BCCI President Sourav Ganguly has pleaded that his daughter Sana be kept out of any political discourse after a purported post by her, which was claimed to be critical of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, was widely circulated on social media platforms.
Mr. Ganguly, a decorated former cricket captain, said the Instagram post was “not true.”
“Please keep Sana out of all these issues ... this post is not true ... she is too young a girl to know about anything in politics,” Mr. Ganguly tweeted.
A screenshot of an Instagram story, claimed to be by 18-year-old Sana, went viral on social media in which she quoted an excerpt from Khushwant Singh’s novel The End of India that was published in 2003.
The excerpt read: “Every fascist regime needs communities and groups it can demonise in order to thrive. It starts with one group or two. But it never ends there. A movement built on hate can only sustain itself by continually creating fear and strife. Those of us today who feel secure because we are not Muslims or Christians are living in a fool’s paradise. The Sangh is already targeting the Leftist historians and ‘Westernized’ youth.”
“Tomorrow it will turn its hate on women who wear skirts, people who eat meat, drink liquor, watch foreign films, don’t go on annual pilgrimages to temples, use toothpaste instead of danth manjan, prefer allopathic doctors to vaids, kiss or shake hands in greeting instead of shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ No one is safe. We must realise this if we hope to keep India alive,” concludes the extract.
The screenshot of this post was shared widely on social media and garnered mixed reactions.
The Rajya Sabha on December 11, 2019 passed the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019. The Bill for the first time allows citizenship on the basis of religion to six communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) have taken the country by storm.