in 1959 in the wake of the Chinese annexation of Buddhist Tibet. They were also settled in the same area with full citizenship rights. Tibet's spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, along with thousands of Tibetans, also migrated to India in 1959.
That the Kashmiri leadership would settle in Srinagar the Uyghur and Tibetan Muslims with full citizenship rights; make unjust, invidious and humiliating distinctions between them and the non-Muslim refugees from West Pakistan; and oppose the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, establishes that its whole approach is communally motivated. |
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