On US Envoy Eric Garcetti's Stand About CAA, EAM S Jaishankar Says, 'Pyar Se Samjha Denge'

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) which seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim migrants who came here from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014, has been into controversy since it was passed by Parliament. While a case is also filed against the act in the Supreme Court, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar was asked about his view on the new US envoy to India Eric Garcetti's statement that CAA is discriminatory towards Muslims, the EAM said that countries like the United States and Germany already have similar laws. 

"First of all, when CAA was passed, there was a debate and people in this country tried to make it an international debate. It was interesting because when I went around the world and explained to different countries please look at your citizenship criteria and tell me, are you less specific in terms of how you have defined the criteria than we have? Take the United States (for example), the two very well-known amendments there, something called the Lautenberg amendment and Specter amendment, which actually single out specific communities and specific faiths, and give them a faster pathway into citizenship...This is not just the US, if you look at Europe, the Germans have a faster citizenship pathway for people of German descent in other countries," said Jaishankar to a news channel.

He further said that people being persecuted in many countries have nowhere to go than India. "In many cases, the people who are persecuted have nowhere else to go except to India. If you are a Hindu in Pakistan, who is being oppressed, where else will you go other than India?...Let him (Eric Garcetti) come here, pyar se samjha denge," said Jaishankar.

During his interview, Jaishankar also lashed out at Rahul Gandhi over his Cambridge speech.