Author-activist Arundhati Roy on Wednesday claimed that the National Population Register (NPR) will serve as a database for the NRC and asked people to oppose the former by furnishing wrong names and addresses.
Roy’s speech at a protest gathering at Delhi University has gathered many reactions among Indians. She said at the protest that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was targeted against the Muslims of the country. She also said that when officials will visit people's homes under NPR exercise for taking their names, addresses and other details, “give them some other name -- like Ranga Billa, Kung-Fu Kutta, give your address as 7 Race Course Road and let's fix one phone number.”
Roy further said, “We were not born for lathis and bullets.”
Arundhati Roy’s RangaBilla comment has people wither fuming or laughing on the floor. Twitter has been trending #RangaBilla since and the tweets are not funny.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently said that there was no link between the NPR and the NRC and their databases cannot be used for each other. The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved Rs 3,941.35 crore for updating the National Population Register(NPR). The NPR is a list of "usual residents" of the country.
However, the BJP-led central government has stated multiple times in the parliament that the two are related. BJP leader Kiren Rijiju has gone as far as to say that NRC is the logical conclusion to NPR.
