An act of injustice

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law that legal and rights experts believe is discriminatory, anti-constitutional, and a threat to the plural structure of India was finally announced for implementation recently, ahead of the country’s general elections that will start on April 19 and end on June 1, 2024.

But aside from questioning the timing of the implementation of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that was dormant for four years, critics also fear that it is just a precursor to the countrywide imposition of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which has already rendered stateless almost 2 million people from different religious backgrounds in the northeast state of Assam.

“BJP wants to use CAA as a political weapon to gain an edge in the elections and it isn’t surprising at all,” Irshad, a Delhi-based scholar and political analyst who wished to go with a single name, told Asia Democracy Chronicles. “The party has fought elections along communal lines since they came to power in 2014. Its leaders use anti-Muslim rhetoric to galvanize support, polarize people, and empower Hinduism in India.”

Irshad is referring to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Hindutva ideology, which equates Indian nationalism with being Hindu. Enacting the draft CAA had been part of the BJP’s 2019 manifesto.

Predominantly Hindu, nearly 15 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion are Muslims, while other religious minorities include Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists.

“Besides violating the constitutional values of equality and religious non-discrimination, the law can be used to disenfranchise the Muslim population of India,” said Irshad, talking about the CAA. “The more concerning issue for India’s Muslim population is the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is next in the ruling party’s list.”

Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister, along with other members of the ruling BJP, has consistently hinted NRC would be implemented throughout India to remove “illegal infiltrators.”

The opponents of CAA see a clear link between the CAA and NRC. When the NRC will be implemented, “hundreds of thousands of citizens of our country will become stateless,” said Irshad. “Except Muslims, the believers of other religions will find relief through CAA.”

Weeding out the unwanted

So far, the NRC has been enforced only in Assam, which borders predominantly Muslim Bangladesh. Undertaken in August 2019, under the Supreme Court’s supervision, the NRC process there left about 6 percent of Assam’s population at the time out of the Register, essentially making them non-Indian citizens.

Assam residents had to first produce documents issued before March 24, 1971 to prove that their ancestors were residents of India. Later, they had to show another document to establish their relationship with those ancestors. The NRC implementation in Assam was supposed to weed out “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. But locals claimed that the final list excluded legal residents.

Meanwhile, the CAA is a modification of India’s Citizen Act 1955. It grants fast-track citizenship in six years to “persecuted” minorities – including Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christians – from three Muslim-majority neighboring countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

The CAA excludes Muslims and curtails standard eligibility requirements from 12 years of residence to six years. According to the Act, only immigrants who have come to India on or before December 31, 2014 are eligible for citizenship.

It was passed by both houses of the Indian parliament in December 2019 and was approved by then President Ram Nath Kovind just days later. it remained inoperable until recently. On March 11 – days before the dates for the upcoming polls were set, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced its implementation.

Asserting that the Modi administration has kept its promise, the BJP lauded the act’s implementation. Home Minister Amit Shah said in an interview that the citizenship law will not be “taken back” and the government will not “compromise” on it.

But the timing of the law’s implementation has drawn widespread flak, with many political analysts and opposition parties describing the CAA as a political weapon pandering to the sentiments of India’s Hindu majority, thereby helping the ruling party extend its influence in electoral politics.

Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah noted that the CAA’s notification just before elections clearly indicates BJP’s intentions. “The BJP targeting Muslims is not their new politics,” he said. “The party is claiming they are winning 400 seats in ensuing polls. But the reality is their position is weak and is now using these tactics as new weapons.”

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the CAA’s surprise implementation an “election gimmick,” while Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal describe it as a “dirty vote bank politics” by the BJP. Kejriwal, who has since been arrested and remains in detention on an unrelated issue, said that people want the law repealed.

Diverting attention?

Another former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, asked Muslims to understand the BJP’s alleged game plan and not fall into its “trap.” She wrote on X: “This sudden urgency in its implementation despite the case being pending in the honorable SC (Supreme Court) is a desperate attempt to divert attention from its all-round failures and engage people in hate politics. Appeal to all communities especially Muslims not to walk into their trap.”

