Interrogating the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019

Arup Kumar Sen

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 (CAB), which was passed by both houses of the Parliament very recently, was floated by the BJP in the Parliament in 2016 to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955. The anti-Muslim orientation of the Bill is explicit in the language of the Bill itself. To put it in the words of Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill, introduced by the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, in the Lok Sabha: The constitutions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh provide for a specific state religion. As a result, many persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities have faced persecution on grounds of religion in those countries... Many such persons have fled to India to seek shelter and continued to stay in India...Now, it is proposed to make the said migrants eligible for Indian Citizenship.

In fact, the Bill has characterized the neighbouring Muslim-dominated countries as lands of persecution and promised to give Indian citizenship to the persecuted people. However, the Bill has excluded the persecuted Sri Lankan Tamils and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar from its umbrella of protection. Moreover, as stated by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in its petition against the Bill moved in the Supreme Court, the CAB has excluded minority Muslim sects, who have a long history of persecution in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Livelaw News Network, December 12, 2019). The complete exclusion of Muslim migrants from the neighbouring countries in the CAB, 2019, which promises Indian citizenship to migrants belonging to other religions, is a clear case of discrimination based on religion.

Professor M. Sridhar Acharyulu, former Central Information Commissioner and presently Dean, School of Law, Bennett University, has characterized the outcome of the Bill, now Act, as “De-Constitution of India”. We agree with his reading of the Bill: “The CAB simply means that if a Hindu person comes into India from Pakistan and Bangladesh to settle with his relations or friends from whom he separated 1947 or after, he will be welcomed with conferment of citizenship of India; but if he is a Muslim, he is not. This is clear violation of fundamental right to equality”(livelaw.in).

Coincidentally, the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, in the Parliament is preceded by the Ayodhya judgment, which empowered the majoritarian Hindu community to construct a Ram temple at the site of destruction of the Babri mosque. These developments bear testimony to the “Making of Hindu India”.

Frontier
Dec 20, 2019