On Tuesday, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs released a list of questions and answers in an attempt to clear the air about the discriminatory nature of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The document makes for bizarre reading. It is shoddily drafted, makes improbable claims and is full of half-truths and even outright lies.
I am reproducing below the questions posed by the MHA, its answers, and my analysis (‘The reality’) for each reply.
Update: The MHA has deleted the embarrassing document but here is the original, saved as a PDF.
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Home Ministry preambular claim: Without curtailing the freedom and opportunity of Indian Muslims to enjoy their rights as they have been usually practicing and entertaining since Independence like other Indian citizens belonging to other religions, CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) 2019 has reduced the qualification period of application for citizenship from 11 to 5 years for the beneficiaries who had [been] persecuted on religious grounds in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan and who had entered India on or before December 31, 2014 with an aim to show a generous treatment to them as compensation for appeasing [sic] their persecution.
The reality: I have no idea what “compensation for appeasing their persecution” means but this claim is a dishonest one. If the aim is really to benefit the victims of persecution and offer them “generous treatment”, the government needs to explain:
- Why is the benefit confined to refugees from only these three countries?
- Why is only religious persecution being considered grounds for conferring benefits when there are other forms of persecution that people in these three countries may be fleeing from, including political persecution or persecution on grounds of ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation?
- Why have Muslims being excluded from the list of those subject to religious persecution when there is evidence that particular Muslim sects are indeed persecuted in these countries?
- Even if the aim is only to help non-Muslims who are religiously persecuted in these three countries, why is there a cut-off date of December 31, 2014? How does the government propose to treat victims who had good reasons to flee to India after that date or who may still flee here to escape persecution?
The Modi government has no answer to any of these questions, nor can it explain why it took four and a half years to operationalise the CAA and provide this “generous treatment” to these refugees.
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Question: What are the implications of the Act for Muslims who have been living in India?
Home Ministry’s answer: Indian Muslims need not worry as CAA has not made any provision to impact their citizenship and has nothing to do with the present 18 crore Indian Muslims, who have equal rights like their Hindu counterparts. No Indian citizen would be asked to produce any document to prove his citizenship after this Act.
The reality: Home Minister Amit Shah has said several times in the past that there is a ‘chronology’ at work when it comes to the Modi government’s policies towards refugees and ‘infiltrators’. In April 2019, he said: “First we will bring the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), every refugee will get citizenship, and after that we will bring the National Register of Citizens. So refugees have no reason to worry. But infiltrators definitely have a reason to worry. So understand the chronology.” He added that the NRC would not only be for Bengal but for the entire country because “there are infiltrators everywhere.” On December 10, 2019, Shah told parliament that the NRC was definitely coming and when it is implemented “not even one infiltrator will be able to save himself”.
What did Shah mean? The NRC is a process whereby the citizenship status of every person in India will be tested on the basis of documents they provide. In Assam, where the NRC was first tested, the results were disastrous: some 1.9 million people were excluded as citizens. These were Indians who were unable to produce the required documentation. The majority were Hindu. The purpose behind the CAA was to reassure Hindus who fail to satisfy the NRC process that they need not worry about being expelled or disenfranchised since the CAA allows a path to citizenship for those without proper papers. But for Muslims who fail to satisfy the process, there is no way out. They face the risk of being branded as ‘infiltrators’.
Even if the Modi government formally renounces its plans for implementing the NRC, the MHA’s claims that Indian Muslims need not worry about the CAA affecting their citizenship is simply not true.
As I have written elsewhere, consider the example of two Indian women, one Hindu and one Muslim, who have been married to two undocumented Bangladeshi men, one Hindu and one Muslim. Under the unamended Citizenship Act, the children of both women are considered ‘illegal migrants’ and are liable to deportation along with their respective fathers. The CAA, however, offers a clear path for the Hindu Indian woman to live a normal family life free of the risk of disruption due to deportation. But the Muslim Indian woman must continue to live with the risk of expulsion of her family from India. And she will have no option but to leave India if her family is deported and she wishes to continue living with them.
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Is there any provision or agreement for repatriating illegal Muslim migrants to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Home Ministry’s answer:: India does not have any pact or agreement with any of these countries to repatriate migrants back to these countries. This Citizenship Act doesn’t deal with the deportation of illegal immigrants and therefore the concern of a section of the people including Muslims and students that CAA is against Muslim Minorities is unjustifiable.
The reality: This is a clever and deceptive lie. The Foreigners Act (Section 3) and Passport (Entry into India) Act (Section 5) already empower the government to deport persons it deems to be illegally staying in the country (‘power of removal’. The absence of a pact for repatriation only means that persons deemed illegal are liable for incarceration – even long-term – in prisons or detention centres. Taken together with the NRC it is not hard to understand why “a section of the people including Muslims and students” see the process which the CAA embodies as anti-Muslim. Even if it does not lead to deportation or detention, the fear is that a large number of Indians who will be mostly Muslim will end up disenfranchised.
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Who is [an] illegal migrant?
Home Ministry’s answer: Like Citizenship Act, 1955, this CAA defines illegal migrant as a foreigner who has entered India without valid documents.
