The Prime Minister, through his customary rhetoric and grandstanding, has tried to pin the blame for the wave of unrest sweeping the country on the Opposition parties and the so-called ‘urban Naxals’ (Front page, “Pan-India NRC never on the table: PM,” Dec. 23). But, the truth is that no one other than his own Home Minister, Amit Shah, was responsible for the unrest. It was the overaggressive and unduly dramatic statements made by Mr. Shah in the Lok Sabha asking the people to be prepared for a nationwide NRC that led to all the trouble. Now that Mr. Modi has clarified that a pan-India NRC is not on the table, what is one to make of all that happened? Was the Home Minister just shooting off his mouth or was he testing the waters for an NRC with the full knowledge and backing of the Prime Minister and the rest of the Cabinet? Or is it that the Home Minister has become a power unto himself? At this juncture, when the NRC restricted to Assam has itself thrown up a situation where the future of lakhs of people still remains uncertain, the priority of the government should be to find a humane solution to the problems of the people figuring in the list of ‘illegal immigrants’. While the Citizenship (Amendment) Act can potentially take care of the Hindus among them, the government of a civilised country like ours should not close its eyes to the plight of those belonging to other communities.
G.G. Menon,
Tripunithura, Ernakulam, Kerala
