Our Correspondent
Kohima, Dec. 12 (EMN): In an interesting choice of words, the president of Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) K Therie, on Thursday ‘derided Christian legislators’ for voting in favour of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Speaking to media persons on Thursday at his official chamber in Kohima, Therie said, “As Christians, at least the Christian members (legislators) from the NE should not have voted in favour of CAB because it discriminates the Muslims, in India and around the world.”
According to Therie, though CAB discriminates Muslims, “they (NE legislators) have voted (in its favour) without any hesitation”. He added that ‘such an act was against the spirit of Christianity’.
Therie pointed out that both the MPs from Nagaland have supported the CAB; despite the fact that THE Rajya Sabha MP had only recently stood among a crowd of protestors displaying an anti-CAB banner in New Delhi.
“This shows that they are not actually protesting against the spirit of CAB. They (MPs) are also not aware that this Bill is against the Fundamental Right provided in the Constitution under Article-13 and 14,” he added.
Therie was of the view that it is “too early for us” to accept CAB. Only after Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN) “is cleaned and cleared, then only we can start accepting CAB or NRC”, he said.
But before identifying who are the Nagas of Nagaland, ‘if we are to just accept this type of Bill, it will dilute, submerged, sink the identity of the people’, he said.
He was of the opinion that Nagaland will be “completely submerged” in 30 years’ time.
Citing past instances, he said that even ancestors in 1929, when they submitted Naga Hills memorandum, ha “feared that because of our small community, we may be submerged in the oceans of the Hindus and Muslims.”
According to Therie, “our MPs, who are representing us, our government of the day are not having any concern” about the issue.
He extended solidarity to the other NE states protesting the CAB.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Nagaland Public Rights Awareness and Action Forum (NPRAAF) expressed regret that “our MPs” had supported the CAB “even though our state is most vulnerable to influx of illegal immigrants”.
“Soon the northern-eastern states will become a paradise of illegal immigrants even without Muslims registering themselves as Hindus, Christians and other minor religion to enter India. The CAB should have been opposed in toto. Unless we want all the Northeast states to be another Tripura where tribal indigenous people has become a minority in their own land.
“The BJP government hoodwinked the Northeast by assuring that ILP and Eastern Bengal Frontier Regulation Act 1873 will empower the NE states, which is already in place but the influx of refugees is unabated. Secondly, the bill was passed on religious line, which itself is unconstitutional and undemocratic,” read the statement.
The forum appealed to the government of Nagaland to introduce a bill in the next Assembly session, for dual citizenship, where "a citizen of the state will automatically become a citizen of India but a citizen of India will not be necessarily a citizen of the state unless he is a natural citizen and not naturalised."
“Unless an effective measure is taken to protect the indigenous citizens of the state, Nagaland, along with Northeast states, will be totally annihilated by illegal immigrants in the years to come and our posterity will never forgive us for our inaction,” it stated.