Emperors of half-truth: ‘The Lie’ Lamas speak in multiple voices and create a smokescreen
The Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar this week joined the growing list of BJP leaders who are speaking in different voices on Citizenship, NPR, CAA, NRC and now the NRIC
Published: 28 Dec 2019, 3:00 PM
Engagement: 352
Iska dur dur tak NRC ke saath koi sambandh nahi hai (NPR is not even remotely linked to NRC),” Prakash Javadekar said on Tuesday this week with a straight face. And despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he denied that the government had ever made a statement linking the National Population Register to the National Register of Citizens.
But media and the Opposition were quick to point out that five-and-a-half-years ago, on July 23, 2014, Kiren Rijiju had informed in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, “The government has now decided to create the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) based on the information collected under the scheme of NPR by verifying the citizenship status of all individuals in the country.”
Even as Home Minister Amit Shah joined in the chorus, the claims flew in the face of hard facts. Rijiju had followed up with another reply in November, 2014 and said that the NPR was a register of all the ‘usual residents’ and would include both citizens and non-citizens.
“The NPR is the first step towards creation of NRIC (National Register of Indian Citizens) by verifying the citizenship status of every usual resident,” he said
On April 21, 2015, yet another minister of state for home, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary, told the Lok Sabha, “it has been decided that NPR should be completed and taken to its logical conclusion, which is the creation of National Register of Indian Citizen and National Identity Cards would be issued to citizens by verification of citizenship status of every usual resident in the NPR.”
Chaudhary added on record, “The Citizenship Act, 1955, provides the central government to compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue National Identity Card to him.” This is what Javadekar also claimed this week and, ironically, praised the UPA government for initiating the NPR.
Hours after Javadekar made the announcement on NPR, it was the turn of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to tell the government’s favourite news agency ANI that the Prime Minister was right when he claimed on Sunday in a public speech that “never” was the NRC even discussed in the government since 2014.
Did the Home Minister then speak out of turn in Parliament when he explained the chronology and said that first there would be the amended citizenship Act, which would be followed by the NRC?
The website of the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, helpfully provided a link between the NPR and the NRC. The homepage had a link to the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), which led to all the related acts, rules and gazette notifications, besides an introduction and schedule for the NPR — even as Amit Shah was making the claim to the contrary.
As questions swirled and the country watched the unfolding drama, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha seemed to echo the sentiment of many Indians, when he tweeted, “The PM and the HM have left Goebbels behind and deserve the highest award for misleading people through the lies.”
Narendra Modi in any case is known to be economical with the truth. So much so that there is a website dedicated to his ‘lies’. And despite lies dominating politics not just in India, the PM’s lies have been so brazen that a commentator wondered in April this year, “Why does Narendra Modi lie?”. Months later in August, observers scrambled to detect at least five factual distortions in his Independence Day address to the nation.
Fact checking website AltNews in January, 2018 came out with a report, “Half-truths and whole lies: 10 times the PM misled the nation”. As if on cue, the then Congress President Rahul Gandhi alleged in March that Prime Minister Modi lied all day.
But on Sunday, December 22, 2019, the Prime Minister surpassed himself. Who is spreading lies on NRC, he asked aggressively while addressing a BJP rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. He went on to give the answer and said that Congress and ‘Urban Naxals’ were the ones spreading lies on citizenship. His government, he asserted, had never even discussed the National Register of Citizens.
While he was expected to come up with a statesman-like speech to reassure the country and provide a healing touch, whether by accident or design, the Prime Minister was at his corrosive best.
Burn my effigy, he screamed, but do not burn public property. Hate me if you like, he added, but do not hate India or Indians. It reminded many Indians of his dramatic declaration in 2016 after Demonetisation that all he needed were 50 days to prove
that Demonetisation was done in national interest. After that, if people were not convinced, they could punish him at any street corner and put him on a stake.
In similar vein he had said then that the Opposition had ganged up against him, that they would not let him live.
With not a word of sympathy for the young protesters or bystanders killed, maimed and pulverized during country-wide protests, he reminded his audience that policemen worked for them, that 33 thousand policemen had lost their lives since Independence in the line of duty. He of course would not refer to the videos flooding social media showing the police vandalising property and vehicles; or answer why protesters got killed only in BJP-ruled states.
