New Delhi is rushing through implementation of a controversial citizenship law in a naked effort to change voter demographics in the upcoming elections. On paper, the Citizenship Amendment Act simply grants Indian nationality to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before December 31, 2014. Tamils from Sri Lanka, Tibetans from China and Rohingya from Myanmar have also been clubbed in with Muslims. In practice, however, rights organisations say the law is, at best, discriminatory against Muslim immigrants and refugees, and at worst, designed to deprive Muslim citizens of their nationality.
Sectarian violence broke out soon after the law was passed in 2019, leading the government to suspend its implementation. Meanwhile, a state-level attempt to enforce the rule in Assam met with disastrous results for the BJP, as it showed their claims that Muslim migrants are eating the country like “termites” was just a bigoted attack. Most of the ‘disqualified’ people turned out to be the children of documented citizens who lacked their own documentation, usually due to poverty and illiteracy, or lack of access to the government agencies that would have issued the relevant documents. Making it worse, many of the people excluded were not even Muslim, and some local BJP leaders and workers even made the initial list.
But five years later, even though the BJP is still expected to win the election, its support base is appearing weaker, as cracks in the ruling party’s propaganda appear to show. This weakness has been reason enough for the party’s leadership to go ahead with implementing the law, as it will invigorate hardcore supporters and possibly delist enough Muslim voters to sway voting in the BJP’s favour. Whether or not the BJP’s latest effort to tamper with the country’s demographics proves beneficial to them at the polls, it is almost certain to cause unnecessary hardships for millions of Indians whose only ‘crime’ is to live in states with large Muslim populations.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 13th, 2024.
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