Since the CAB was tabled in the Lok Sabha, the Lutyens’ elites have gone on a rampage trying to create misconceptions about the CAB. Leading from the front are two “eminent” journalists- Barkha Dutt and Rana Ayyub. Both of them have drawn fire in the past over their shoddy, anti-India journalism and propaganda. Recently, Barkha Dutt had taken to Twitter in her attempts to create misconceptions about the CAB, while Ayyub had given a highly misleading, anti-India account of the recent developments in Kashmir to The New Yorker.
Indeed. Except telling them that only non Muslims can be naturalised citizens going forward. https://t.co/mKxCo9Ndq7
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) December 9, 2019
Having failed to make any significant impact through their false propaganda about the CAB, the two journalists have now written outrageous and grossly misleading articles for The Washington Post with a clear malicious agenda of defaming India and tarnishing the country’s image with respect to the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019.
In her article, which is no less than an exercise spreading falsehoods, Barkha Dutt has stated that it is “for the first time in India’s history, citizenship has been linked to religion.” This is particularly misleading, as the reality is that the amended citizenship law will only pave the way for conferring citizenship on the minorities persecuted in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not create a citizenship law based on religion contrary to what is being claimed by Barkha Dutt and like-minded “intellectuals”.
The article gets pretty objectionable at the point where she goes on to state how PM Modi has claimed that the Bill will somehow reduce the pain of “children of Maa Bharti” (Mother India). Then, she goes on to ask, “But why, then, are the Muslims of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan also not regarded as “children” of India?” The answer is simple- those who fought for the partition of India and sought creation of Pakistan, and ultimately settled down in Pakistan cannot be recognised as the “chidlren” of India. Moreover, those following the state religion are neither persecuted nor minorities in these countries. There is a clear, intelligible differentia between the Muslims of these countries and the persecuted minorities which creates a reasonable classification as recognised by the CAB.
Rana Ayyub’s article goes a step further in spreading fake news. She states, “While the government plans to rescue and rehabilitate persecuted Hindus from neighbouring countries through the Citizenship Amendment Bill, it is simultaneously seeking to disenfranchise Muslim citizens through the National Register of Citizens by labeling them as migrants and infiltrators.” Which Muslim citizens is Rana Ayyub talking about? This is absolutely untrue and misleading. Not a single Muslim citizen of India is going to be disenfranchised by the enactment of the CAB.
However, those who are classified as illegal immigrants by virtue of the well-settled law in India, which has remained unaltered during the term of Modi government, are going to be deported under the NRC. It has got absolutely nothing to do with the CAB. Even if the NRC had not taken place and even if the CAB has not been tabled in the Parliament, these illegal immigrants would have been liable to be deported out of India. This is a simple process of identifying, detaining and reporting infiltrators who enter another country without valid travel documents. She doesn’t stop here and tries to indulge in sheer fear-mongering about construction of “detention centres” for Muslims.
It is clear that the likes of Barkha Dutt and Rana Ayyub have understood that India is not going to fall for their fake propaganda. Their lies have been called out, and now they are trying to tarnish India’s image at a global level. The idea is to create a grossly negative perception of India, and trigger panic and fear about the CAB being Islamophobic, though which in reality does not harm in any way any Muslim living in India, or even the sub-continent.