The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by the Parliament of India on 11 December 2019. It amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 by providing a path to Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities fleeing persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The act was the first time religion had been used as a criterion for citizenship under Indian law.
The religious persecution of minorities such as Hindus, Sikhs and Christians has been a serious and widespread problem in Pakistan. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the Indian government, had promised in previous election manifestos to offer Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from neighbouring countries. Under the 2019 amendment, migrants who had entered India by 31 December 2014, and had suffered “religious persecution or fear of religious persecution” in their country of origin were made eligible for citizenship. The amendment also relaxed the residency requirement for naturalization of these migrants from eleven years to five. According to the Indian Intelligence Bureau, the act will add about 31,300 new citizens to India’s 1.3 billion population. About 25,400 Hindus and 5,800 Sikhs, along with about 60 Christians and other religious minorities, are expected to be immediately eligible for citizenship under the amended Citizenship Act.
The amendment has been widely criticised as discriminating on the basis of religion, in particular for excluding Muslims. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called it “fundamentally discriminatory”, adding that while India’s “goal of protecting persecuted groups is welcome”, this should be accomplished through a non-discriminatory “robust national asylum system”. Critics express concerns that the bill would be used, along with the National Register of Citizens, to render 1.9 million Muslim immigrants stateless. Commentators also question the exclusion of persecuted religious minorities from other regions such as Tibet, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. The Indian government says that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are “Muslim-majority countries” where Islam has been declared as the official state religion through constitutional amendments in recent decades, and therefore Muslims in these Islamic countries are “unlikely to face religious persecution” and cannot be “treated as persecuted minorities”.
The passage of the legislation caused large scale protests in India. Assam and other northeastern states have seen violent demonstrations against the bill over fears of non-Muslim illegal immigrants being naturalized under these provisions, thus impacting the local culture and society. Major protests against the Act were held at universities in India. Students at Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia alleged “brutal” suppression by the police. The protests have led to death and injuries to protestors and police personnel, damage to public and private property, the detention of over a thousand people, and some suspensions of local internet and communication infrastructure.
3 thoughts on “What is CAA?”
Comments are closed.