Actress Urmila Matondkar on Thursday compared the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) to the Rowlatt Act of 1919 at a public meeting called ‘Non-violent people’s movement against CAA, National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR)’, organised to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary.
“The Rowlatt Act of 1919 and the CAA of 2019 are the two acts that will be addressed as ‘black Acts’ in history. The CAA is against poor people. The Act as being stated is of course anti-Muslim. We do not want an Act which ascertains my identity and citizenship on the basis of religion. It is in our Constitution that you cannot discriminate on the basis of religion, language, gender or region,” Matondkar said.
The British government had passed the infamous Rowlatt Act in 1919, giving enormous powers to the police to arrest any person without giving any reason, in an effort to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country.
Gandhi had protested against this oppressive Act by calling people to launch a satyagraha against it.
Human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, Bishop Thomas Dabre and Kumar Saptarshi, president, Maharashtra Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, also addressed the public meeting at Gandhi Bhavan in Kothrud on Thursday.
Setalvad talked about Gandhi’s assasination by Nathuram Godse and said “Hindutva forces never agreed to a republic and secular state”.
“Whereas Gandhi, a symbol of both, said India will remain secular and there will be
no correlation between Raj, politics and religion,” she added.
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