Kolkata: Going totally against the party line, BJP’s West Bengal unit vice president and revolutionary hero Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s grand nephew Chandra K. Bose has called for bringing Muslims within the ambit of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), and said that a legislation cannot be implemented through threats and intimidation.
Bose, who has been articulating his dissenting views for quite some time, also disapproved of the abusive language being used by the BJP leaders like its state unit president Dilip Ghosh.
“The movement which is going on across India can be resolved very easily if you clearly announce that everybody — Hindus, Muslim, Sikhs and Christians — will get citizenship as a result of the CAA,” said Bose, who contested but lost the Lok Sabha polls last year from the Kolkata South constituency.
The CAA, passed in Parliament last month, seeks to provide Indian nationality to minority Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists fleeing persecution in Muslim-majority Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014.
The legislation, which has come into force on January 10, has led to countrywide protests, with students coming out on the streets in thousands in almost all the states. Civil society members, anti-BJP political parties and commoners have also joined the protests
Bose wants that his party should go to the people on this issue.
“We have to go to the people and reason with them. You can’t implement an Act through intimidation and threats,” he said.
Bose, who is the grand son of Netaji’s elder brother and freedom fighter Sarat Chandra, said using abusive words to attack protestors does not befit a party like the BJP.
“Just because we have the numbers in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, does not mean we are at liberty to take such an aggressive approach. Today we are in government, tomorrow we may not be there.
“Attacking those opposed to us in this manner, does not befit us,” he said.
A section of the BJP leaders, including its state unit chief Dilip Ghosh, has been hurling choice epithets on intellectuals and celebrities who have hit the streets in Kolkata and elsewhere in the country.
Days back, Ghosh had described these intellectuals as “creatures”, “devils” and “parasites”.
Following his lead, BJP MP Soumitra Khan dubbed the protesting intellectuals as “(West Bengal Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee’s dogs”.
Continuing the assault, on Monday state BJP General Secretary Sayantan Bose called the protestors “dogs” and “monkeys”.
Bose, however, also expressed his opposition to the state governments run by the non-BJP parties announcing they won’t implement the CAA.
“After an Act is passed in Parliament, and it is notified, then it is the responsibility of the state government to implement it. If anybody has questions about the legislation, then the Supreme Court can be approached.
“A number of state governments, including the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal, are saying they don’t accept this Act. This is legally not correct. A state government can’t perform an illegal act,” said the 59-year-old, an Economics degree holder from the Hendon College of London.
Ghosh came down heavily on Bose for his statements, and asked him to win an election first.
“Who has made him a leader? How many votes did he get? First, let him win a Panchayat election at least, then he can talk big,” said Ghosh, himself a Lok Sabha member.
