Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra gave a fiery speech against the Narendra Modi government in the Lok Sabha on Monday, exposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the state of the economy.
Moitra said that the government had betrayed not those who did not vote for them, but those who did. She compared the CAA and Natioanl Register of Citizens (NRC) to the holocaust between 1941 and 1945 and said that the “NPR, the NRC and the CAA are all tools in the Machiavellian design to first mark out, then disenfranchise and finally annihilate. This is the biggest betrayal of those who voted for you”.
An excerpt of the speech is given below. Watch the full speech here.
“...You have betrayed the very citizens who voted for you. You did not come to power on the vote of the Hindu right alone. You came to power because of a very large section of ordinary people. The aspirational middle-of-the-road voters cast aside whatever reservations they might have had about your past, and believed you when you said 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas', which they took to mean development for a united India. They believed in your alternative narrative of merit, of transparency, of a world without nepotism.
It is to this section of the people, these middle-of-the-road voters that you owe your historic mandate to. These were not the hardcore believers. They still believed you and they still voted for you. But you betrayed the young voter who was eagerly looking forward to his first job. You have betrayed the small businessman by your foolish decision of demonetisation, killing his market, ruining his business for no fathomable reason. You have betrayed thousands of tribal people in Gujarat whose land you took to build a statue and to whom you have now given jobs as toilet cleaners.
These middle-of-the-road voters cannot recognise the India that they now see... They cannot identify the hate-filled venomous invective that they see members of the ruling party spew out publicly.
The NPR, the NRC and the CAA are all tools in the Machiavellian design to first mark out, then disenfranchise and finally annihilate. This is the biggest betrayal of those who voted for you. Nobody wanted to be a part of this 'us versus them' debate. My friends who voted for you are horrified by what is happening in their name under your watch. As every election comes and goes, your members demonise dissent, exhorting your supporters to shoot people who stand up to you.
Today, you have let a person who was banned by the election commission for speaking for thirty-six hours to come to the floor of the house and present the manifesto of the ruling party for the Delhi assembly elections...
You build false narratives where our dadis become terrorists, our children become deshdrohis. Today, the citizen is finally standing up to these bullies...
You have betrayed the history of this Republic. You have denounced the very ideals on which we fought and gained our freedom, which was through peaceful and non-violent dissent. You have tried time and again to rewrite the past and create a grotesque and singular version of India with a false history.”