Even Nehru wanted Indian citizenship for religious minorities from Pak: PM

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said in Lok Sabha that even Jawaharlal Nehru had wanted Indian citizenship for religious minorities from Pakistan as he hit out at the Congress while defending the amended citizenship law.

Replying to a debate on Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, he said the first prime minister of India (Jawaharlal Nehru) wrote to the first chief minister of Assam (Gopinath Bordoloi), saying there was a need to differentiate between Hindu refugees and Muslim migrants.

He said Nehru had wanted to defend minorities in then West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

“Was he communal, did he want to create a Hindu Rashtra…I want to ask the Congress,” the prime minister said.

He said Nehru was a big thinker. Why did he not include all citizens but mentioned only religious minorities in the Nehru-Liaquat Agreement? Modi asked. Liaquat Ali Khan was the then prime minister of Pakistan.

He said his government is saying today what Nehru had said decades ago.

Modi said the government was fulfilling the wishes of the founding fathers.

While referring to the Citizenship Amendment Act, President Ram Nath Kovind in his address to the joint sitting of Parliament on January 31 had said that Mahatma Gandhi was in favour of bringing back religious minorities facing persecution in Pakistan.

Participating in the debate on the Motion of Thanks, Shashi Tharoor of Congress had said Mahatma Gandhi was only partially quoted by the government to defend the amended law.