“Tera mera rishta kya? La ilaha illallah”- the exclusionist Islamist slogan had become the buzzword of the anti-CAA agitation not very long ago, as the so-called intelligentsia and radical mobs, appalled by Modi government’s bold decision to extend a humanitarian initiative towards religious minority refugees hailing from Pakistan among other Islamic States, joined hands to protest against the CAA.
While the Islamist radicals within India turned a blind eye towards the most inhuman of excesses committed on Pakistani Hindus, among other religious minorities, Hindu refugee doctors from Pakistan have made a heartening gesture to help India in her fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic.
As per recent reports, a group of migrated Pakistani Hindu doctors having MBBS degrees have sought the Modi government’s permission to participate in the country’s fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.
However, these doctors will have to first pass a bridge examination conducted by the Medical Council of India (MCI), which is mandatory for doctors with overseas degrees before they are considered eligible to practice in India.
The Pakistani Hindu doctors however have appealed the Modi government to relax the eligibility conditions, given the public health emergency triggered by the Coronavirus outbreak.
As of now, these doctors having degrees from different Medical Colleges in Pakistan are unable to practice in India because only Indian citizens having overseas degrees are allowed to take the MCI eligibility exam. Citizenship, of course, remained a distant dream for these religious minorities for decades and even it became a reality it was marred by Islamist supremacist protests and riots, such as the Northeast Delhi riots and the Shaheen Bagh roadblock.
One of these Pakistani Hindu doctors, Anila Sharda, said, “After coming to India, it takes us at least 11 years to obtain the citizenship of India and after that, we are supposed to appear in an examination by MCI to attain the qualification to practice in India, which is again a herculean task. Most of us could not appear in this exam due to age and other factors.”
It is these bottlenecks in citizenship for the disadvantaged minorities that the CAA sought to remove, and for those wondering why the CAA included these religious minorities but excluded Rohingyas- this is the reason why.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has to advise States to probe Rohingyas’ links with Tablighi Jamaat on one hand apart from screening them for the novel Wuhan virus, but on the other hand, the Pakistani Hindu doctors are offering help against the Pandemic.
This development should leave every single protester who raised supremacist, anti-Hindu slogans at the Shaheen Bagh roadblock red faced. While the anti-CAA protesters had almost managed to create massive Coronavirus clusters, the CAA beneficiaries have come out lending a helping hand.
The Pakistani Hindu doctors are literally putting their lives at stake by offering to join a fight that has already killed more than a hundred doctors and nurses at the frontlines across the world.
This proves beyond doubt why the persecuted minorities who sought refuge in India deserve Indian citizenship. They are cultural Indians and they do have a deep feeling of Indian nationalism- a major vindication of Modi government’s decision to enact the Citizenship Amendment Act.