If the spirit behind CAA was ever the protection of those amongst our neighbours threatened by state-sponsored religious extremism and persecution, it should be our duty as the bigger, more liberal, more democratic nation in the neighbourhood to be the North Star of the moral compass (that more powerful but further off states like the US have lacked) and to evacuate, embrace, and resettle our Afghan friends with alacrity. They need us now. We cannot abandon them in their time of need.
Indeed, if Akhand Bharat ever meant anything to the bhaktgan, they’d be the first to agree that our friends and indeed brothers and sisters (mainly sisters) in Afghanistan need.
If our all-embracing (Sanatani?) philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam that the bhaktgan keep mouthing has any meat or real-life application, it is this duty to our Afghan co-travellers on Spaceship Earth that must be taken seriously. Enough for us to deploy the kind of resources we have done (and successfully concluded) in the past to evacuate our citizens from troubled areas and conflict zones.Unless, of course, the idea behind The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 was to target, and put in their place, Muslims inside the country. And the idea behind Akhand Bharat was always just a tool to emotionally blackmail the majority into voting for them by showing them an unfulfilled (and unfulfillable) dream, persecute our own minorities, and keep the borders hot (on the West, obviously). Or the idea behind Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam was simply an act, a crutch to be used to claim selfless humanism and good intent in a similar way that a white man will claim to have a black friend as proof that he is not racist.
Ah well.
