On Saturday, Union external affairs minister S Jaishankar said he questioned the understanding of the United States about the understanding of Bharat’s history while denying their criticism of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Jaishankar said, ‘I am not questioning the imperfections of their democracy, their principles but I am questioning their understanding of our history. If you hear the comments from many parts of the world, it is as if the Partition of Bharat never happened. And there were no problems which the CAA is supposed to address’.
‘The remarks were made without an understanding of the historical context behind the law’, said EAM.
He added the law was brought to address problems created during the Partition of Bharat.
Talking about the US Ambassador Eric Garcetti’s comment that principles of freedom and equality are prime in a democracy’, S Jaishankar said, ‘You take out a problem and eradicate all the historical contexts, sanitise it and make it into a politically correct argument, and say ‘oh, I have principles and don’t you have principles’”.
Garcetti, said the US can’t give up on principles and principles of religious freedom and equality are a cornerstone of democracy.
‘The US was concerned about the CAA and was closely monitoring the implementation of the law’, said Eric.
“I have principles too, and one of my principles is an obligation to people who were let down at the time of partition. They are not holding up a mirror to their policies,” said Jaishankar referring to the Jackson–Vanik amendment, Lautenberg Amendment, Spector Amendment and so on that fast-tracked citizenship for ethnic minorities like Jews and Christians.
“If you ask me if other countries fast-tracked citizenship based on ethnicity, faith, or social attributes, I can give you any number of examples. When something of a very major scale happens, it is not possible to deal with all the consequences right then and there’, said S Jaishankar.
Notably, the central government announced the implementation of the Citizenship Act for granting citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who reached here before December 31, 2014 on Tuesday.
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