The reality: In 2003, the then Vajpayee government amended the Citizenship Act to prohibit ‘illegal migrants’ from ever acquiring Indian citizenship by naturalisation or marriage. In 2016, the Modi government amended the Act to exempt non-Muslim ‘illegal migrants’ from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh from this provision provided they entered India before December 31, 2014. The CAA of 2019 took this process further by allowing the fast-tracking of their citizenship.
In other words, as the law stands today, a foreigner from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan who has entered India without valid documents until December 31, 2014 will only be considered an illegal migrant if they are Muslim. All non-Muslims will no longer be considered illegal migrants. This discrimination on the basis of religion violates the Indian Constitution. As the lawyer S. Prasanna has noted, this discrimination is also a violation of India’s obligations under the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, Article 26 of which states:
“All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
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What is the impact of this Act on the image of Islam?
Home Ministry’s answer: Due to the persecution of Minorities in those three Muslim countries, the name of Islam was badly tarnished all around the world. However, Islam, being a peaceful religion, never preaches or suggests hatred/violence/any persecution on religious ground. This Act showing the compassion and compensation for the persecution, protects Islam from being tarnished in the name of persecution.
The reality: If we ignore the terrible drafting of this answer, the MHA and the Modi government has not been able to explain why a law has been made to accept religiously persecuted people only from Muslim counties and not from other non-Muslim neighbouring nations like Myanmar, China and Sri Lanka. Is the government not saying that there is something unique about persecution in Muslim countries which is causing it to create a new law for its victims? What does this tell us about how the government view Islam and Muslims as opposed to other faiths?
Government ‘sources’ claim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have been singled out as these three countries are in India’s neighbourhood and have a ‘state religion’: “The presence of a state religion is hurting minorities in the neighbourhood,” they claim. But the fact is that Sri Lanka, too, has a state religion – Buddhism. And in Myanmar, the US Committee on International Religious Freedom notes, “athhough there is no official state religion, the constitution states the government “recognizes the special position of Buddhism as the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens of the Union.”
Secondly, the CAA may or may not have any impact on the image of Islam but it has already had an adverse impact on the image of the country. India has welcomed and granted domicile to refugees and people from all parts of the world for over three thousand years but has now for the first time in its history made religion a criterion for the acquisition of citizenship (and right to domicile) for refugees from three countries. The world at large sees this as a betrayal of India’s own values and culture, not to speak of its constitution and commitment to human rights.
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Is there any bar for Muslims from seeking Indian citizenship?
Home Ministry’s answer: No. There is no bar on Muslims from anywhere in the world to seek Indian Citizenship under Section 6 of the Citizenship Act, which deals with the citizenship by naturalisation.
The reality: Since 2003, the Citizenship Act bars anyone who is an illegal migrant from acquiring citizenship of India. The CAA opens the door for illegal migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and their India-born children who are non-Muslim to acquire Indian citizenship. But illegal migrants and their India-born children who happen to be Muslim will continue to be barred from acquiring citizenship.
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What is the need of the amendment?
Home Ministry’s answer: To show the mercy on the persecuted minorities of those three countries, this Act gives opportunity to them as per the evergreen generous culture of India to get Indian Citizenship for their happy and prosperous future. To customise the Citizenship system and control the illegal migrants, there was need of this Act.
The reality: There was no need to create a religion-based exemption in order to show generosity towards persecuted persons. All that the government needed to do was to say that any illegal migrant in India who has a well-founded fear of persecution in the country of their origin would be allowed to stay in India indefinitely and be eligible, in due course, for Indian citizenship. In fact, this is the route countries around the world follow for the naturalisation of refugees and it does not require the refugees to be of a particular religion.
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What are the previous initiatives of the Government?
Home Ministry’s answer: In 2016, the Central Govt. also made minorities of those three countries eligible for long term Visa to stay in India.
In reality: Here are some ‘initiatives’ the MHA forgot to mention. So helpful has the government been towards religiously persecuted persons from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the wider neighbourhood that it made it extremely difficult for Sikhs in Afghanistan to get an Indian visa and flee the Taliban. In the case of a Sikh man killed by terrorists in Kabul, his visa for India never came. In 2021-22 alone, 1500 Pakistani Hindus who wanted to stay in India were forced to return home because of hurdles placed in their way by the government. Rohingyas, fleeing religious persecution in Myanmar, have been deported by the Indian government.
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Is there any restriction for Muslim migrants from any foreign country?
Home Ministry’s answer:: CAA does not cancel the naturalisation laws. Therefore, any person including the Muslim migrants from any foreign country, seeking to be an Indian citizen, can apply for the same under the existing laws. This Act does not prevent any Muslim, who is persecuted in those 3 Islamic countries for practicing their version of Islam, from applying for Indian citizenship under the existing laws.
The reality: In this answer, the MHA has let the cat out of the bag. It knows very well that there are Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who are persecuted for practising their version of Islam. But if they enter India without valid papers, or overstay their visa, they automatically get classified as illegal migrants and are thus ineligible for Indian citizenship under existing laws. So they simply cannot apply for Indian citizenship under the existing laws.
