Lord Alton's stupid anti-CAA speech

Lord Alton said in the House of Lords-

My Lords, as India celebrated its Republic Day on 26 January, marking the 70th year since the ratification of the Indian constitution in 1950, my noble friend’s compelling speech and welcome debate are extremely well timed. However, a disturbing counterpoint to those celebrations has been in evidence on the streets of that great country—the world’s largest democracy. India’s founding fathers—Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel—who steered their new nation in the direction of democracy to ensure that it was not destroyed by sectarianism, casteism and authoritarianism, would surely be aghast to see people all over India protesting against a draconian law that is communal and unconstitutional in its nature: the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 and the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens.

Lord Alton thinks the CAA bill is unconstitutional. That is not the case. If there were prima facie evidence that this was so, the Indian Supreme Court would have struck it down or, at the least, taken up the matter immediately. Thus our noble Lord is telling porkies.

The fact of the matter is that Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and Patel, agreed to the Partition of the country. They presided over vast ethnic cleansing. Gandhi told Congress workers in Bihar that he knew they had attacked and killed and chased away Muslims. Did Gandhi punish those Congress members? Did he ask for them to be prosecuted under the Law? No. He would himself have been chased away if he tried any such thing. Nehru, it is true, threatened to send planes to bomb the Biharis. But this was an empty threat. Nehru was not able to prevent the killing of 20,000 Muslims in Delhi itself. He and Patel and Ambedkar knew full well that the Custodian of Evacuee property was grabbing houses and businesses from Muslims on the basis of a bare complaint from a Refugee. The Cabinet decided that no Muslim would get back his property till alternative arrangements had been made for the Refugees. This never happened. Thus Muslims continued to emigrate from India to Pakistan all through the Fifties and Sixties.

All Indian leaders have accepted that non-Muslim refugees should be accommodated in India but no Muslim economic migration can be sanctioned. As for Assam, a law was passed in 1950 setting up a Nationality Register and promising to eject migrants.  The new Register, published last year, was produced on the orders, and under the auspices, of the Supreme Court.

Dr Ambedkar, the father of India’s constitution, warned Indians against
“any competitive loyalty whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language. I want all people to be Indians first, Indian last, and nothing else but Indians.”

Jinnah said more or less the same thing. It was meaningless. 

He wisely said that:
“Constitution is not a mere lawyers document, it is a vehicle of Life, and its spirit is always the spirit of Age.”

But he later told the BBC that his contribution to the Constitution was 'hack work'. Incidentally, that 'lawyer's document' directs the State to protect cows!  Guess which Religion holds cows sacred.

Tragically, today’s Government are living by different principles and a different spirit, stoking fear among all quarters of society across the country.

This is utterly false. Those who are 'stoking fear' are in Opposition. They hope to gain the Muslim vote. 

There have been reports of numerous arrests, excessive use of force by the police, and deaths as a result of these protests.

These reports are tainted. They are propaganda. 

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act is in itself discriminatory, isolating Muslims, including Rohingya, Ahmadiyya and Shias, and other minorities from participating in nation building.

Rohingyas wanted to join East Pakistan back in 1948. They don't want to build the Indian nation. Ahmadiyyas wanted to build Pakistan- but were declared non-Muslim by Bhutto. If they come to India in any large numbers they will be attacked by Indian Muslims because they are believed to be heretics worthy of death. Many prominent families in Pakistan are Shiah. It is ludicrous to suggest they would be safer in India because the vast majority of Indian Muslims are Hanafi. 

It is true that India has offered refuge to some Muslims who were persecuted in Islamic Republics. But look at what happened to Dr. Taslima Nasrin after she was chased out of Bangladesh. The Indian Muslims started baying for her blood. So she had to escape to Norway, which offered her asylum. 

On Sunday 17 February, I was concerned to see a headline in the Sunday Telegraph: “Christians in the Firing Line”.

