A Pollution-Free Delhi?

WHEN AIR POLLUTION enveloped Delhi in a killer embrace recently, someone put out a clip of the Delhi chief minister speaking at the annual conclave of a media house. He committed to ensure a pollution-free Delhi in “one year since Punjab now has an AAP government.” The caption under the clip read: “Please note the date and year.” It was November 21, 2022.

HAVE YOU NOTICED that Pakistan is throwing out nearly two million Afghans? Having given them short notice, which ended on October 31, Pakistani police are now corralling Afghans like animals from wherever they can lay hands on them, imprisoning them in shabby refugee camps, before eventual transfer to Afghanistan. Even tens of thousands born in Pakistan, and with bona fide residency papers, are not spared. They must all go across the Durand Line on foot, buses, trucks, or whatever transport they can get, but they are no longer allowed to stay in Pakistan. Period. Strained relations with the Taliban regime in Kabul coupled with the perception that Afghans pose a security threat are among the reasons cited for the diktat on en masse eviction.

But what is significant is that Pakistan has hardly faced any pushback from any quarter, domestic or foreign, for its precipitate action against the two million Afghans. Even the Western media, quick to wax angry at the real or imaginary human rights violations in India, has been rather muted. Of course, Pakistani human rights activists and secular-liberal pretenders who get angry at the mere hint of action by the Indian authorities against illegal migrants are maintaining radio silence.

Be that as it may, what I still fail to wrap my head around is the well-funded protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019. How a relatively quicker grant of citizenship to the persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis from the neighbouring countries was discriminatory, was not clear. That those who sought to be offered faster citizenship had no other country on planet Earth to call home and that they had strong ancestral ties to this country, were not good enough. The mere exclusion of Muslims from those listed for the provision of faster citizenship had made them suspect in the eyes of the secularist-liberal pretenders. That, of course, was utter nonsense.

One could argue that illegals entering this country from Bangladesh, Myanmar, etc, over the decades have hardly required the benefit of CAA since they are known to melt into the multitudes and without much ado get enrolled as bonafide citizens, with Aadhaar cards, ration cards, houses, et al. Porous borders allow illegal migrants to slip into the country—and to be welcomed with open arms by fellow illegals who had come before them and had already acquired citizenship, voting rights, etc.

There cannot be an iota of doubt that tens of millions of illegals in this country have distorted our demography, and democracy too. The sanctity of citizenship has been undermined with complete impunity with the collusion of political forces which have all along seen the illegals as a vote bank. Anyone protesting the relentless influx of illegals is immediately dubbed communal. It is a different matter though that all countries try and keep their borders completely shut to illegal migrants. And nobody does a better job of keeping strictly closed borders than the 50-odd Islamic countries. But we must revolt against CAA. Why? Because we do not like the Modi government.

About The Author

Virendra Kapoor

Virendra Kapoor is a political commentator based in Delhi