Urmila Matondkar draws bizarre parallel between Rowlatt Act & CAA, slams both laws

Actor and politician Urmila Matondkar stoked a controversy on Thursday by comparing the Citizenship Amendment Act with the Rowlatt Act enacted by the British. She was speaking at a public meeting in Pune on the theme ‘Non-Violent People’s Movement against NRC, CAA, NPR’. She contended that the British had brought in the Rowlatt Act to crush the dissent that had spread in India after the culmination of World War II. Matondkar opined that both this legislation and the CAA would go down as “black laws” in history. Activist Teesta Setalvad was one of the other speakers on this occasion. 

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Comparison of the two Acts

Passed by the Imperial Legislative Council on March 21, 1919, the Rowlatt Act paved the way for detention and incarceration without trial for two years. This gave tremendous powers to the British authorities to apprehend any person involved in the freedom struggle. It also sought to severely censor the press in India. The Non-Cooperation Movement was a reaction to oppressive legislation such as the Rowlatt Act. 

Read: Feel Foreign Forces Behind Creating Misunderstanding Over CAA To Weaken India: Rajnath Singh

On the other hand, the CAA is a law passed democratically by both Houses of Parliament in December 2019. The CAA seeks to provide citizenship to the minority communities namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. This will be applicable to the members of these communities having arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014. Moreover, they will not be considered as illegal migrants. 

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Matondkar's political career

Matondkar joined the Congress party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. She was immediately given a ticket to contest from the North Mumbai constituency. However, she lost to her BJP opponent Gopal Shetty by a margin of more than 4 lakh votes. Thereafter, the actor resigned from Congress citing infighting in the party ranks. 

Read: CPI Leaders D Raja & Binoy Viswam Detained By Delhi Police During Anti CAA, NRC Protest