But some Christians have been whining about being persecuted by Hindus under Nehru and Indira and Rajiv and Manmohan Singh. They may get some money that way and, if so, good luck to them.

This is an ancient community that dates back to 52 AD. Taken together with the National Register of Citizens, it is abundantly clear that both measures will have far-reaching implications for all sections of the community, right across the nation, in the only place that they can call home.

It is abundantly silly to make any such claim. Britain has amended its Citizenship laws. It detains and deports far more illegal migrants than India. Yet, even for a black fellow like me, there have been no 'far-reaching' implications whatsoever.  No doubt, some stupid politicians pretended otherwise at the time. But, nobody was fooled. Had the BAME community protested every single tightening of Immigration and Nationality Laws, there's a good chance we would all have been forcibly repatriated.

With the launch of these unreasonable and extreme benchmarks for citizenship,

what about Britain's own 'benchmarks for citizenship'? They are far more draconian than India's. Why is the noble Lord not up in arms against British laws which prevent nice Rohingya terrorists moving in next door to him? 

many who do not possess the necessary documents to prove their citizenship risk facing statelessness and immeasurable suffering in detention centres, and an imminent unsettled future.

India has about a thousand people in detention centers. Britain has more than double that number. But it deports far more people so the turnover is much higher. Why does this not cause the noble Lord sleepless nights? 

Right across India, this will not only burden millions who are already suffering extreme hardship but will set them aside from the rest of society—as if there are not already too many existing barriers preventing citizens from being “Indians first, Indian last, and nothing else but Indians.”

This is all hooey. It is obvious that very few people will be affected simply because mother-tongue quashes any question about origin. 

The minority population of India comprises approximately 20% of the total, a large percentage of whom are economically poor and socially excluded. With the CAA/NRC policy in place, large swathes of Indian society will become outsiders and more vulnerable than ever.

Lies. 

The preamble to the Constitution of India opens with the words:
“We, the people of India”.
It does not say, in words which could have been crafted by today’s Government, “We, the documented people of India”.

Nor does it say 'We, the stupid life peers of Britain who like talking bollocks about everything under the sun'. The fact of the matter is that the people of India had a right to certain documents. The Indian Government, yielding to British pressure, refused to give one such document- viz. a passport- to people who wanted to emigrate to Britain. The Bench had to step in and order the Government to furnish any Indian person with an Indian passport. This triggered a change in Britain's Immigration and Nationality law.

Incidentally, the Indian Constitution deliberately deprived only Muslims, not non Muslims, of Indian citizenship if they were not resident on a certain date. Indian Citizenship law discriminates harshly against those with a Muslim parent or grandparent from Pakistan or Bangladesh. The noble Lord is talking bollocks. 

Ambedkar’s constitution was never intended to discriminate between Indian citizens on the basis of their religion.

Ambedkar contributed to the constitution. He did not author it. Its intention was to create a strong unitary Government which, because Hindus are the overwhelming majority, would represent Hindu interests. That is why he was unhappy with it. But, when in the Cabinet, he did his job loyally and faithfully. 

This law not only discriminates against Muslims but diminishes a Muslim person’s value in society, inevitably exposing the community to further prejudice.

How does it do so? It was already the case that non-Muslim refugees were getting Indian citizenship while Muslim economic migrants were being turned down.
What has exposed that community to further prejudice is their protest against non-Muslims being able to escape forcible conversion or slaughter. 

The promotion of majoritarian communalism, based on anti-minority rhetoric, has been evident since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power.

Says a man who knows nothing about India. Indira Gandhi discovered that using the police to kill Muslims was a vote winner. She did it a lot. However when the Assamese killed Muslims at Nellie, she did a deal with them. Killing minorities was her shtick. Rajiv on taking power permitted thousands of Sikhs to be slaughtered in Delhi itself. 

Since 2019, after taking office for a second term, the party’s leadership has thrown caution and wisdom to the wind.

