India's Citizenship Amendment Bill

AFP

From Donald Trump to England’s Boris Johnson, to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the world is seeing a global trend towards right-wing populist leaders, and India is no exception. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had a huge victory in the election that took place early this year, earning a massive majority in the lower house of the Indian parliament. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (translates to Indian People’s Party) champions Hindu nationalism and the idea of Hindutva, the idea that Indian culture is defined by Hindu values. Although the BJP has distanced itself from this meaning of the word, claiming instead that Hindutva is the idea of Indian nationality and has nothing to do with religion, it’s policies and rhetoric seem to coincide with the original definition of the word. In order to appeal to their Hindu base, the BJP is ignoring, even harming minorities in the country, and the Muslim community in India is feeling the brunt of these efforts. In fact, 90% of religious hate crimes in the last decade, have occurred since Modi came to power in 2014. Islam is the largest religious minority in India, having about 200 million followers. Islamophobia in India isn’t new but under the Modi administration, it has become mainstream.

The most recent policy India’s government enacted, that received well-deserved fierce criticism, was the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). This bill was framed in such a way that the islamophobia wasn’t so obvious that the government couldn’t defend it. However, the CAB is clearly dangerous to Muslims all over the country. This bill amended the Citizenship Act of 1955, which laid out how immigrants and refugees to India could receive citizenship. The amendment created a fast track to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, who had fled religious persecution. At first, it looks like this is a benevolent policy, allowing refugees to become citizens quicker. However, this amendment is a calculated slight against Muslims in India. Conveniently left out from this amendment are Muslims fleeing religious persecution. The three carefully chosen countries that the amendment applies to are Muslim-majority countries. This key fact was used by the BJP to defend their amendment, stating that Muslims aren’t included in the bill since they can’t be persecuted against in countries where Muslims are the majority. This obviously makes no sense since Muslim minority sects, such as the Ahmadis in Pakistan, are often the most persecuted against. This bill also leaves out the many Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar. Even if somehow one were to still argue that this bill is a humanitarian effort rather than discriminatory, Parliament debated a proposal to extend the bill to all refugees and this proposal was shot down. 

On its own, the Citizenship Amendment Bill is enough to be scary, however, coupled with other policies, it is terrifying. The government recently nearly completed the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the North-Eastern Indian state of Assam, which has many undocumented immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. The NRC is a database of the citizens in Assam, which identified 1.9 million of the 33 million residents in Assam as not Indian. Unlike what Hindu nationalists believed, the majority of these immigrants were Hindu Bengalis, not Muslims. However, under the CAB the Hindu Bengalis would be able to get citizenship while the Muslims would be singled out to appeal to the government, or in the worst-case scenario deportation. Even worse, the Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah recently announced that the NCR would be expanded to the entirety of India. Especially in poorer areas of India, people don’t have the documentation needed to prove that they are Indian citizens or documents that show how long they’ve been in India. Many Muslim families in India might have been living there for centuries,  but just don’t have the proper documentation, so they will be singled out as non-Indian and illegal. With the CAB non-Muslim immigrants who don’t have the proper documentation will have a fast track to citizenship, while their Muslim counterparts won’t have this same opportunity.

Hopefully, this bill will be rejected by the courts since it is clearly undermining Article 14 of the Indian Constitution which reads "The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” The Citizenship Amendment Bill giving certain religions a preference in citizenship violates this Article, and the public knows this. Massive protests have broken out throughout India, some of which have turned violent. The government is using any means necessary to quell them including methods used by regimes, not democracies, from banning large public assemblies to cutting internet access in certain parts of the country. India prides itself on being a secular democracy, however, under Modi and the BJP this title is being questioned. The Citizenship Amendment Bill is not the first policy enacted that has brought India’s reputation of being a secular democracy into question, nor, under the BJP, will it be the last.