CAB : Citizenship Amendment Bill and All India NRC – Undoing India

“…… the foreign race in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture or language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture i.e of the Hindu nation and must lose their seperate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment- not even citizen’s rights ”

— M.S. Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, 1939, Pg:47-48

The above quote by Golwalkar summarizes the Sangh Parivar’s idea of a Hindu Rashtra. What was theorized by Golwalkar in 1939 about India being a nation for the Hindus and where Muslims must remain wholly subjugated and be denied of even citizenship and voting rights. Now this dangerous worldview is being brought back in 2019 by the RSS-BJP government by the Citizenship Amendment Bill. CAB 2019 is not about benefitting the refugees and persecuted communities, but to exclude Muslims from the definition of Indian citizenship. The CAB is a blatant attempt by the RSS to establish India as a Hindu Rashtra.

The passing of the CAB by the Union Cabinet comes in heel with the failed exercise of the NRC in Assam to identify “illegal immigrants”. Now, who are “illegal immigrants”? According to the Citizenship Act and its’ amendments during Vajpayee regime (2003), “illegal migrant” is a “foreigner who has entered into India without a valid passport or other travel documents”. This is absurd and mercilessly cruel given the massive influx of refugees during Partition and Bangladesh liberation war. So, refugee families without proper document were viciously criminalized in the eye of law.

We have seen how 19 lakh people have been excluded from the NRC in Assam and now face statelessness. The BJP had sought to divide the Hindus and the Muslims by exercising the NRC, but it dealt a blow on the BJP itself. People across religious lines united to defeat the BJP in the recently concluded by-elections in West Bengal. The BJP plans to carry out NRC for the entire country. But having failed in communally dividing people in Assam through its NRC project, it has sought to enact CAB before carrying on a country wide NRC to give an assurance to Hindus that even if they are excluded from the NRC, they would be protected by CAB. But this too is a communally motivated lie.

The communally motivated CAB

The Bill will allow refugees from minority communities, namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to apply for Indian citizenship after they have stayed in India for “not less than six years”. A question arises here. Why only the above mentioned religious communities are considered as persecuted and that too, only if they belong to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan? Why not the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan who also are being persecuted? Or why not the Rohingya Muslims from the Buddhist-dominated Myanmar? Or Sri Lankan Tamils? Or the atheist rationalists from Bangladesh, many of whom are of Muslim origin, who are threatened in their own country? Why does it adopt a definition of refugees from persecuted minority groups based on religion and nationality, and not on the sole ground of humanity? Making specific religions as a pre-condition to guaranteeing citizenship, while excluding Muslims, violates Article 14 and Article 15 of the Indian Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion.

Thus, the CAB is communally motivated to deny citizenship rights to Muslims. Along with NRC, it forms a deadly combination for cleansing of Muslims from the country, and permanently alters the secular fabric of the country.

The Myth of Hindus are safe if CAB is enacted

While the BJP government is outrightly rejecting Muslims from the definition of Indian citizenship, it is creating the myth that the Hindus are safe now. The vast majority of poor in the country, who belong to different religions, don’t even have the documents to prove that they are below the poverty line, and thus are even excluded from government benefits. Many have to migrate for work and others are displaced due to reasons ranging from natural calamities to government sponsored eviction of the poor. Women have been migrating ever since due to marriage. How is it possible for such people to even prove that their ancestors were citizens of India in 1951? The CAB and All India NRC threatens India’s poor citizens with exclusion.

CAB says that while Muslims excluded from NRC will remain stateless and be “thrown out”, non-Muslims excluded by NRC will get refugee status and be allowed to apply for citizenship. In other words, if All India NRC and CAB becomes a reality, the vast majority of Indian citizens will be facing two choices – one of statelessness, and another of refugee status! All India NRC and CAB turns every Indian citizen, bearing inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution, into a supplicant, begging for citizenship.

Are Indians suffering from joblessness and deprivation because of “illegal immigrants”?

There is no evidence at all that there is any large-scale influx of undocumented immigrants in India. On the other hand, the Indian economy grew at a mere 5% between April and June 2019. The growth rate fell to 4.5% between July and September. The manufacturing sector growth rate was a meagre 0.6% in April-June 2019. Crisis in rural India has deepened due to agricultural crisis. The purchasing power of people have diminished rapidly. India’s unemployment rate was at 8.5% in October 2019, the highest in decades. The twin blow of demonetization and GST hit hard on the Indian economy. Indians are suffering from joblessness and deprivation today, not because of “illegal immigrants”, but because of the devastation of the economy, jobs, and society by the Modi-Shah Government.

The CAB and All India NRC have become another severe blow to the very secular fabric on which this nation was imagined. An entire community is being alienated and targeted along with possibility of expulsion from the country they have been calling ‘home’. The Sangh brigade’s “nationalism” is a frenzied division of people in the name of religion.

Amit Shah has time and again reiterated that National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) will be implemented to “identity and throw out infiltrators”. Indians must unite to reject and resist the NRIC and CAB, which are an all-out attack on India’s secular Constitution. It is hence very important for us to come and discuss ways in which we, as citizens of this nation, can ensure public sensitization on the communal, anti-poor and inhuman dimensions of the brazenly divisive move unleashed by the govt of the day to tear apart and trample down the idea of Indian Constitution.

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