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New Delhi: People refusing to accept a law passed by the legislature can lead to “anarchy”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Tuesday, in an indirect reference to protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh and other places.

Training his guns on the Congress, he added, “Imagine if the Rajasthan assembly decides on a law and people take to the street and no one is ready to implement it? It is your government. In Madhya Pradesh, too, it is your government.

“Imagine a scenario where people refuse to allow a certain law? Can a country function like this? This is the path to anarchy,” he added, addressing the Lok Sabha while replying to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address.

He accused the Congress and the Left of inciting people at the site of the protests for their political benefit. Pakistan has been trying to incite Muslims in India and the opposition is doing it now, he said.

Nehru and 1984

Modi’s speech came days before the 8 February Delhi assembly polls — an election whose campaign has witnessed a series of incendiary remarks from BJP leaders.

PM Modi addressed two rallies in Delhi this week. His speech in the Lok Sabha, which clocked in at 1 hour and 41 minutes, raised some of the same points as he sought to reiterate that the CAA will not impact any Indian. “No citizen of this country will suffer on account of CAA,” he said.

The opposition, he said, was deliberately politicising it, and attacked the Congress by recalling the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

“Those who speak of persecuting minorities should also remember the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Many innocents were brutally killed,” he said.

“At that time, you did not send those who are accused in the anti-Sikh riots to jails. Not only that, you also ended up making someone who faces allegations of instigating anti-Sikh riots, a chief minister [Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath],” Modi added. “How can there be two kinds of minorities?”

He also accused India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of dividing the nation on religious grounds.

“There is nothing wrong in having ambition to be Prime Minister. But there was a time when, because of one person’s ambition to become the PM, a line was drawn that led to the partition of India.”

He then said that the intent behind the CAA was similar to Nehru’s thoughts around the time the 1950 Nehru-Liaquat pact on minority rights was signed between India and Pakistan.

“At that time, Nehru had written in letters that Hindu and Muslim refugees should be seen differently… He also said that Hindus in East Pakistan were under pressure,” he added. “Was he communal? Was he making a Hindu Rashtra? Even today there are attacks on minorities in Pakistan.”

Many MPs, he said, had questioned the government’s “hurry” to introduce the CAA.

“If we worked in the same way as you (opposition) did, even after 70 years of Independence, Article 370 wouldn’t have gone,” Modi added.

“Some [in the opposition]… accused the government of doing Hindu-Muslim [politics]. There were some who said the government was trying to divide the people. This is the language Pakistan has been using for decades,” he said.

“Pakistan has been trying to provoke Muslims and now the same is being done by the opposition. For them, Muslims are Muslims. For us, they are Indians.”

Also read: Shaheen Bagh will not be seen as a national threat next week. Here’s why

‘How can we side with them’

The issue of political detainees in Kashmir — many of whom have been in detention for six months since the scrapping of Article 370 — also featured in his speech, with Modi questioning those who have criticised the decision.

“There were many who said that Kashmir will be on fire if Article 370 is removed. Then there are others who are questioning us for detaining some political leaders,” he said.

“On 5 August [when Article 370 was scrapped] Mehbooba Mufti said that India has betrayed Kashmir and we would have been better with deciding otherwise in 1947. Can we accept such people? Omar Abdullah said scrapping Article 370 would cause a quake. Farooq Abdullah said that if Article 370 is removed, no one would want to hoist the Indian flag in Kashmir. How is it possible to side with them?” he said.

He also took a jibe at former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who said at a rally in Delhi Wednesday that the youth of India will “beat PM Modi with sticks (dande maarenge)” if unemployment is not addressed.

Without naming Gandhi, he said, “I heard a Congress leader say yesterday that the youth of India will hit Modi with sticks in six months. I have become gaali-proof (expletive-proof) over the past few years and now I have decided that I will increase my frequency of ‘Surya Namaskar’ so that my back becomes so strong it can bear the blows of so many sticks.”

Also read: Dalit-Muslim unity is an opposition charade. CAA and Ram Mandir trust blow the lie

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