And he made the following statements, which are not borne out by facts. For the record, his questionable statements at Ramlila Maidan were as follows:
• Since my government first came to power in 2014, I want to tell 130 crore countrymen, there has never been a discussion on this NRC.
• The government has never discriminated on grounds of religion
• Rumours of detention centres raised by Congress and urban naxals are lies
• The citizenship law or the NRC has nothing to do with Indian Muslims
• Urban Naxals and Congress spreading rumours
But the confusion was being confounded by the government and BJP leaders.
Modi: We’ll not revoke anyone’s citizenship
Amit Shah: NRC will be implemented and infiltrators will be thrown out
Assam CM: No one can stop us from implementing NRC
Bengal BJP president: If we win in Bengal, we’ll implement NRC
Shivraj Singh Chauhan: NRC will be implemented but only after discussions
Amit Shah: There has been no discussion in the government on NRC
Indeed, the Home Minister this week went on to declare, “NRC has neither been discussed in the parliament nor any rules regarding it have been framed. There are no talks about it at all. It was only when the Supreme Court directed us to implement it in Assam, that we had to do it there”.
So, who should the citizens believe? The Prime Minister, who declared at an election rally in Jharkhand that protesters could be identified by their clothes ( in a reference to Muslims apparently) or the same Prime Minister who ridiculed Wayanad in Kerala as the place where ‘the minority is the majority’?
To put things in perspective,
• First, they said CAB will be followed by NRC.
• Then they said CAA has nothing to do with NRC
• Now they are saying they never said anything about NRC.
Breathtakingly brazen, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister seem to have even forgotten that the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, addressed the joint session of Parliament in June, 2019, his speech cleared by the cabinet, and declared the government’s intention to roll out the National Register of Citizens (NRC) all over the country.
The bluff on the detention centres was also called. Not only has the Parliament been informed officially that several people sent to the detention centres in Assam had died but states have also been asked to build detention centres in anticipation of the NRC. The Centre in fact sent a Detention Centre Manual to the states.
But the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, who are both honourable men (remember Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar?), say there has been no discussion on the NRC. The honourable Home Minister was till recently holding out almost daily threats of rolling out the NRC. He would say menacingly again and again that nobody would be spared and every infiltrator (ghuspethiye as Shah calls them) would be thrown out of the country. But even he has taken a U-turn and now says that NRC is not being rolled out, with the ominous rider, ‘ not right now’.
But does the government even know how many infiltrators are there in the country? It has convinced itself that the number would be very high, in millions, and that they are eating into national resources. That is the ostensible reason for the feverish narrative on the NRIC (National Register of Indian Citizens) that the Modi government is keen to finalise ‘before the next general election in 2024’. That really seems to be the catch and gives the game away.
The government, it is worth recalling, has not disclosed ‘sensitive’ parts of the 2011 Census, especially the data on caste. It already has access to the identity of virtually every Indian and their biometric details by way of Aadhaar. The Election Commission has a data base of voters. The National Population Register was updated less than five years ago. Why should then the government be in such a tearing hurry to push the NPR and NRIC down the throat of Indians?
But the priority seems to be profiling of people and, if possible, disenfranchising the Muslims. This suspicion is strengthened by the Intelligence Bureau telling the Parliamentary Committee scrutinising the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 (now turned into an Act) that this might benefit around 32 thousand refugees, who are presumably seeking Indian citizenship. It is also not clear why the government needs to exclude the Muslims first before it can grant citizenship to refugees following other religions.
BJP has never shied away from declaring that they do not need Muslim votes to win elections. They would rather treat all Indians equally, they said. But while criminalising Triple Talaq, the government ensured that non-Muslims deserting their wives do not have to face criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court verdict on Ayodhya, a verdict which even many Hindus feel is unfair, went blatantly against the Muslim Waqf Board. Finally, putting an end to the Constitutional privileges enjoyed by the erstwhile Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir, the only Muslim majority state in the country, and converting it into two Union Territories, the Modi government has been driving an agenda, which seems unmistakably directed at ‘Othering’ the Muslims.
Normally, the NPR and the Census, both decennial exercises, would not have raised eyebrows. But given the agenda driving the government, the background on which this is being launched and the changes that the government has made by including questions about the date and place of birth of parents in NPR for the first time — the exercise does raise suspicion about the government’s intent.
In politics, they say, what you see is not what you get. And lying is now such an integral part of politics that commentators say it is hardly newsworthy anymore.
But since eternal vigilance is the price for democracy, it is worth following the lies of even honourable men.
