India moved on Monday to implement a 2019 citizenship law that has been criticized as discriminating against Muslims, weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a rare third term for his Hindu nationalist government. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants Indian nationality to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India due to religious persecution from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec. 31, 2014. The law is stated to protect those religious minorities, who come from Muslim majority countries. There were massive protests against this law, especially in Assam and West Bengal, both majority Muslim regions who have often felt victimized by the Hindu government. In particular, Assam, which borders Bangladesh, was already struck by The National Register of Citizens (or NRC), a list of people who can prove they came to the state by 24 March 1971, the day before neighboring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. Many residents who had lived in Assam generation and claimed to have papers were not put on this registry, with a large portion of these being Assam Muslims. India stated this was to cut down on illegal migrants from Bangladesh. In addition, before CAA passed, there was no way for illegal immigrants in India to become citizens, and now it is seen as specifically Muslims, whether seen as refugees or illegal immigrants, that cannot become citizens.
Opponents of the law say it is exclusionary and violates the secular principles enshrined in the constitution. They say faith cannot be made a condition of citizenship. Historian Mukul Kesavan said the law is “couched in the language of refuge and seemingly directed at foreigners, but its main purpose is the delegitimisation of Muslims’ citizenship”. Many critics say that if this law was genuinely aimed at protecting minorities, it should have included Muslim religious minorities who have faced persecution in their own countries, such as Ahmadis in Pakistan and Rohingyas in Myanmar. (The government has gone to the Supreme Court seeking to deport Rohingya refugees from India.) In addition, Modi’s elections are coming up, so it is said he’s doing this to gain more Hindu support (In addition, many Muslim residents of areas like Assam, along with their Indian citizenship status, lost the right to vote. It was not only Muslims affected by the Registry, with Modi also losing a good part of his own voting base, but the area is primarily Muslim.) Modi asserts that the protests against the law are politically motivated, and that the law is simply intended to provide relief to refugees who have no harbor other than India.
This is related to what we have talked about in class regarding our discussion of Multi-nation states (as India is) and how conflict can occur as a result of conflict of interest with different groups in the state. Different groups within the state can have different interests, and especially in cases like this, with such different interpretations and perspectives, it can also be very polarizing. It also relates to how any conflict in a region, and most especially a neighboring country, has effects on the region, in refugees and displaced populations among many other factors, as India is being affected by.