Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was against the "the idea of India" and the framers of the Constitution explicitly rejected any idea of citizenship on the basis of religion.
Tharoor, speaking at the inaugural Dr N R Madhava Menon Memorial Lecture by O P Jindal Global University on the theme 'Law and The Idea of India', said India is a "land of belonging" rather than of blood and what binds the idea of India is the rule of law contained in the Constitution.
Menon was an educationist, scholar and the pioneering spirit behind modern legal education in India.
Menon was the founder director of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore and headed it for 12 years. After that, he established West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) in 1998 and later presided as the founder director of Judicial Academy (NJS), Bhopal, till 2006.
Quoting B R Ambedkar, Tharoor said, "The Constitution makers explicitly rejected any idea of citizenship on the basis of religion.... It is for the Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of the law (CAA), but it goes against the very spirit, the idea of India."
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