Indian policemen baton charge a man during a protest against a new citizenship law in Ahmadabad, India, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019. Police detained several hundred protesters in some of India's biggest cities Thursday as they defied a ban on assembly that authorities imposed to stop widespread demonstrations against a new citizenship law that opponents say threatens the country's secular democracy. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
As of now, India is home to 200 million Muslims. Over the course of Narendra Modi and BJP’s tenure, the peaceful lives of Indian Muslims have been looming in the balance, as they faced threats to their autonomy and status. From religious intolerance to crackdowns and lynching, Muslims have been subject to it all in the increasingly fascist state of India.
The latest development, in this case, was the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was passed on 11th December 2019. The law solidifies religious polarization, causing protests to erupt all over India.
The bill effectively redefined the country’s citizenship criteria to exclude Muslims. It makes religion the basis of who will be defined as an illegal immigrant and who will be set on the fast track for citizenship.
The CAB will fast-track citizenship to immigrants from three neighboring countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. However, this will be done only if they are not Muslim. The religious minorities being accommodated are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians.
Regarding the bill, the Prime Minister of India wrote, “A landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood! This bill will alleviate the suffering of many who faced persecution for years.”
Currently, it is being framed as a way to offer quick citizenship to oppressed minorities by the BJP. Raveesh Jumar, the spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, stated, “It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights. Such an initiative should be welcomed, not criticized by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom.”
The Citizenship Amendment Bill is intertwined with another discriminatory act of the BJP, India’s National Register of Citizens. The NRC is a citizenship list, which constitutes part of the government’s effort to extract and identify ‘illegal’ immigrants in the state of Assam, which is located in North-Eastern India.
The Indian government claims that people who have migrated from the neighboring country of Bangladesh (mostly Muslims), are not rightful citizens despite the fact that they have called the state of Assam home for over ten years.
The NRC was published in August 2019, causing uproar and protests across the country. When the list came to light, it was discovered that around 2 million people, majority Muslims, and some Hindus had been left off. To make matters worse, they were given a short time frame to prove that they are rightful citizens – however, most of these citizens were from low-income backgrounds and illiterate, which meant they might not even have the papers to prove their citizenship.
In the event that they could not prove the fact that they were rightful citizens, they were to be rounded up and placed in the mass detention camps that had been erected in parts of India, which would set them on the track to being deported. Ultimately, these citizens are to be effectively displaced and declared stateless, fast tracking the growth of the ongoing refugee crisis.
The NRC only impacts 2 million Muslims in India, but Modi’s party has unveiled plans to extend the measure across the country. With the latest bill, the country of India has begun to morph into a Hindu Nationalist State that many have predicted would become under the control of BJP and Modi.
The bill will increase the suffering of the Muslim minority in the country and is fundamentally discriminatory as the opposition of the government and Modi, and a number of human rights activists in India have stated.
Legal experts in the country say that it violates Article 14 of the constitution, which guarantees a right to equality for everyone. The critics of the bill argue that the law undermines India’s secular constitution that promises that all religions in the country will be treated equally by the government.
Harsh Mander, an activist and former civil servant, told TIME before he was detained on Thursday, “The very soul of the Indian freedom struggle and the constitution was the idea of equal citizenship for people regardless of their faith. And it is this that they are destroying.”
Shahi Tharoor, the leader of the Congress Party, called the bill a “fundamentally unconstitutional piece of legislation.”
Abhishek Manu Sanghvi, also stated, “It hurts the spirit of India. We are going to fight this till the end.”
Faizan Mustafa, the Vice-Chancellor of NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad, stated, “We do not have our citizenship based on religion. Our constitution prohibits any discrimination based on religion. By distinguishing illegal immigrants based on religion, the proposed law violates the basic structure of the Indian constitution. If the Indian government, through this bill, wants to give citizenship to persecuted minorities in the neighboring countries, how can it exclude the Rohingya of Myanmar who are far more persecuted than any other group in the neighborhood. Similarly, how can we exclude Ahmediyas and Shia from Pakistan and Bangladesh and Hazaras from Afghanistan.”
The bill was first introduced in the Parliament in July 2016, amending the Citizenship Act of 1955 by making religion the basis for citizenship. Previously the consideration of religion was absent from the criterion to become a citizen in India.
In January, the Bill was passed in Lok Sabha, but was not taken up in the Upper House of Parliament as it was opposed by the Congress Party and North Eastern states that erupted in chaos.
The new law also made some special exemptions for states in the North East, who have protested against it, as it is thought that the bill will cause the migration of numerous Hindus from Bangladesh to the country.
According to the law that is being passed, the undocumented immigrants must have been living in the country for at least one year and a minimum of 6 years to be considered eligible for citizenship.
In the Lok Sabha, the bill was voted in favor of by 311 members of the Parliament while 80 voted against it. Now, it also cleared Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament, despite BJP lacking a majority, with 125 votes in favor of the bill and 105 against it. All that remains is for the bill to be signed by the President to be signed into law.
Heavy protests regarding the citizenship law have been rocking the country since last weekend, with videos of police brutality and oppression rocking Twitter and social media following the protests.
Students of all religions, in nearly 50 colleges and universities took to the streets to protest the Act ever since it was passed. The protests erupted in nearly 15 cities, in spite of the ban on gatherings in public areas.
As of now, nearly three people had died in the violence, while scores have been injured. Two people from Mangalore passed away due to sustained injuries while another passed away due to firearm injuries in the protest in Lucknow which is the capital of Uttar Pradesh. In Assam, the protests are well into their second week, and at least people have been killed. Hundreds have been arrested.
Nevertheless, the resistance remains strong, as protests have been rolling out one after the other in the country. Farhat Ali Khan, who was amongst the protestors, is studying literature at Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi. He spoke to TIME, expressing concern about the whole ordeal. He argued that the potential India-wide NRC program, advocated by the BJP, would be extremely and openly anti-Muslim.
According to him, “a Hindu without documents would likely be allowed to stay, while a Muslim could eventually end up in a detention camp. What is bothering the Jamia students is these damn camps. This generation has never thought India would come to this day, and that is why we’re protesting. I’m shivering when I talk about this.”
The backlash has also grown to include a wide variety of celebrities. Amongst the most notable is Farhan Akhtar, who took to Twitter to express his concerns and announce that he would be protesting and posting an infographic, alongside the statement, “Here’s what you need to know about why these protests are important. See you on the 19th at August Kranti Maidan, Mumbai. The time to protest on social media alone is over.”
Nazia Erum of Amnesty India also stated that “It does not seem as of now that the government is planning to back down. We don’t see any signs of backing down from anybody. That is why the protests are growing in number. Every day we see a new university or a new section of people joining in the protests.”
Arguably, the biggest backlash against the bill is that it undermines the democracy of India. In undermining the status of the minority Muslims, India’s brand as the largest democracy in the world is in danger. The hate crimes and religious intolerance are considered to be part of Modi’s bigger agenda – to create an entirely nationalist Hindu state that is free of the “termites that eat away at the country.”
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