Successive Cong govts failed to respond to injustice done to minorities in Pak, B'desh

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Monday alleged that successive Congress governments have failed to respond to the "injustice and oppression" unleashed on minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was now giving succour to these people.

The Union minister for the PMO said even Jawaharlal Nehru, as prime minister, had expressed concern over the plight of minorities in Pakistan and Hindu refugees coming from the then East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh.

"The matter of fact is that successive Congress governments have, from time to time, been ceased of the injustice and oppression unleashed on the minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh but they did not have the courage to respond. It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had the courage, conviction and capacity to take decisive initiative on the issue," he said here.

Singh was responding to the protests held by different quarters, including the opposition Congress, against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which seeks to grant Indian nationalities to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis, who have come to India after facing religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014.

A bill to this effect was passed during the winter session of Parliament.

Describing the Congress as "a party of leaders who were ignorant of their own history and do not even read the statements made by some of their own patriarchs", Singh said even Nehru, as prime minister, had expressed concern over the plight of the minorities in Pakistan and had specifically referred to Hindu refugees coming from then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

The minister meticulously drew a chronology of events and said the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Khan pact of 1950 was actually inspired by the realisation on the part of the Government of India, headed by Nehru, that the minorities in Pakistan were not getting a fair deal.

"One of the evidence of this is that nearly a year before the signing of the Nehru-Liaquat pact, in 1949, Nehru wrote a letter to then Chief Minister of Assam Gopinath Bordoloi and said 'you must make a difference between Hindu refugees and Muslim immigrants and the country must take responsibility of the refugees'," he said.

Singh said this expression is in itself an indication that while Nehru used the word "refugee" for Hindus, he used the word "immigrant" for Muslims, considering the fact that in the Islamic state of Pakistan, Hindus were a minority and thus seeking refuge.

The minister said within a few months of the signing of the Nehru-Liaquat pact, Nehru had realised Pakistan was not living up to its commitment to protect the interest of its minorities.

This is evident from the statement made on the floor of Parliament on November 5, 1950, when he stated "there is no doubt, of course, that those displaced persons who have come to settle in India are bound to have the citizenship. If the law is inadequate in this respect, the law should be changed," he said.

Singh said even during a discussion on a Call Attention Motion in Lok Sabha in 1963, Nehru had intervened to say that the authorities in East Pakistan were bringing great pressure on Hindus.

Accusing the Congress of trying to create confusion by mixing NPR (National Population Register) and NRC (National Register of Citizens), Singh said it was then Home Minister P Chidambaram who had said in Parliament during a short-duration discussion in 2010 that "NPR could be basis for NRC".