India’s Parliament has passed a bill that would give Indian citizenship to immigrants from three neighboring countries, but not if they are Muslim. The controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will fast-track citizenship for religious minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
Opposition parties say the bill is unconstitutional as it bases citizenship on a person’s religion and would further marginalize India’s 200-million strong Muslim community.
The government, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says the bill seeks to protect religious minorities who fled persecution in their home countries.
The Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament where the BJP lacks a clear majority, passed the CAA on Wednesday last with 125 votes in favor and 105 against.
The day before, lawmakers approved the bill 311-80 in the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, which is dominated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP.
The Lok Sabha also approved changes to the law on citizenship on December 9. The law has been challenged in the Supreme Court. In the interest of social stability, of India’s reputation as a liberal democracy and of preserving the ideals of India’s constitution, the court should have speedily and unequivocally rejected it but it has set January 22 the date to hear it.
The CAA is only the latest measure the Indian government has taken to marginalize its Muslim minority
I think it is, without exaggeration, probably the most dangerous piece of legislation that we have had because of it amounts to truly destroying the very character of the Indian state and the constitution, said Indian human rights activists. The very nature of the Indian constitution is that it is based on secular values. It’s extremely worrying.
Modi celebrated the bill passing on Twitter: “A landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood, he wrote. This bill will alleviate the suffering of many who faced persecution for years.”
But he is alone in celebration of the law.
The bill’s passage has drawn widespread opposition and protests in several states of India and as many chiefs of provinces have refused to follow it. Demonstrators shout slogans as they hold placards to protest against the government’s CAA.
Many indigenous groups there fear that giving citizenship to large numbers of immigrants, who came over the porous border with Bangladesh following independence in 1971, would change the unique ethnic make-up of the region and their way of life, regardless of religion.
India is known as the largest democracy in the world. But its current government is driving it away from democratic norms.
Modi champions a hardline brand of Hindu nationalism known as Hindutva, which aims to define Indian culture in terms of Hindu history and values and which promotes an exclusionary attitude toward Muslims. UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet recently expressed concerns over increasing harassment and targeting of minorities, in particular, Muslims.
Under Modi, vigilante Hindus have increasingly perpetrated hate crimes against Muslims, sometimes in an effort to scare their communities into moving away, other times to punish them for selling beef (cows are considered sacred in Hinduism). This summer, Modi withdrew the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, which had previously enjoyed considerable autonomy over its own affairs.
Muslims comprise approximately 14 percent of the national population and more than twice that in Asam state. In the 2019 Indian election, one of Modi’s central campaign promises was that he’d get the National Register of Citizens ( NRC) in shape and deal with the Muslim migrants in Assam once and for all. Other BJP members have used dehumanizing language to describe the Muslims there.
“These infiltrators are eating away our country like termites,” BJP president and home minister Amit Shah said at an April rally. “The NRC is our means of removing them.”
Shah has openly said the goal is to deport those who are deemed, illegal immigrants.
Last month, Shah said the government will conduct another count of citizens, this time nationwide. This could be used to clamp down on Muslims throughout India, potentially triggering a huge humanitarian disaster.
The CAA is only the latest measure the Indian government has taken to marginalize its Muslim minority.
The BJP is positioning the CAA as a means of offering expedited citizenship to persecuted minorities. It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights, said a spokesman for the country’s Ministry of External Affairs. Such an initiative should be welcomed, not criticized by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom.
Prominent Indian political leader Shashi Tharoor said the passage of the bill by the Indian Parliament is against the basic principle of the Indian Constitution. He had to confess that the bill is a victory of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s thoughts over Mahatma Gandhi. Let’s salute the father of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Allama Muhammad Iqbal who gave us the state of Pakistan. The international community, however, must be worried about what is happening in India, a country of 1.3 billion people.
In a secular democracy, all citizens are equal before the law and parliament. No religious or political affiliation gives advantages or disadvantages and religious believers are citizens with the same rights and obligations as anyone else.
On Monday, a wave protests erupted in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, and Lucknow, where hundreds of students, most of them Muslims, tried to storm the police station, hurling volleys of stones at officers cowering behind a wall.
Rahul Gandhi, former opposition Congress chief, tweeted the law and a mooted nationwide register of citizens also seen as anti-Muslim were “weapons of mass polarisation unleashed by fascists”.
The UN human rights office said last week it was concerned the law “would appear to undermine the commitment to equality before the law enshrined in India’s constitution”, while Washington and the European Union have also expressed concern.
The world should take notice of Modi’s actions.
The writer is a retired doctor of the Sindh Health Department