‘Unacceptable to Use Religion to Discriminate’: Amartya Sen on CAA

File image of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Tuesday, 7 January, claimed that the Citizenship Amendment Act violates Constitutional provisions, adding that discrimination on the basis of religion is not acceptable.

“The CAA law that has been passed in my judgment should be turned down by the Supreme Court on the grounds of it being unconstitutional because you cannot have certain types of fundamental human rights linking citizenship with religious differences,” he told reporters at the Infosys Science Foundation’s Infosys Prize-2019 in Bengaluru.

(Catch all the live updates on CAA here).

‘CAA Violates Constitution’

The Nobel laureate said that what really should matter for deciding citizenship is the place a person is born, lived and so on.

About the CAA, he said “My reading of the constitution is that it violates the provision of the constitution.”

Explaining further, Sen said that citizenship on the basis of religion has been a matter of discussion in the constituent assembly where it was decided that “using religion for the purpose of discrimination of this kind will not be acceptable.”

Sen, however, agreed that a Hindu treated badly in a country outside India deserves sympathy and his case must be taken into account. “It (consideration for citizenship) has to be independent, of religion but take cognisance of the sufferings and other issues into account,” said Sen.

Speaking about the violence in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Sen took note of the fact that the university administration could not prevent entry of outsiders coming on the premises and creating violence.

“The communication between the university administration and the police got delayed due to which ill treatment of students went on without being prevented by the law enforcement agencies,” he added.