Citizenship as a Political Weapon: India on the Brink of Chaos
At least twenty five dead, hundreds arrested, and over 4,000 detained – this is the growing toll of human life from ongoing protests throughout India; yet, this poses an important question for outsiders unfamiliar with the ongoing crisis: why is this happening?
Image obtained through CNN – Credit: Rajanish Kakade/AP
On the 11th of December, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu-nationalist party, passed the Citizenship (Amended) Act of 2019 (CAA), which is an amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955. This amendment grants an expedited pathway to citizenship and retroactive citizenship for undocumented immigrants in India who originate from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. However, there’s a catch: qualifying undocumented immigrants must follow Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, or Zoroastrianism, but the Islamic faith is excluded.
This amendment effectively makes religion a criterion for nationality in India- a direct blow to the secular goal of the 1955 law which makes no distinction of religious affiliation. This has been decried as a political move which has led to immense pushback from Muslim and allied communities. Tens of thousands of people have come out to the streets to protest against the Act throughout major states, which has led to rather authoritarian measures by state governments to quell opposition to the Act. These include establishing a curfew, banning protests against the CAA, detaining opposition party leaders and academics, forcing service providers to cut all communication services to areas with ongoing protests, shutting down metro services to and from protest sites, and firing live rounds at protestors.
Despite all these actions to prevent citizens from exerting their rights, the citizens have persisted in their protests.
The two prevailing rationales for opposing this act are that firstly, it effectively gives Muslims a second-class group which defies the secular goal of the Constitution and secondly, it will lead to an influx of immigrants seeking citizenship which would cause a drastic change in the demographic composition of the country. The first rationale is prevalent throughout the country including Delhi, Kerala, and West Bengal whereas the second is predominantly concentrated in the northeast states where the cultural and linguistic composition is a contentious political issue due to the frequent entry of undocumented immigrants from neighbouring countries. However, since the first rationale is more prevalent and captures a greater essence of a constitutional crisis, it is worth a greater deal of examination in order to understand the direction India risks taking.
One Country - Two Classes?
Image obtained through CNN – Credit: Anupam Nath/AP
Whether Muslim citizens will be treated as second-class citizens remains to be seen; however, it is clear that the CAA stands against the secular ethos of the Constitution by creating a preferential system based solely on religion. In the 42nd Amendment, known as the Constitution Act, religious harmony is identified as an important goal for the future of India.
To elaborate further, an “anti-national activity” in the Constitution includes acts by individuals or associations intended to “threaten or disrupt harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities”. This makes it rather clear that it is against the national interest of India to establish preferential treatment based on religion; yet, the BJP controlled government has defended the Act by claiming that this measure was enacted to protect religious minorities facing persecution in the neighbouring countries.
However, as critics have pointed out, the CAA gives preference to very specific groups from rather specific locations while either ignoring or disregarding the plight of other persecuted groups. These include the Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan, Uighur Muslims from China, Sri Lankan Hindus and Bhutanese Christians. Other actions taken under this leadership, such as prime minister Narendra Modi stripping Jammu and Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority state – of its statehood earlier this year, have also placed the BJP under intense scrutiny in terms of seeking to create a Hindu nation.
So, if this act is against national interest and is not true to the provided rationale by the BJP government, why was it enacted?
Image obtained through CNN – Credit: Ajit Solanki/AP
Control Citizenship to Control a Nation
Earlier this year, Assam released the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was a process that began in 2015 to identify ‘genuine citizens’ and detect undocumented immigrants living in the state.
In order to be included in the final list, residents in Assam had to prove that an ancestor lived in Assam pre-1971 and that they had a true relationship with said ancestor by submitting ten approved documents. If unable to do this, the resident would be classified as an undocumented immigrant and be subject to detention and deportation, which is problematic as Assam’s identification and detention process has been reported to have several flaws.
As a result, the NRC classified 1.9 million of the 33 million people in Assam as noncitizens; however, the NRC also revealed that a majority of the undocumented immigrants living in Assam are Hindus, primarily coming from Bangladesh. This placed the BJP in a precarious spot: they conducted the NRC under the guise of public order to root out illegal immigrants but following through with this action would have meant acting against their own electoral interests. It is no surprise then that the CAA includes retroactive citizenship for Hindus from Bangladesh who were unable to prove their status as ‘genuine citizens’.
To make matters worse, the BJP announced their aim to conduct a nation-wide NRC in combination with the CAA. Since Muslims are excluded from the CAA, a nation-wide NRC would lead to the statelessness of countless Muslims throughout India while the BJP would potentially benefit from an increased electoral base; this would effectively lead to the creation of a Hindu nation.
This is not only an unconstitutional proposition but also an inhumane course of action which undermines the budding welfare state of India.
Image obtained through CNN – Credit: Altaf Qadri/AP
Weaponizing Citizenship and Undermining the Welfare State
It is not uncommon for nationalists to weaponize citizenship as a means of amassing power. In the US, it has been used to rally an electoral base leading up to elections. In the Ivory Coast, it was used to exclude political rivals from contesting power. In the Dominican Republic, it was a means to removing those deemed to be of an ‘inferior race’. Whether it be surviving the limbo of statelessness or shedding blood in a civil war, the innocent are subjected to inhumane suffering when targeted by strategic attacks on citizenship.
By continuing down this route, India is teetering between continued growth and unprecedented chaos; it risks undermining its constitutional foundation of a welfare state. When describing the welfare state, Kees Van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis note, “[e]nhancing the welfare of vulnerable groups of people in society and offering or facilitating social protection for all is what a welfare state is about”.
Yet, the continued implementation of the CAA and the goal of a nation-wide NRC will lead to an opposite effect. Rather than protect the vulnerable, the BJP leadership is setting India on a course of growing its vulnerable population, excluding families from accessing services, and exacerbating cultural and ethnic tensions. These actions only serve to create a ‘lost generation’ of children and families who will have to survive to the best of their ability while actively being persecuted.
As such, the world must pay attention to the citizenship crisis in India. The international community’s failure to intervene and protect India’s constitutional goal of a secular nation and welfare state could lead to an unimaginable tragedy of statelessness and unnecessary loss of millions of lives.
Image obtained through CNN –Credit: Anupam Nath/AP
Nuno Pereira is a a Jack Kent Cooke International Award Scholar from the U.S. reading for the MPhil in Comparative Social Policy (CSP). In the U.S, he received an associate's degree in Criminal Justice from Union County College, and a bachelor's degree in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he researched the effects of memory in the criminal justice system. His interest in CSP comes from my background as a community organizer developing community-driven social programs and state-wide political campaigns.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.