For all the latest India News, Follow India Section.
National Register of Citizens (NRC)
Citizenship Amendment Act
Engagement: 352
Iska dur dur tak NRC ke saath koi sambandh nahi hai (NPR is not even remotely linked to NRC),” Prakash Javadekar said on Tuesday this week with a straight face. And despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he denied that the government had ever made a statement linking the National Population Register to the National Register of Citizens.
But media and the Opposition were quick to point out that five-and-a-half-years ago, on July 23, 2014, Kiren Rijiju had informed in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, “The government has now decided to create the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) based on the information collected under the scheme of NPR by verifying the citizenship status of all individuals in the country.”
Even as Home Minister Amit Shah joined in the chorus, the claims flew in the face of hard facts. Rijiju had followed up with another reply in November, 2014 and said that the NPR was a register of all the ‘usual residents’ and would include both citizens and non-citizens.
“The NPR is the first step towards creation of NRIC (National Register of Indian Citizens) by verifying the citizenship status of every usual resident,” he said
On April 21, 2015, yet another minister of state for home, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary, told the Lok Sabha, “it has been decided that NPR should be completed and taken to its logical conclusion, which is the creation of National Register of Indian Citizen and National Identity Cards would be issued to citizens by verification of citizenship status of every usual resident in the NPR.”
Chaudhary added on record, “The Citizenship Act, 1955, provides the central government to compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue National Identity Card to him.” This is what Javadekar also claimed this week and, ironically, praised the UPA government for initiating the NPR.
Hours after Javadekar made the announcement on NPR, it was the turn of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to tell the government’s favourite news agency ANI that the Prime Minister was right when he claimed on Sunday in a public speech that “never” was the NRC even discussed in the government since 2014.
Did the Home Minister then speak out of turn in Parliament when he explained the chronology and said that first there would be the amended citizenship Act, which would be followed by the NRC?
The website of the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, helpfully provided a link between the NPR and the NRC. The homepage had a link to the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), which led to all the related acts, rules and gazette notifications, besides an introduction and schedule for the NPR — even as Amit Shah was making the claim to the contrary.
As questions swirled and the country watched the unfolding drama, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha seemed to echo the sentiment of many Indians, when he tweeted, “The PM and the HM have left Goebbels behind and deserve the highest award for misleading people through the lies.”
Narendra Modi in any case is known to be economical with the truth. So much so that there is a website dedicated to his ‘lies’. And despite lies dominating politics not just in India, the PM’s lies have been so brazen that a commentator wondered in April this year, “Why does Narendra Modi lie?”. Months later in August, observers scrambled to detect at least five factual distortions in his Independence Day address to the nation.
Fact checking website AltNews in January, 2018 came out with a report, “Half-truths and whole lies: 10 times the PM misled the nation”. As if on cue, the then Congress President Rahul Gandhi alleged in March that Prime Minister Modi lied all day.
But on Sunday, December 22, 2019, the Prime Minister surpassed himself. Who is spreading lies on NRC, he asked aggressively while addressing a BJP rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. He went on to give the answer and said that Congress and ‘Urban Naxals’ were the ones spreading lies on citizenship. His government, he asserted, had never even discussed the National Register of Citizens.
While he was expected to come up with a statesman-like speech to reassure the country and provide a healing touch, whether by accident or design, the Prime Minister was at his corrosive best.
Burn my effigy, he screamed, but do not burn public property. Hate me if you like, he added, but do not hate India or Indians. It reminded many Indians of his dramatic declaration in 2016 after Demonetisation that all he needed were 50 days to prove
that Demonetisation was done in national interest. After that, if people were not convinced, they could punish him at any street corner and put him on a stake.
In similar vein he had said then that the Opposition had ganged up against him, that they would not let him live.
With not a word of sympathy for the young protesters or bystanders killed, maimed and pulverized during country-wide protests, he reminded his audience that policemen worked for them, that 33 thousand policemen had lost their lives since Independence in the line of duty. He of course would not refer to the videos flooding social media showing the police vandalising property and vehicles; or answer why protesters got killed only in BJP-ruled states.
And he made the following statements, which are not borne out by facts. For the record, his questionable statements at Ramlila Maidan were as follows:
• Since my government first came to power in 2014, I want to tell 130 crore countrymen, there has never been a discussion on this NRC.
