 The way humans with which people are fighting, I'm… I was wondering, did I miss something? I think in a very calibrated way, somebody sent the message to the minorities that your citizenship is under threat. This lie did fly for the last one week, now it's landed. Namaskaram, Sadhguru! Sadhguru, there is a lot of turmoil in the nation regarding CAA and NRC. I am confused and many of us do not even know what to make out of it. Where did you come from? I am from Lucknow. Oh! And there is so much going on. Yeah, I know, Lucknow people are confused. Sadhguru, I wanted to know your thoughts on this. My thoughts, CAB became CAA, a bill became an act. Well, looking at last one week's reactions on the street, I even wondered, have I missed something really? Have I missed some aspect of it? Because I have not read the act fully, I only know it from the newspapers and whatever else is there in the… generally out there, considering that many explanations that are being put out. See, this was one land, got divided about seventy-two years ago. Terrible things happened, nearly six-hundred, seven-hundred thousand people got killed. Three to four million people migrated from both sides, going through enormous suffering. And the country, at least one part, not India, the other two parts that happened, happened on religious basis. People divided the land on religious basis. Fortunately, we chose to be a secular nation, but the others chose to be, you know, religious republics. But not everybody changed sides, because people have been living there for millennia. Not everybody will leave their property, their life, their everything and travel, just because the nation… somebody drew a line. Seventy-two years ago, whole lot of people did not understand what this line meant, really. So, quite substantial number of them stayed back. There's a lot of debate about percentages. I'm not an expert on this either. They said twenty-three percent stayed back in West Pakistan, and nearly thirty percent stayed back in East Pakistan. That's what people say, because nobody has perfect numbers, I believe, but it's somewhere around that, it can't be totally wrong. But then, 1971 war happened and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Then widespread persecution of the minorities happened. At that time, nearly eighteen to nineteen percent of the people left and came back to the Indian side. They got mixed up. There was no proper arrangement. They just got mixed up with the local population. Some of them are still in refugee camps, unfortunately. It's the situation in India. The situation on the other side is different, because by law there is discrimination against the minorities. Here also people will claim there is discrimination, but not by law. Individual people may always discriminate against each other, which is there in every nation on some basis for race, religion, caste, creed, gender, all kinds of discriminations exist unfortunately in most societies on the planet. We are not completely antiseptic to that. We also have our share of discriminatory practices, but not by law. In the eyes of the law, all citizens of India are just same. There is no two ways about it. Social practices, not everything catches up with the constitution. Everybody plays their own little game here and there for different reasons. Political reasons, social reasons, economic reasons, you know, a variety of things. But on the other side, by law there are discriminations, which by law women are seriously discriminated on various levels. By law almost all the minorities are discriminated just day before yesterday. A professor has been given a death sentence for blasphemy, because he wrote something online which the religion does not like. Such things are not possible in this country. Socially there may be repercussions that is there everywhere in the world, but not by law. I was in Baku in Azerbaijan. 164 Pakistani Hindus were visiting Baku, because Baku has a fire temple which is over five to six thousand years old. With all Sanskrit inscriptions, Indian people have been traveling to this fire temple. It is… it is called the Agnikashi. So those who want to do sadhana on fire because of natural gas, naturally on the land there are points where fire is burning or he's been burning forever. So they built a nice temple around that and this is a place where people go to do sadhana, largely to die. The last part of their life they want to go there and spend. For thousands of years they've been going there. So now in India we've completely forgotten about the Baku temple, the fire temple, but the Pakistani Hindus are still going there. So 164 of them came. Well on that day I had to take 164 photographs with each one of them and then families and then friends and groups and totally two hundred pictures in one evening. Then one of them, a young man, maybe around thirty, maybe thirty-two, thirty-three years of age, came to me crying bitterly and he said, he was married for two-and-a-half years. One day ten to twelve people came, thrashed him, picked up his wife and went away. And that evening they got her married to another man of another religion and that evening she's with him. Two-and-a-half years he was married to her, they're close together. Now forcefully they take her and he cannot, police won't take complaint, he cannot go to court because Hindu marriage is not legal in Pakistan. Can you beat it? I was just surprised that there is such a law. I have not made a study of it, I must check this out, somebody must check this out properly. But I inquired and a few other people confirmed it is so. I'm not hundred percent on this but this man's plight is real that they pick up his wife, take her away, that evening they get her married to somebody else and she's supposed to live with him that evening because his marriage is not valid because he's gone through a Hindu ritual. He has not gone through the rituals that the other religions are propagating. So his marriage is not valid. So people have been going through this kind of thing so a trickle of people slowly when they get overly frustrated, they can't live there, they've been coming for last few decades. In my opinion, CAA is too little compassion coming too late because the atrocities that they've gone through, there are statistics saying that this many hundred temples, now there are only this many because systematically it has all been demolished so that there is no places of prayer or worship for other religions, this is happening for all religions, not for any one specific religion because the fundamental belief is that the nation belongs to one religion. That is not the case with India fortunately. Here everybody can practice whatever, propagate whatever, everything is there. So CAA is not bringing any new people. See, we are populated all right, even here. We're well populated. So we don't need millions of people coming from another country no matter what is the situation there. We can't go on taking people. So some cutoff date was fixed as per the sum accord, 1972 or 71 was something was fixed because that is the time when huge influx happened. A genocide which killed three million people, three million Hindus were killed just before Bangladesh got liberated. So at that time a massive influx of people happened. So local people started protesting because their culture is being overrun by refugees. The refugee population is bigger than the local population in Assam. So they have always been protesting. You know the whole Assam movement in seventies. So there they made an accord that we will identify all the foreigners and send them back or do something, redistribute