This revisit and re-examination of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) is motivated by the writing of Harish Salve “CAA is Necessary” in the columns of a national daily. The crux of the arguments seems to be threefold. First, the usual officially publicised stand that CAA is a legislation which is designed to gift citizenship and not to deprive. The second is the contention that the State has power to make classification and such a defined categorisation cannot be held to be invalid on the ground that a better classification was possible. The third is the blind assumption that the minorities are persecuted in Islamic Republics and all immigration is a concomitant of such persecution.
In the concluding parts, the writer without a clear mention takes a ‘hidden’ dig at the intellectuals who hold cudgels for secularism, equality and constitutionalism and sprays them with the coat of romanticising movements and civil discourses with ideologies which according to senior advocate Harish Salve are gathering dust on the bookshelves of political history. The writer through his sprinkle of wit and wisdom communicates his inner discomfort and displeasure (if not simmering contempt) for the idea of pluralistic India where the State is expected just not to transgress but to positively promote secularism, equality and fraternity.
CAA on the apparent tenor appears to confer the benefits of Indian citizenship. However, by restricting to the six communities and excluding Muslims, this law outright rejects any possibility and options of the grant of citizenship to any immigrant of this community. In other words, CAA extends the citizenship cover to members of all immigrant communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh with the one and sole exception of Muslims. This is a powerful political and social communication that Muslims are “unwanted” or “less-wanted” in India. This is unkind, unjust and devilish for a community numbering 208 million and forming 14.6% of India’s population. Therefore, the beneficial exterior look of CAA is superficial. Internally, it is loaded with messages of distortions of history and provides ammunition to the communal elements and hate mongers to sow and fertilise seeds of discord.
The most recent Delhi riots are an indicator of the outcomes of such a buildup of communal hate and nationalist jingoism. Peaceful protests and dissent are answered with arson and killing. Politicisation and communalisation percolates into the police force and law enforcement mechanisms. Otherwise just a minor amendment to the law by a competent authority, purportedly causing no harm according to the arguments of Harish Salve makes sizeable elements in the majority community to sound the bugles of pro-India slogans and louder trumpet noise of anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim venom. Indian Muslims are attacked as enemies of nation and dissenting Hindus are trolled as anti-Hindus and anti-national. Muslim children, women and elders are murdered; their properties looted & burnt. Hindus & neighbours who provide succour and shelter to the riot victims are too chopped with instructions to set such Hindus on fire.
The “goli maaro gang” creates frenzy and insecurity with police reaching the spots of violence after the damage. The govt does nothing to assuage the people’s fears. On the other hand, the ministers and top politicians of the ruling regime sport fists and bang the tables to show their iron hand and work with zeal to multiply people’s fears through lingua such as gushkhoree and that ‘Pakistanis are occupying Delhi roads.
The argument that the State has the power to make classification and as long as it is to a defined class, it stands valid cannot hold water when the defined class is classified under religion. A similar kind of proposal for grant of citizenship only to Sikhs and Hindus was moved in the Constituent Assembly (1949) and was rejected. What was abandoned by the Constituent Assembly and the framers of Indian Constitution stands to be the law today. It is against the international and United Nations conventions of which India is a signatory.
“Do we need proof that the minorities are persecuted in Islamic Republics?” is the rhetoric query of Harish Salve suggesting that all immigration from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh is due to persecution. The facts are contrary as loads of Hindus and Muslims have immigrated together for economic and other reasons. The CAA puts the cutoff date as December, 2014. Does this mean that the government and the Indian Parliament is announcing to the world that all except Muslims are persecuted in the Islamic nations and it is a rule of the land there?
We are told that the Indian Muslims have nothing to fear. We are also told that the PM has allayed the fears about National Register of Citizens (NRC) and that there is nothing of NRC in the pipeline. The issue is not of Muslims or persons from any other community.. The primary issue is of dumping specific communities as being lesser nationals and undignified lot, throwing the principle of equality, brotherhood and fraternity to the winds. The question is to preserve the modern, civilised, secular, and democratic fundamental law of India. “Persecution” itself can form rational criteria of classification. The prejudiced approach as in the CAA satisfies the baser instincts of ‘Hindutva’ brigade and offers a vicarious pleasure to the communal elements in majority community. It injects toxic and needless poison in the Indian State and its plural society. In the ultimate, CAA is gain to none, pain for all.
(The writer is an educationist and political
commentator)
