How come 'spokesperson' of India was banned earlier?

LETTER | I am amused by Hafiz Hassan’s letter to Malaysiakini in which he thinks that although Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad might not be right on some matters, I am no better.

He, in fact, referred to my recent piece in the same news portal in which I explained that Mahathir might not have really understood the Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) passed in both the chambers in the Indian Parliament.

It not that Hafiz himself has looked at the CAA in detail, but since the Muslims have been left out in this specific amendment, he thinks that it is discriminatory.

Apart from Muslims being left out, the recent protests in India and the fact that India went against the International Convention Against Racial Discrimination (ICERD), plus some statements from those who were critical of the CAA were adduced

to attest to the discriminatory nature of the new Indian amendment.

Hafiz could not restrain himself from saying that my critique of Mahathir on the CAA showed me more of an official of India’s External Affairs Ministry and not as an elected member of the State Legislative Assembly of Penang.

Why he would resort to such underhand unprofessional method is not clear. It merely weakens his case against me.

But surely, as he himself understands well, such irresponsible name-calling is well beneath his dignity, something to be avoided in the future.

He should stick with his argument that I am no better than Mahathir, a reflection of his personal opinion, not anything more.

Yes, Hafiz is right in saying that there is opposition to CAA. In fact, the vibrancy of democracy in India gives rise to all kinds of opposition.

There have been protests in different parts of the country as there were protests when Jammu-Kashmir was brought directly under the central government.

There are a number of reasons why the CAA was opposed.

First, the new amendment apparently went against India’s secular Constitution, which disallows discrimination on the basis of caste, race and religion.

Second, the Muslims are not the potential beneficiaries of the new law, because they have been excluded in the new provision.

Third, the new law is slowly turning India under BJP as a Hindu religious state.

Although the CAA, by its very definition does not touch or deprive Muslims of their citizenship, it was meant to deal with the specific problem of fast-tracking citizenship for Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis. Religious minorities who have felt the brunt of Islamisation in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Hundreds and thousands of non-Muslims have fled forced conversions and deaths to India in the last 70 years or so. If these non-Muslim minorities had the benefit of equal rights in these countries as citizens, why would they have to flee to India?

If India was that discriminatory towards Muslims, Muslims in droves would have left India to the theocratic states of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan or to Muslim countries elsewhere.

Why are Muslims not leaving India, if India is moving in the direction of Hindu or Hindutva state?

This is simply due to the fact that Muslims in India, making for the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia, have equal rights as members of other religions. Muslims are protected by the Constitution of the country.

Can Hafiz tell me whether the non-Muslims in Islamic theocratic states have the same level of protection as Muslims in India?

It was nothing wrong for me to have stated that the CAA is not perfect; in fact, no law is perfect.

My umbrage with CAA is, basically, why it is silent on stateless people from countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

There are more than 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees in camps in different parts of India, they could have factored in the CAA. So are the other religious minorities, those who have fled due to racial and religious persecution over the years.

For Mahathir, sad to say, things about India are always black and white. It is about the Hindu majority discriminating the Muslim minority.

Thus, when he was asked about the CAA, he responded by saying that it was discriminatory towards Muslims and that India was losing its secular character.

I am not sure whether he knows the details of the new citizenship law.

Although my origins can be traced back to India, I was born and bred in this country.

Hafiz was revealing his shallowness by saying that I acted like a spokesperson for India, just because I was critical of Mahathir.

Perhaps he does not know that I was banned from going to India for five years, from 2010 to 2015.

Why would India ban a “spokesperson” like me?

Was it because I criticised heavily the government of India then for failing to avert the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka in 2009, during the height of the civil war.

It is perhaps more accurate to say that Hafiz wants to be Mahathir’s spokesperson.

P RAMASAMY is Perai assemblyperson and deputy chief minister II of Penang.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.