them, whatever. That never happened because people who made that accord, they only signed the paper, they did not act. So now the cutoff date is 2014. Those who have come before that, that means they've been living in this country for ten, twenty years without a driving license, without a passport, without a ration card, without another card, without any kind of identity like animals. There's no human identity in this country. Because of this controversy, should we accept them or not accept them? Now you make up your mind and say, till 2014 whoever has come, we will accept them. But looking at the reaction in the country, it amazes me, are we, are we this hard-hearted that somehow for whatever reasons. But this bill is only focused on religious persecution. You may have some other trouble and you want to come here, that's not allowed. You may looking for economic opportunities, you cannot come. If you want to come, there is a separate channel for that. Anybody can apply for Indian citizenship and go through the normal process of law. Like in any other nation, even in India, you can apply for Indian citizenship, go through the normal process irrespective of your religion, you can come into India. This is a block acceptance of citizenship. This is for those people who have been living here, nineteen... I mean, twenty-fourteen means they've been here for at least over seven years, most of them over fifteen, twenty years. Well, looking at the reaction on the street, the way humans with which people are fighting, I was wondering, did I miss something? Am I not getting something here? But since in the last twenty-four hours I looked up a few things, this is all it is. And everybody knows that's all it is. Now slowly everybody's thin is changing their stance and saying, no, no, we are reacting because of police atrocity. Nobody... see, one thing is it looks like the government was caught napping because they didn't expect such a big reaction for such a simple issue. So they didn't put up enough police on the streets, so police got really trashed barely in most places, brutally. So when a few thousand people, corner twenty-five policemen and trashed them, naturally when the bigger force comes, they are going to do some things. I'm not trying to justify anything. This is the reality that we have seen in the last eight days. And now everybody is changing their stance and saying, no, no, it's not that we never said it's religious discrimination, it is just proof police should not enter the university. But university students can behave like what quarry workers and from inside the university they're throwing stones at everybody and police should not go and stop them when they go. Well, if she's throwing stones and she's not, both will get beaten unfortunately because she's standing sitting next to her. This is the way it works in the crowd, huh? Will they go out and point out only she was throwing, others were not throwing. It doesn't work like that. All of them who are sitting together, everybody gets beaten. But I think they didn't use their firepower. That is a lot of restraint. Otherwise people would have died in big numbers. Lucknow where you come from, there are fifty-six policemen who have bullet injuries. Where did the bullets come from? Lucknowi people. What are you up to? Police have bullet injuries. What does it say unfortunately? So this is a dangerous game people are playing. I think there is a certain desperation among certain people who misinformed, illiterate masses of religious groups who went wild thinking that the local Indian Muslims will lose their citizenship. That's what they conveyed. They sent out a message saying they are discriminating and all of you will lose your citizenship and they will throw you out. This is... Well, such a mischief should not have worked on the scale that it worked. It should not have. It's unfortunate. Still in today's day and age where you can just open up your phone and read the act, what does it say? What does the CAA say? Any student can read it. But all of them are coming and behaving like illiterate people. They're studying in premier universities and how come they can't read the damn act? It's really sad that such a thing can happen. That nobody reads the act. Everybody goes by the rumors that are going on. WhatsApp is their source of knowledge. Okay? I hope they're not doing any PhD on WhatsApp. It's really terrible that public property is burned and destroyed. Ordinary people's scooters and cars and shops being absolutely vandalized like this. For what? Because once the crowds go into a frenzy state, nobody knows why they're doing what they're doing. Everybody's doing something. I think in a very calibrated way, somebody sent the message to the minorities that your citizenship is under threat, which is an absolute lie. Unfortunately, it did fly. This lie did fly for the last one week. Now it's landed. Now people know it's not. So they're trying to find different reasons why we did what we did. It's very unfortunate. You also want NRC? You're determined to get me into trouble. See, there is an NRC in every nation. It may not be done in this format. What NRC means is every citizen must be registered. All those who are living in this country must be registered. When we are trying to, in Coimbatore city, there was an attempt to register all the dogs which have some ownership. I'm saying the idea is we must know how many dogs, otherwise we don't know what will happen. Because some children were killed by packs of dogs, you know, loose dogs, street dogs, out there attacking school children and eating them up, killed. So then somebody suggested all those who have some ownership, they must have a tag and they must be registered. Their birth and death must be registered. When we are thinking on these lines we want even dogs to be registered, is it not important how many human beings are there in this country? Where did they come from? Were they born here? Did they come from outside? What is their antecedents? Is it not important for a nation to know this if you want to conduct this nation properly? But some people think that is also discriminatory. This is for everybody. All of us you and me will have to register. Now they're giving you various options. You produce your birth certificate, people say we don't have. You show the school footprint, no I never went to school. You show the ration card, no I don't have it. Show the other card, I don't have it. Show the election registration card, I don't have it. Then who the hell are you? And if you don't have any of these things, they're saying produce three witnesses who know you for a period of time. No I don't have witnesses. Who are you? It is just probably, I think in some way for whatever reasons I think the government has failed to communicate this properly. Otherwise personally I don't see one issue on these things. But I think communication wise, the way it is communicated unfortunately certain number of people are perceiving it as a threat to them. That must definitely change. If anybody is issuing a threat through these two most essential, one is of some compassion coming very late in my opinion, it should have happened much before. Another is an absolute necessity for a nation to register every citizen who lives in this country. See there are so many foreigners here we don't know who they are. Yes we should know where they come from and why they have come, isn't it? In any nation that's a fact. So such a simple thing I think was lack of proper communication and people took advantage of it and made sure it was miscommunicated and illiterate youth in the universities went wild.