Actor Siddharth Slams Amit Shah On NRC, Says ‘Seeds Of Ethnic Cleansing Being Sown’

Actor Siddharth, who is known for speaking his mind, has hit out at Amit Shah for his veiled threats against Muslims he made at a conference on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) held in Bengal on Tuesday.

Addressing a public rally on in Kolkata, Shah asserted that the contentious NRC will be implemented across the country, but before that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will be passed to accord Indian citizenship to all Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists crossing into the country.

He also went on to say that all ‘infiltrators’ will be thrown out of the country, in a veiled reference to Muslims.

Calling Amit Shah a ‘Home Monster’, Siddharth slammed him for his hateful and divisive comments, saying that it is against the Constitution to tell refugees that only Muslims will be forced to leave India by the Government. He also commented saying that these are “seeds of ethnic cleansing being sown in the open for all to see”.

“How is the Home Monster allowed to speak like this? Is it not against the constitution to tell refugees that only the Muslims among them will be forced to leave India by the govt? What is going on? These are the seeds of ethnic cleansing being sown in the open for all to see!,” Siddharth tweeted.

Siddharth is a longstanding critic of the BJP.

Earlier, he took a dig at Modi after the latter posted a video on Twitter of his “memorable welcome” in Delhi after he returned from the US. Siddharth wrote: “Supreme Leader is boasting about a crowd assembled and a welcome orchestrated for him by his team. Mogambo khush hua.”

Siddharth had also shared his opinion on Hindi language imposition in Indian schools. The recent draft version of the National Education Policy 2019 has mandated compulsory learning of Hindi in non-Hindi speaking states. Siddharth has reacted against the policy, saying that as a native Tamil speaker choosing to learn Hindi is different from being required to study it academically.

Siddharth took to his Twitter on Tuesday 4 June, writing, “There is a big difference between a native #Tamil speaker learning #Hindi vs being forced to study it and write exams in it. I speak 5 languages and understand 10. I wasn’t forced to learn them and that’s how it should be. #India is a mixture of great languages. Leave them be.”

Siddharth who has acted in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Hindi films, had also criticised the Narendra Modi government for ‘politicising’ the Pulwama attacks.