After almost four years since it was passed by Parliament, the BJP-led central government on Monday implemented the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) – widely touted as Modi’s lifeline for all persecuted non-Muslims against Islamist persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
The development came after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Modi government will enforce the law by notifying its rules of application ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, scheduled to take place in the coming months.
The CAA seeks to fast-track citizenship to persecuted non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who have sought refuge in India before December 31, 2014.
The exclusion of Muslims caused rights activists and Opposition parties to accuse the Modi government of being ‘anti-Muslim’. The constant references to India turning into a ‘Hindu Pakistan’ led to weeks of rioting between late 2019 and early 2020, forcing the NDA to put the law on the back burner.
Now, with the government notifying the CAA rules, expect another round of socio-political tumult. The usual suspects have already re-ignited the campaign of calumny. But before the fire spreads and sparks unrest, it is vital to preemptively set the record straight.
Let’s examine the first claim that the Citizenship Amendment Act is anti-Muslim and specifically anti-Indian Muslims.
While there’s no denying that the CAA keeps Muslims out of its ambit, the law doesn’t apply to Indian citizens – Muslims or otherwise. The CAA only fast-tracks the citizenship of non-Muslim Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh citizens who have been residing in India prior to December 31, 2014. These refugees will get their citizenship on a priority basis if they can establish that they have been living in India for six years. All other categories of foreigners must establish they have been living in India for 12 years.
Second, no Muslim is debarred from seeking refuge from prosecution in India under the CAA. In fact, during the last six years, approximately 2830 Pakistani citizens, 912 Afghani citizens, and 172 Bangladeshi citizens have been given Indian citizenship. Most of them are Muslims.
Third, the law is not targeted against Muslims. Let’s not forget that while the CAA overlooks Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, it also leaves out Hindus: Tamils in Sri Lanka and Hindu Rohingyas (a minority within a minority) in Myanmar.
In other words, the CAA is about securing human rights and not discrimination against a religion. The Left ecosystem also forgets that preferential treatment has also been dished out earlier under Indian law. Indira Gandhi’s regime denied full citizenship rights to Pakistani Hindu refugees but extended that right to refugees from Bangladesh and those cast out by Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1972.
Fourth, the argument that the NDA is making a mockery of Article 14 is also not conclusive. The Supreme Court has cited the doctrine of ‘reasonable classification’ that allows the “State to treat different persons differently if circumstances justify such treatment.”
Most social justice legislations in India guaranteeing reservations to backward communities positively discriminate between various ‘classes’ of people. While the “reasonable classification” created by the CAA is being tested in the Supreme Court, it bears reminding that India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had also thought up a CAA-like scheme. Nehru had reportedly written a letter in 1949 to Assam’s first Chief Minister, Gopinath Bordoloi, asking him to “absorb” refugees from east Pakistan (as Bangladesh was known then) adding that he (Bordoloi) would have to “differentiate” between Hindu refugees and Muslim migrants.
It is astonishing that when the Modi government has adopted Nehru’s philosophy in letter and spirit, the ideological Left, that includes the Congress party, is hypocritically painting the NDA as communal.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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