In November 1948, as ZH Lari was making a case in the Constituent Assembly for the rights of minorities to be protected, he was constantly ...
In November 1948, as ZH Lari was making a case in the Constituent Assembly for the rights of minorities to be protected, he was constantly heckled. Some members asked the Muslim representative from the United Provinces what “his leaders” in Pakistan were going to do to ensure the safety of minorities in that country.
Lari eventually took on their taunts. His hecklers, he said, wanted him to follow the footsteps of Pakistan but he was not going to do so. “I have not mortgaged my rights to Pakistan,” he said. “What Pakistan does or does not do is not my concern.”
The lawyer added that Indian Muslims “are the children of the soil and as such we claim the rights of citizens of India”.
More than seven decades have passed since then but the public discussions in India today remain uncannily similar. India’s Muslim community continues to be subject to similar heckling – and worse.
As hundreds of thousands of Indians take to the streets to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act, which introduces a religious criterion into the country’s citizenship law, some of the questions that engaged the Constituent Assembly that was framing India’s Constituency are being debated all over again.
While there were many apprehensions, disagreements and criticisms...
