Against the India Idea

The Citizenship Act of 1955, stipulates that in order to get Indian citizenship by naturalisation one must have resided in India for eleven of the previous fourteen years. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 (now lapsed in the Rajya Sabha) tried to lower that eleven-year stipulation to six years, but only for those belonging to six religious communities — Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian — from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, even if they had entered India as late as, December 14, 2014. This gives a religious twist to the purely political, legal and humanitarian perspectives usually associated with citizenship laws. The Indian Constitution guarantees fundamental rights including the right to equality before the law (Article 14) even to non-citizens. If we keep that essence of Indian Constitution as expressed through the fundamental rights in view, we are bound to oppose any religion-based discrimination in giving citizenship whether fast-track or not. [caption id=“attachment_5922861” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of activists staging a protest rally against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, in Guwahati. PTI[/caption] It is heartening to note that such misguided attempt to play a religious card in creating and appeasing a particular vote-bank by excluding a particular religious community is not accepted by the people at large in the northeastern region where the said amendment was seen to have the greatest impact. The very fact that majority of the people of Assam, as well as those of the neighbouring states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland, came out vehemently against such religion-based law of citizenship is a strong indication that they saw through the ulterior design in such a law to allow illegal migrants to remain in India under the garb of ‘religious persecution of minorities’ in the neighbouring countries. It is another million-dollar question altogether as to how one will prove such religious persecution when leaders like Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed of Bangladesh has already denied that any such persecution of minorities prevails in her country. Assam has seen decades of agitation against illegal migrants from Bangladesh and thousands lost their lives in those years. Ultimately all agitating parties, as well as the people of the state cutting across religious lines, agreed upon the Assam Accord (1985) which says that illegal migrants entering India after March 25, 1971, will be expelled from the country irrespective of their religious identity. Majority of the people of Assam, Hindus and Muslims, in an act of both humanitarian considerations as well as exigencies of the circumstances, accepted the cut-off date. They agreed that those who entered the country before that date be accepted as citizens through the due process of law. Such a considerate view of the Assamese society was uniquely secular and not soaked in religious sectarianism. Granting ‘fast track’ citizenship to ‘non-Muslims’ illegal migrants goes against this basic sentiment of the people of Assam as well as of the other northeastern states. In fact, though Christians are included in the proposed amendment, it is the largely Christian people of a state like Mizoram who could see through the long term impact that such a religion-based citizenship law. The society and culture of the North East at large do not tow the religious fanaticism of the North and on the contrary, it reignited the faultiness that made placard saying “Hello Independent Republic of Mizoram” hit the headlines. Proposers of this kind of citizenship law make the same mistake that followers of the two-nation theory made years ago. Pakistan soon saw the birth of Bangladesh underlining the fact that cultural and linguistic ties are much stronger than any whipped up religious sentiments. The founding fathers of India rejected any religious overtones in building this nation and our constitution emphatically bears that proof in all its provisions. The Citizenship Act, 1955, though amended more than once since, has maintained the same non-discriminatory principle while laying down the process by which one can genuinely acquire citizenship of India. In the words of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as spoken at the World Economic Forum or at the United Nations, India has always espoused the principle of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the whole world is one single family) and believed in the unity of the humanity rather than dividing it. If we believe in that core value, then, one can see that any law to grant fast-track citizenship to non-Muslims runs against that idea of India as a nation. The writer did his PhD on post peace agreement societies and is an international fellow of the KAICIID Dialogue Centre in Vienna