Others echo Mufti in saying that the move may also be part of the government’s strategy to divert attention from pressing issues, particularly that of the so-called “electoral bonds scam.” In 2017, the central government brought in an electoral bond scheme that allowed people to make any amount of donation to political parties of their choice while maintaining anonymity.

Data released recently by the State Bank of India revealed how the scheme was used to help donor corporations, individuals, and groups evade laws or punishments, or gain official favor in exchange for the sums they gave to political parties.

Last February, the Supreme Court ordered the bank to stop issuing electoral bonds. Although more than 20 political parties were found to have benefited from the scheme, the BJP by then had already received more than half of the amount generated, or some US$720 million.

Jairam Ramesh, spokesperson for the opposition Indian National Congress Party, tweeted, “It (the implementation of CAA) also appears to be an attempt to manage the headlines after the Supreme Court’s severe strictures on the Electoral Bonds Scandal.”

Yet Union Minister Smriti Irani, in her own post on X, called the announcement day of CAA’s implementation “historic.” She said, “Our government stands firm in its resolve to provide a secure and welcome environment for all persecuted minorities, ensuring their dignity, rights, and aspirations are protected.”

On March 12, the government launched a new portal for people applying for citizenship under CAA. The government is also planning to launch a mobile app, “CAA-2019,” to facilitate applications.

On March 21, the Home Ministry launched the helpline number 1032 to provide assistance and information about the CAA, enabling applicants to make toll-free calls from any location in India between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

According to The Hindu, the CAA may allow local priests to issue “eligibility certificates” to validate applicants’ individual religions. Another The Hindu report said that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindutva ideology parent group of BJP, has been organizing camps and issuing “eligibility certificates” to members of the Hindu community from Pakistan to help them apply for citizenship under the CAA.

Contentious and deadly

Back in 2019, the CAA passage by the parliament sparked an outcry, with hundreds of thousands of Muslims and other citizens who were outraged by this act taking to the streets and protesting against it. The demonstrations turned violent in many places, resulting in dozens of people, most of them Muslims, being killed.

Just in the northeastern part of India’s capital New Delhi, at least 53 people including 38 Muslims and 15 Hindus were killed, while around 581 people were injured in deadly riots that ran from Feb. 23 to 27 that year. The riots that destroyed properties and desecration of Muslim religious sites coincided with then U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit to India.

At Shaheen Bagh in South Delhi, a women-initiated sit-in protest against CAA started in mid-December 2019 and would have continued if it were not for the COVID-19 pandemic. The protest became global news, but was called off in late March 2020 when the pandemic began spreading in India.

The law has also been challenged before India’s Supreme Court by different political parties, as well as by rights and religious groups. Most of them have argued that the Act violates Article 14 of the Indian constitution, which guarantees the right to equality and cannot be reshaped by any parliament.

Vowing to fight for the constitutionality of the law, the Chief Ministers of three states – West Bengal, Kerala, and Punjab – declared they wouldn’t allow its implementation in their states. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee have also condemned the law, as have international rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

In a statement issued last March 25, USCIRF voiced concern over the Indian government’s notification of rules to implement the CAA, saying no one should be denied citizenship based on religion or belief. It also said that if the law is truly aimed at protecting “persecuted religious minorities,” it would include Rohingya Muslims from Burma, Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan, or Hazara Shi’a from Afghanistan, among others.

“No one should be denied citizenship based on religion or belief,” USCIRF added in its statement.

Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, meanwhile, has accused the Indian opposition of sowing confusion on the CAA’s impacts. According to the Deccan Herald, Singh told his audience at a recent election rally in Ghaziabad, which is part of the Delhi metropolis:

“Now the opposition people try to create this illusion among our Muslim brothers that now you will be thrown out of the country. I want to tell our Muslim brothers that rest assured we believe in the concept of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,’ i.e. the whole world is our family. No matter what caste or creed one is born in, or a follower of any religion or sect, we consider everyone as a member of our family.”

“We are not people who do politics on the basis of caste, creed, or religion,” the Deccan Herald also quoted Singh as saying. “And there are people who do politics on the basis of humanity … We respect all the religions in India. Be it a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or Parsi, we respect everyone.” ◉