Jinnah's victory will be complete if CAA leads to NRC: Tharoor

JAIPUR: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said that Pakistan's founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah's victory will be completed if the Citizenship (Amendment) Act leads to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in which a large section of the population would be deprived of its rights if it fails to prove its citizenship. On being asked about his reported remark that "CAA implementation would be the fulfillment of Jinnah's two-nation theory" at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Tharoor said, "I would not say Jinnah has won but he is winning."

He added, "If CAA would lead to NPR and NRC that would pursue the same line. If that happens, you can say that Jinnah's victory is complete. From wherever Jinnah is, he would say he was right that Muslims deserve a separate country because Hindus can't be just towards the Muslims." Jinnah was a strong votary of the two-nation theory which says that Hindus and Muslims are two separate peoples belonging to two different religious philosophies, with different social customs and literature.

The CAA grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and who came to India on or before December 31, 2014. It conspicuously omits Muslims from the list of refugees.