New Delhi: The Sangh Parivar through its political wings has been actively engaging in process of spreading Islamophobia across the country since it assumed power at the Centre since 2014. The BJP-led NDA has successfully amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 through the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 is passed in both the Houses of Parliament after it failed earlier in the year.
The bill proposes to amend Section 2 (b) of the Citizenship Act – which defines ‘illegal immigrants’ – namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan” from the ambit of “illegal immigrants” and excludes Muslims from the list. The bill also reduces the period of residence in India for the acquisition of Indian citizenship through naturalization to six years from the earlier period of twelve years. Through this amendment, these ‘minority communities’ from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are no longer ‘illegal’ immigrants, and they can obtain Indian citizenship through naturalization if they have resided in India for six years.
The CAB assumes to be communal or anti-Muslim and against the basic principles of the Indian constitution for many reasons; first, a classification based on religion by excluding Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from the ambit of illegal immigrants; and secondly, a classification based on country, by restricting the benefit of acquiring citizenship through naturalization to minority immigrants only from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
CAB is violating two fundamental rights envisioned in the constitution. While the objective of Article 15 is anti-discrimination, the objective of Article 14 is to provide equal protection of laws. Thus, Article 14 will be violated if the classification is unreasonable, while Article 15 will be violated only if there is discrimination based on the classification.
Both the Citizenship Amendment Bill and the National Register of Citizenship are exposing the extermination politics of the Indian Government.
And for the Indian Muslims, the time has come where they will be denied citizenship only because of their faith. These bills will not only make Muslims refugees in their own country based on religion, but it also points towards the genocidal agenda of Sangh Parivar. As we have been witnessing in Assam, while the NRC is expelling a large number of people, the amended CAB will be going to secure the citizenship rights of every community except Muslims. So, the procedural cooperation from the part of Muslim community will not help them to be recognized as citizens.
In a liberal democratic nation-state, rights are meant for citizens only. Hannah Arendt says that the citizenship gives the right to have rights. If you want to have rights, you must obtain the identity of a citizen. Only those people who have rights can make claims for political power. Hence, the protest for citizenship is a protest for the right of having rights. Also, only with rights, you can be a human; if you attain citizenship and rights, then only you will be recognized as humans. Here, citizenship precedes your humanity. If a nation-state declares you as a non-citizen, there is no institution remaining for you to appeal against it. Your human status is granted through the modern nation-state.
We must remember that the citizenship discrimination and denial of citizenship are two different matters. In the Indian context, the citizenship is already based on discrimination. Upendra Baxi says that there exist many discriminatory dangers in the matter of citizenship in India. The super citizen beyond the law, the citizen who compromises with law, citizens who live as subjects by scared of the law, insurgent citizenship in which the law always shows its might are the discriminatory citizenship issues inside the legal system. Citizenship discrimination is an internal challenge of the liberal democratic nation-state. Even though the discrimination’s happening in these situations, the citizenship is not denied.
This is not the case of Muslims in India. Here, Muslims are denied citizenship because of the extermination agendas of Sangh Parivar. The denial of citizenship is the denial of institutions in a liberal democratic nation-state for a group of people. Denial of citizenship hence denies rights and legal protections. A man without rights loses legal protection thus, his human status is lost too. The denial of citizenship by the Indian fascists to Muslims is another way of denial of their human status. As mentioned earlier, if the protection of citizenship doesn’t exist, your human status is in danger. That’s why we need to say the distance between the denial of citizenship and genocide is very less. Denial of citizenship is the symbolic genocide. Denial of citizenship is aimed at the abrogation of the legal protection of Muslims, dehumanize and demonize them and render them helpless against genocide. We must not forget; in modern nation-states the denial of citizenship precedes genocides.
Nevertheless, one thing is for sure: New CAB, Babri Masjid verdict, Abrogation of Constitutional Guarantee of Jammu and Kashmir, UAPA amendment etc, have led many minority communities including Muslims to the path of protest. However, it is saddening that these protests have been ignored by the opposition groups and civil society. Muslim minority protests are fighting against the New CAB while keeping in mind that it will lead to the Nazi model genocide.
To prevent genocide, we must stop every policy towards the denial of citizenship. It is high time to come together to boycott and reject NRC and CAB in TOTO. Time has come for us to hit the streets and fight for the very right of being a Muslim in this country. A Parliament march is being organised in this regard on Friday 13th December 2019 at 3 pm.
