Nobel Laureate and president of the Royal Society, Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph condemned the Citizenship Amendment Act proposed by the BJP-led government in India.
Popularly known as Venki, has a dual American-UK citizenship, Venki said he won’t be signing the petition organised by the group of scientists and scholars because he feels it is to be done by citizens of India only, but wanted to talk about the wrong turn that India is taking.
Venki said that even though he doesn’t live in the country, he decided to speak up because he is extremely fond of India and views our nation as “a great tolerant ideal and I also want India to succeed.”
Venki called the bill as highly divisive, “I felt very strongly that telling 200 million people that ‘Look, your religion doesn’t actually have the same status as all the others’ is a very divisive message to the country.”
Venki went on to draw parallels between India and Pakistan, he told The Telegraph, “India decided consciously to be a secular democracy that did not favour any particular religion. That is the basis of India and that is why we have 200 million Muslims in India whereas Pakistani has hardly any (non-Muslims). One per cent of Pakistan is (non-Muslim).”
He added saying, “So we are not Pakistan. We are different in that we are secular. I shouldn’t say ‘we’ — I should say ‘India’. So, that’s an ideal — it says that everybody is tolerated. The other thing about the Indian Constitution is that it is unique in (promoting) the scientific temperament…. The scientific temperament means that you look at things based on the evidence, you don’t discriminate on the basis of things (like religion) and so on.”
Venki expressed gratitude towards India because he had received scholarships in India, he said, “I was taught there, I have great affection for India and I want India to succeed.”
