Of far greater moment than the semantic quibbling over whether Mamata Banerjee has sought a “UN-monitored referendum” or as she now claims an “opinion poll” on the citizenship issue must be her fervent appeal to the Prime Minister to take a call on the citizenship imbroglio. It is an imbroglio that has impacted India’s equation beyond borders ~ with Bangladesh (cancellation of ministerial visits), Japan (cancellation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit), and the external affairs minister, S Jaishankar’s refusal to meet the Indian-American Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal, in Washington… albeit over a wholly different issue ~ Kashmir.

The nub of the matter must be that internal matters have impacted foreign relations, as seldom before. While this was not exactly Miss Banerjee’s compulsion on Friday, one must give it to her that alone in the country she is thus far the one Chief Minister who has made so critical an appeal. It may be just a coincidence that she wrote to Mr Narendra Modi on Friday, when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) government in Kerala let it be known that it would oppose the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act. As many as nine Chief Ministers have now opposed the Centre’s initiative, which too has been subject to semantic jugglery ~ from the National Register of Citizens to National Population Register.

It isn’t exactly a quirk of India’s political history that the CPI-M veteran and Kerala’s Chief Minister and the Trinamul’s Chief Minister are on the same wavelength on a profoundly emotive issue. Miss Banerjee has been suitably bold to urge the Prime Minister to give up what she calls his “stubborn attitude” towards the twin issues of nationwide contestation. This has been couched with the request to “concede to countrywide protests”. Her supplementary conveys a lesson to the present dispensation of the Bharatiya Janata Party ~ “If Atalji (former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee) had been alive today, he would advise him (Modi) to uphold rajdharma.

It would be useful to recall that Mr Vajpayee had made such an appeal to Mr Modi ~ then the Gujarat CM ~ during the pogrom of 2002. Sad to reflect, in terms of carrying adversaries along with him, Mr Modi can’t hold a candle to Mr Vajpayee. She has made it pretty obvious that citizenship scheme provokes a parallel with the annihilation of Muslims in 2002. Obvious too must be the strand that binds the tragedies of history ~ calculated malevolence towards a segment of the populace. Rightly has she cleared the air over the controvesy over semantics, after the tut-tutting from Raj Bhavan ~ “I had said that an opinion poll on CAA and NRC should be conducted by experts in our country under UN monitoring”. It is fervently to be hoped that the controversy over wording shall not linger and thus deflect the focus from the cardinal issue over who exactly is a citizen of India. Of course, the Chief Minister ought never to have stoked a controversy.