Constitution is India’s holy scripture, CAA violates it: Sitaram Yechury

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: National CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury has said that ‘exploitation’ has nothing to do with ‘religion’ and the only ‘religion’ of India is its ‘Constitution’. He has also said that the CPI(M) will keep fighting as and when there is violation of the ‘Constitution’ of the country.

The Left leader said this while speaking at a rally organized by the party at Guwahati Club Rotary demanding repeal of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019. Yechury said, “An atmosphere of protest and resentment has engulfed the entire ambience in the country. Whenever we raise voice against anything unconstitutional the government blames it on us and says that we’re instigating people for such protests. The government says that we’re indulging in wrong dissemination, leading to violence. However, the government itself is responsible for wrong dissemination. Every religion has its own sacred book. The Muslims have their Quran, Christian’s have their Bible and the Hindus have the Bhagawat Geeta and so on. However, being Indians we believe and follow only one holy scripture irrespective of our individual religions, and that is the Indian Constitution. If anyone violates the constitution we’ll fight and save it.”

Yechury said, “The government says that the non-Muslims of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh will be provided with Indian Citizenship as they are victims of exploitation in the neighbouring Islamic countries. The moot point is: where is it written in our Constitution that citizenship is connected to religion? The government is replacing ‘humanity’ with ‘religion’. This is against our Constitution and we’ll fight it out.”

Stating the CAA a dirty politics, Yechury further said, “The NRC, the NPR and the CAA make a package. One can’t view them in isolation. The Union Home Ministry said in writing that they’d bring the NPR so as to start the NRC procedure in various States taking it as the basis. However, the entire suggestion is providing citizenship by creating discrimination to form a Hindu vote bank.”

“We’ve supported the NRC in Assam because it is a part of the Assam Accord. We did support the Assam Accord, so we are committed to it. We won’t allow any kind of changes in the cut-off date – 24th March, 1971 of the Accord,” Yechury added.

Senior CPI(M) leaders Hemen Das and Suprakash Talukdar, student representatives and others also joined the rally.

Hemen Das said that this is not a protest by the Muslims and vendors as claimed by the government, but it is a protest by all who respect the Constitution.

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