Former IAS officer S Sashikanth Senthil, who resigned in September this year in protest against the abrogation of Article 370, has written a letter to the Home Minister Amit Shah against the religion-based Citizenship Amendment Bill, that was passed in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
“Your vehement defence of the bill on the floor of the house revealed a lot about the core ideology of hatred that drives your government. I feel completely ashamed that as a country that we have let down our Muslim and Adivasi brothers and sisters and have not succeeded in assuaging their fears about the secular ethos of the country,” former civil servant wrote in his letter to Home Minister.
Senthil said in his letter to Amit Shah that the passage of the Bill “marked the darkest day in the history of modern India.”
“I should remind that irrespective of the status of the CAB the idea of an all India NRC by itself is a dehumanizing effort. We as people of this country should now stand up for all the marginalized,” he added.
Before resigning from the services, Senthil, was the Deputy Commissioner of Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka.
“I refuse to accept the process of enumeration in NRC by not submitting the requisite documents to prove my citizenship and is willing to accept the action taken by the India state against my disobedience. If the state chooses to declare me as a non-citizen, I would also be happy to fill up the many detention centers that you are building all over the country. I would accept the incarceration with all humbleness than to wait at the sidelines as a mute spectator to the communal profiling and disenfranchising of my fellow humans,” he writes.
“The passing of this bill in the Lok Sabha has left a deep scar in the belief of already marginalized people and along with the NRC is surely an attempt to profile Muslims and Adivasis akin to the Asiatic Registration Act in South Africa and the Nuremberg laws of Germany,” Senthil stated.