Nonsense! The CAA bill was brought in because the Supreme Court had published the NRC for Assam. Similarly, when the BJP's coalition in J&K collapsed, they took quick action to prevent Imran Khan stirring up trouble there. 

This has emboldened others. Attacks have been perpetrated by non-state actors, such as cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Where is the proof? Why has no FIR been filed with the police? 

The RSS is closely connected to the ruling party, as well as commanding influence over the police in many parts of the country.

It is because the RSS is perceived as a clean and socially productive force that the BJP is now the ruling party. However, it has no 'commanding influence over the police'. If it did, people would think it was corrupt and debauched. 

That endangers public trust in the impartiality, independence and objectivity of the police, which is dangerous for any society.

Telling stupid lies may be dangerous for a society- but only if the population is composed of stupid liars. Public trust in the police is only endangered if it fails to catch and lock up villains. We don't give a shit about its impartiality, independence, or incestuous orgies. Does it do the job it is paid to do? If not, we won't bother calling on their services. We will pay a local gang to protect us. 

There have been widespread reports of attacks on the freedom of worship, religion or belief; hate speech; mob lynchings; targeted violence against the Dalit and tribal communities; assassinations and attempted assassinations of journalists and human rights defenders; and infringements of freedom of expression against those who raise their voices in dissent against such rank injustice.

But the people who manufacture these reports have been doing so, come rain or shine, irrespective of who was in power. Even if they move to England they will still speak of Islamophobia and atrocities against Dalits and the attempt made by Boris Johnson's hired goons to assassinate me in Waitrose which I cunningly foiled by stuffing a bottle of Vodka down my pants. Sadly, because the British police lack objectivity and independence, they didn't believe me. Still, since I gave my name as Lord Alton, they let me go. Apparently a lot of life-peers have a habit of stuffing bottles of Vodka down their trousers. 

Anyone who questions the policies of the Government risks being labelled an “anti-national” and being subjected to harassment and brutal attack by nationalistic groups.

Very true! Shit like this happens to me all the time at Waitrose. 

The unprecedented attack on students at the Nehru University on 5 January by a large mob of unidentified assailants armed with stones and sticks was just one shocking example of the shrinking space for public dissent against such injustice.

So the Lefties beat up the ABVP who then retaliated. That's how student politics works. Mrs Gandhi, in 1983, sent in the police to do the beating and she threw a lot of these kids in jail. 

It gave force to Nehru’s own remark:
“The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction”.

But Nehru was wrong. Muslims in Pakistan were not destroyed when they stopped co-existing with non Muslims. Britain was not destroyed when it stopped co-existing with Hitler's Germany. The USA has not disappeared just because the USSR had disappeared. 

Great Britain’s long-standing relationship with India is hugely significant

What about the UK's relationship with Pakistan? Has this country ever protested against what it gets up to? Even if it has, what good did it do? My memory is that Britain refused to condemn the Pakistan army's genocide in Bangladesh. It refused to condemn Pakistani support for the Taliban and, later on, its sheltering of Osama and other such nutters. In short, Britain has no significance, for good or ill, when it comes to policies pursued by countries in the sub-continent.

Alton himself is a light-weight- a former teacher who was a Liberal Democrat and is now known mainly as a Catholic 'pro-life' advocate.

and does not always reflect well on us, but it is precisely because we must all learn from the past that we should not hold back in our own times when we see human dignity and diversity at risk. Relationships between states must be woven into an explicit understanding that democratic values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, foundational ideals to nation-building, must be preserved, protected and promoted at all costs.

Telling stupid lies does not weave relationships between states. Still, at least it has distracted this noble Lord from worrying about women having sex for pleasure rather than procreation.

At a time when hate and intolerance are so much in evidence in many parts of the world, often fanned by xenophobic agendas, we must as India’s good friend urge its Government not to abandon the high ideals of its constitution.

By contrast, Britain's good friends in India must urge it to get rid of the House of Lords. Seriously, those senile coots are making the country look bad.