• The government has never discriminated on grounds of religion
• Rumours of detention centres raised by Congress and urban naxals are lies
• The citizenship law or the NRC has nothing to do with Indian Muslims
• Urban Naxals and Congress spreading rumours
But the confusion was being confounded by the government and BJP leaders.
Modi: We’ll not revoke anyone’s citizenship
Amit Shah: NRC will be implemented and infiltrators will be thrown out
Assam CM: No one can stop us from implementing NRC
Bengal BJP president: If we win in Bengal, we’ll implement NRC
Shivraj Singh Chauhan: NRC will be implemented but only after discussions
Amit Shah: There has been no discussion in the government on NRC
Indeed, the Home Minister this week went on to declare, “NRC has neither been discussed in the parliament nor any rules regarding it have been framed. There are no talks about it at all. It was only when the Supreme Court directed us to implement it in Assam, that we had to do it there”.
So, who should the citizens believe? The Prime Minister, who declared at an election rally in Jharkhand that protesters could be identified by their clothes ( in a reference to Muslims apparently) or the same Prime Minister who ridiculed Wayanad in Kerala as the place where ‘the minority is the majority’?
To put things in perspective,
• First, they said CAB will be followed by NRC.
• Then they said CAA has nothing to do with NRC
• Now they are saying they never said anything about NRC.
Breathtakingly brazen, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister seem to have even forgotten that the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, addressed the joint session of Parliament in June, 2019, his speech cleared by the cabinet, and declared the government’s intention to roll out the National Register of Citizens (NRC) all over the country.
The bluff on the detention centres was also called. Not only has the Parliament been informed officially that several people sent to the detention centres in Assam had died but states have also been asked to build detention centres in anticipation of the NRC. The Centre in fact sent a Detention Centre Manual to the states.
But the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, who are both honourable men (remember Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar?), say there has been no discussion on the NRC. The honourable Home Minister was till recently holding out almost daily threats of rolling out the NRC. He would say menacingly again and again that nobody would be spared and every infiltrator (ghuspethiye as Shah calls them) would be thrown out of the country. But even he has taken a U-turn and now says that NRC is not being rolled out, with the ominous rider, ‘ not right now’.
But does the government even know how many infiltrators are there in the country? It has convinced itself that the number would be very high, in millions, and that they are eating into national resources. That is the ostensible reason for the feverish narrative on the NRIC (National Register of Indian Citizens) that the Modi government is keen to finalise ‘before the next general election in 2024’. That really seems to be the catch and gives the game away.
The government, it is worth recalling, has not disclosed ‘sensitive’ parts of the 2011 Census, especially the data on caste. It already has access to the identity of virtually every Indian and their biometric details by way of Aadhaar. The Election Commission has a data base of voters. The National Population Register was updated less than five years ago. Why should then the government be in such a tearing hurry to push the NPR and NRIC down the throat of Indians?
But the priority seems to be profiling of people and, if possible, disenfranchising the Muslims. This suspicion is strengthened by the Intelligence Bureau telling the Parliamentary Committee scrutinising the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 (now turned into an Act) that this might benefit around 32 thousand refugees, who are presumably seeking Indian citizenship. It is also not clear why the government needs to exclude the Muslims first before it can grant citizenship to refugees following other religions.
BJP has never shied away from declaring that they do not need Muslim votes to win elections. They would rather treat all Indians equally, they said. But while criminalising Triple Talaq, the government ensured that non-Muslims deserting their wives do not have to face criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court verdict on Ayodhya, a verdict which even many Hindus feel is unfair, went blatantly against the Muslim Waqf Board. Finally, putting an end to the Constitutional privileges enjoyed by the erstwhile Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir, the only Muslim majority state in the country, and converting it into two Union Territories, the Modi government has been driving an agenda, which seems unmistakably directed at ‘Othering’ the Muslims.
Normally, the NPR and the Census, both decennial exercises, would not have raised eyebrows. But given the agenda driving the government, the background on which this is being launched and the changes that the government has made by including questions about the date and place of birth of parents in NPR for the first time — the exercise does raise suspicion about the government’s intent.
In politics, they say, what you see is not what you get. And lying is now such an integral part of politics that commentators say it is hardly newsworthy anymore.
But since eternal vigilance is the price for democracy, it is worth following the lies of even honourable men.
For all the latest India News, Follow India Section.
National Register of Citizens (NRC)
Citizenship Amendment Act
