The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has outraged secular-minded Indians because it uses a religious litmus test for determining citizenship. It purports to provide citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants fleeing religious persecution from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who came to India before December 31, 2014.
The need for an amendment to the Citizenship Act arose from the fact that the existing Citizenship Act forbade illegal immigrants from acquiring Indian citizenship. Everyone is sympathetic to the plight of persecuted people who have had to take shelter in India. However, there was absolutely no need for the government to explicitly mention any religion and exclude Muslims from finding a safe haven in India.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor suggested an amendment to the Act, asking to replace the mention of any specific religion with “persecuted persons”. This broad language would have allowed the government to accomplish its aim of providing citizenship to the same people without creating an uproar.
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Home minister Amit Shah added fuel to the fire by announcing a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) along the lines of the one concluded in Assam recently. This exercise in Assam has resulted in 1.9 million people being declared non-citizens. Out of these, about 1.2 million are Hindus and 0.7 million are Muslims. The future of those who have been declared non-citizens is unclear.
The government is setting up detention centres and there are reports that conditions in the few established centres are horrific. After the passage of the CAA, it is feared that Hindus who have been deemed illegal immigrants may easily be granted citizenship under the CAA while Muslims will remain non-citizens and are likely to be deported or kept in detention centres forever. If a nationwide NRC is conducted, it may lead to a situation where the status of crores of people is brought into question. While Hindus affected by the NRC can rely on citizenship rights under the CAA, their Muslim counterparts will not have the privilege to fall back on such an option.
File image of a protest against Assam’s controversial NRC. Photo: PTI/Swapan Mahapatra
If the central government is sincere about using the CAA to grant citizenship to approximately 30,000 persecuted illegal migrants, and not misuse it by disenfranchising Muslims through nationwide NRC, it should decouple the CAA from the NRC. This can be done simply by putting a time limit on the CAA. A six-month time limit is suitable, as it provides sufficient time for persecuted people already in the country to apply for citizenship under the CAA and after six months, no new application should be accepted under the CAA.
Similarly, Hindus, deemed to be non-citizens in Assam, should not be allowed to benefit from the CAA because they submitted their documents to prove their Indian citizenship. Since the nationwide NRC cannot be started anytime soon, this measure would decouple the CAA from the NRC. It will ensure that, even if the government conducts a nationwide NRC despite stiff opposition to it from several quarters, undocumented Indians of all stripe, irrespective of their religion, will be on an equal footing.
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That is, among genuine Indian citizens, Hindus will be as likely to be without documents as Muslims, which will act as a check on the arbitrariness of the NRC process. It may, in fact, dissuade the government from carrying out a nationwide NRC. In any case, it will go a long way in assuaging the fears of Muslim citizens of India.
A significant concern for those protesting the CAA is its incompatibility with the secular ethos of India and its constitution. While those protests are likely to continue, the decoupling of the CAA from the NRC will address at least one aspect of the growing dissatisfaction.
Priyaranjan Jha is professor at the University of California, Irvine.