TheSite

On Tuesday, US-based organization, Hindus for Human Rights (HHR)  expressed its support to the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act resolution proposed by the Chicago City Council. The Council is the legislative branch of the government of the City of Chicago in the Illinois state of United States.

The resolution  proposed by the Chicago City Council and introduced by Maria Hadden, a council member and alderperson of the city’s 49th ward, classifies CAA  as “discriminatory because it uses religion-based criteria to grant citizenship.”

“Please speak up for the World’s largest democracy, which is slipping rapidly into a majoritarian state where non-Hindus would become second-class citizens,” Rajagopal, co founder of Hindus for Human Rights writes.

Rajagopal drew President Trump's 'Muslim Ban' as parallel to the Indian citizenship law and called “it infinitely worse.”

Rajagopal wrote that “the Indian state operates several detention camps and is planning many more to intern those deemed stateless, once the CAA is applied to the proposed National Population Register (NPR).

He said that “Indian state’s claim that NPR has nothing to do with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a fraudulent claim,” adding, “this has been proven by their own words in the parliament and elsewhere.”

Appealing to the Chicago City Council alderperson that there are “many Indian Muslims in your own constituency,” Rajagopal urged the Alderperson to “speak up in solidarity with them.”

“Genocide Watch is warning us of a potential for a genocide in some parts of India,” he said referring to reports of Muslims being lynched, bans on inter-faith wedding, police brutality against Muslims, anti-conversion laws, etc. 

However, the proposed resolution was forced to edit and revise as the “resolution is gutted in negotiations so as to appease the Consulate of India in Chicago and other defenders of Modi and the BJP,” as one writer wrote in Chicago Sun Times.

The edited resolution has left out the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah’s description of undocumented Muslim immigrants as “termites” and “infiltrators."

However, the revised resolution ‘urges India to restore the rights of people living in Muslim-majority Kashmir,’ and condemn “religiously motivated violence and prosecute those who attack protesters and journalists."

Despite the opposition by the Consulate of India in Chicago, the resolution has found many supporters in the Indian American community in the US and from US Congressmen.