The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government notched a comfortable tally of 125 legislators, in favor of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) 2019, against 99 in the Upper House of the Parliament, and a majority of 311 votes against 80 in the Lower House, enabling its successful legislative Parliamentary passage before it has been sent in for Indian President’s assent, writes Priyanka Bhardwaj.

The new bill aims to ensure rights and dignity, via the granting of citizenship on a fast track basis, to declared minorities, namely, Hindus Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Sikh and Parsis, from neighboring theocratic Islamic countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who were driven out of their motherlands due to religious persecution and have been either overstaying in India beyond the permitted time or without any documents as on December 31, 2014.

Contextualizing the rationale behind this narrow classification, the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 along the lines of separate religious identity, has sought exclusion of illegal immigrant Muslims from these countries, but whose applications for citizenship would require a case by case assessment if they are to move one as a refugee.

The rationale appreciates the hitherto, ignored reality of the rapid decline in the minority populations in these Muslim majority neighbors states and which were not being addressed by the erstwhile Citizenship Act of 1955.

Notwithstanding the sensitivity of the matter, no official figures exist on an exact number of illegal migrants who tend to be benefitted by the new bill, except for a singular report of the Intelligence Bureau to the Joint Parliamentary Committee that mentions 31,313 persons (Hindus 25,447, Sikhs 5,807, Christians 55, Buddhists 2 and Parsis 2) belonging to these “persecuted’ minority communities living in India on Long Term Visa.

The bill also provides for a caveat that bars these immigrants from settling in areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram along with almost whole of Meghalaya and parts of Assam and Tripura, all areas and states that come under the Sixth Schedule and where the Inner Line Permit is applicable.

A clause, additionally allows for foreigners of Indian origin and their descendants, as also the spouse of a person of Indian origin, to register as Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) under the 1955 Act to avail all benefits (right to travel to India, and to work and study in the country) as entitled to OCI cardholders, and which may also stand to get cancelled if the person is found violating any law notified by the Central government.

Furthermore, the Bill has reduced the duration of these eligible migrants from the existing 11 years of residency to 5 years.

Initially a poll promise of the BJP in 2014, the amendments to the Citizenship Act of 1955 could not be brought up in the Rajya Sabha then, though in 2015 certain amendments were gained with regard to the Passport Act & Foreigner’s Act that allowed for non-Muslim refugees to stay back even if they had entered India without any valid documents.

Now with the CAB in place, the exercise of National Register of Citizens (NRC) to identify citizens and expel illegal immigrants) is on the anvil for implementation in the entire country, but which has started attracting negative reactions, as in the case of Assam, where it rendered 1.9 million as refugees, Hindus making up a majority of this figure.

The center’s attempts to assuage their concerns — that the NRC and CAB 2019 would not lead to negation of the 1985 Assam Accord that had fixed March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for illegal immigrants to be considered legal citizens, have been in vain.

Fears for the loss the unique identity of the indigenous people of Assam has spilled onto the streets of many towns, Dibrugarh, Guwahati, Bogaingaon, etc, reminiscent of 1982 mass mobilization, and also in parts of other parts of the north east, forcing the state government to call in the army and shutting down the internet in a bid to quell violence against the bill.

The second grave charge against the bill is that it discriminates against Muslims, to which the government has reasoned for opening of a judicial scrutiny, under the doctrine of “reasonable classification” for equal application of law in certain situations, while stressing that the state retained the right of “granting of citizenship” as opposed to the “right to citizenship” of illegal migrants.

The legal positioning of the bill, therefore, narrows down to form of grant of one-time amnesty to declared non-Muslims minorities of Muslim majority countries, but have fled it to escape religious persecution.

This may not be conflated with the case of Muslims who seek economic migration or political asylum due to intra-Islamic persecutions which the Indian government has equated with poor governance issues of their respective Muslim administrations.

Furthermore, it has clarified that the Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution that deal with right to equality and fundamental rights applies only for current citizens of India and not for migrants.

This new conception of citizenship as sought by the government has drawn from the declaration of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, who wanted the Indian government to shoulder the responsibility of persecuted Hindus and Sikhs from Muslim Pakistan.

Despite the cause of the government finding support in the Janata Dal (United), Shiromani Akali Dal, AIADMK, Biju Janata Party, TDP, YSR-Congress independents and even nominated members to the bill, the Shiv Sena abstained from voting in favor of the bill and the Indian National Congress that has been the chief political opposition has indicated moving the Supreme Court against the bill for it being antithetical to the very idea of secular credentials of India and jeopardizes the lives of Muslims who may have settled for generations in India.

In the internal arena, though there is support for the bill from the larger chunk of the population, the government has countered the opposition with a caution from arming the divisive and enemy Pakistani forces that yearns to play mischief in the internal affairs of a sovereign India, and is also bracing up to take on the twin diplomatic challenges put forth by the federal U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that has sought sanctions against Indian Home Minister Amit Shah for the passage of CAB and abrogation of Article 370 in relation with the Kashmir issue.

New Delhi has declared the “sanctions” as prejudiced and biased and emanating from those quarters that have “little knowledge and no locus standi” on any of the issues that are not anti-Muslim but for protection of the historically persecuted minorities.

For all its successes, the center is bound by its duty to contend with political, religious and ethnic insecurities, and reduce reemerging fault lines due to contested identities, not with a heavy hand, but with large heartedness, and prepare well in advance to deal with a sizeable chunk of “illegal migrants” that will have neither takers nor anywhere to go.