the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens

By: Kanika Malhotra

On November 20  2019, Union home minister Amit Shah said in Parliament that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship Amendment Act would be prepared for every state in the country. The act has already been amended in  2003 by the government. CAA and NRC have also been implemented in Assam in 2013-2014.  In 2019 there has been amends made in the law which has led to nationwide protests. Students, Activists, Actors, Politicians were out on roads protesting against it. It received criticism from media, public figures and from international authorities.
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CAA and NRC have received this amount of objection because of its discriminatory nature. CAA says that refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh from religions Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Christians all religions’ except Muslims and atheists will be given Indian citizenship if they live in India for continuous six years. The act is arbitrary, discriminatory and Islamophobic. When confronted about how the act is dependent on religion, Amit Shah gave a reason saying that Hindus who are minorities in our neighbouring countries are massacred, he also stated that India cannot welcome Muslims from all over the world, but for a matter of fact Atheists in Bangladesh are burnt alive, Shia Muslims in Pakistan are murdered, minorities in Sri Lanka don’t have equal rights. A refugee is a refugee because of facing persecution, not because they belong to a specific caste, creed, religion or  any  other sect. No secular, democratic country would ever initiate an act which discriminates against people on the basis of their religion. The introduction of religious identity as the only measure for citizenship is ambiguous. Secularism is the basic fundamental of India. 

“If India is not secular, then India is not India at all,” said Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

 The law violates Article 14, Article 15 and Article 21 of the constitution. Article 14 guarantees that  " The state shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of laws within the territory of India '' Article 15 prohibits the state from discriminating "against any citizen of ground only of religion, race, caste…". It also infringes Article 21 of the constitution which guarantees the right to life and liberty.

India is not able to meet basic amenities of its own citizens; and thus would not be able to provide basic care for the refugees. Therefore increasing the population won’t be of any help.CAA furthermore is a danger to the national security as spoken of by RAW because now it will be much easier to get citizenship. In 2014 the time period for getting citizenship was 11 years which has now been reduced to half. CAA is a hindrance to the growth of the country, a threat to national security and it violates the very notion of the nation, secularism.

CAA doesn't affect an Indian Citizen directly but NRC does. The government has told that NRC doesn't affect an Indian Citizen but through NRC an Indian Citizen needs to prove their citizenship. They have to provide documents of their ancestors and if they fail to do that they will be declared as an illegal immigrant. Now, through CAA if they are a non-Muslim they need to claim they are from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. They will be given citizenship but this will result in them being an illegal immigrant and hence will lose their property, job, education and everything that they owned will now be proclaimed illegal. If they are a Muslim or an Atheist and they are not able to provide their documents and will be sent to detention centres . Nativity certificates issued by the government, land records, voter identity card, birth certificates of oneself and patents, Panchayat certificate verifying residency and ration card are some of the documents that are needed to prove one’s citizenship. The entire process of the legacy of documents is problematic for homeless people, people from lgbtqia+  community who have been abandoned by their family, or those people who have misplaced their old documents because of a natural calamity or any other reason are seriously vulnerable in this act. Even a spelling error in the documents can ruin a family in the citizenship test. The NPR (National Population Register) is a register of residents of India where the enumerator collects demographic and biometric data of individuals living at the place of enumeration for six months or more. It was originally slated to be prepared between April 2020 and September 2020, and be ready ahead of the Census 2021. The acts are a blatant use of power and mistreatment of minorities. The government has not given a draft regarding NRC. Mr. Amit Shah has claimed that no matter how many protests happen he will implement NRC before 2024. He has even said that NRC and CAA are interlinked. Supporters of Bhartiya Janta Party have been saying that CAA and NRC are not interlinked.  Union Minister Ravi Shankar said that there is no question linking  NRC  and CAA together. However, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has said that there will be no discussion on CAA-NRC before 2024. Members of Bhartiya Janta Party have different statements and keep on changing their words about the act.

In 2016 BJP during the assembly election campaign promised to "free" Assam from illegal Bangladeshi migrants by deporting them. It also promised to give Indian citizenship to Bangladeshi Hindus. The promise has been fulfilled by CAA making the ruling party's religious difference agenda more clear. In Assam NRC and CAA has been implemented, detention camps have already been set up and are now active. As of August 2019 19 lakh, people were illegal immigrants.  There has been a total of 28 deaths in detention camps and total of 100 deaths some due to shock or suicide. Illegal immigrants included people who have served in the Indian Army or the Border Security force for decades. There was also an unexpectedly large number of Hindus who were excluded. In some cases, members of the same family were found to be illegal immigrants but not the others. NRC was a failure in Assam. The experiment of NRC in Assam shows how scrupulously flawed the system of determining citizenship is.  The UN high commissioner Michelle Bachelet  elicited that the exclusion of more than 1.9 million people is a cause of "great uncertainty and anxiety." She also further stated that "I appeal to the government to ensure due process during the appeals process, prevent deportation or detention and ensure people are protected from statelessness."

The protests that have followed after the passing of the act have resulted in extreme police Brutality and nationwide arrests. On 5th January 2020 more than 50 masked people armed with rods, sticks and acid attacked the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)  Delhi and injured more than 39 students and teachers. Many students suffered serious injuries. Eyewitnesses, including students who were injured, accused the members of Bhartiya Janta Party, the current ruling party (BJP) and  Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad(ABVP), a Hindu nationalist organization.  The attacks on JNU students were because of the peaceful protests against fee hike and raising their voice against the Citizenship Amendment Act. There has not been a single arrest or inquiry after 6 months of the attack ever after CCTV footage was leaked.

The Guardian has said law to be dangerous for all, "Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist project is not a containable anomaly, but an enterprise that threatens the nation’s very foundations of pluralism and secularism.” Financial Times has expressed concerns saying that India might slip into a second emergency after CAA. BBC, The New York Times, TIME, SCMP are some of the  International Media which have criticized the law and talked about its inhumane nature.

The current state of India is that unemployment rates are an all-time high, poverty rates are high, the economy is crashing down, GDP is at its lowest. The BJP has made its bigotry, fascism, Hindu nationalism and lack of internal democracy in the party clear to the country. In Nazi Germany there were laws made to segregate Jews from "Aryan"  society, then Nuremberg law was introduced, then they were no more given basic human rights, then eventually concentration camps. There is an uncanny similarity between BJP's Hindutva policies and Nazi Germany. CAA-NRC is not about politics.  It is about basic human rights. Mr. Narendra Modi gave a xenophobic statement  in a rally saying "Protestors can be identified by their clothes." Remaining silence is a political act, an act of letting people suffer an act of allowing the oppressor to enjoy the power.