CAA and the majority-minority binary

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

Senior Journalist

AT the time of the Partition, those who moved across the freshly demarcated boundaries of India and Pakistan were deemed citizens of these countries. And the people who moved across later had to follow the rules framed under the Citizenship Act of 1955. In 2019, the Narendra Modi government brought in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), specifying that members of persecuted religious minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan would be granted citizenship in India. It is a curious law because it includes Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians along with Hindus, whereas the BJP’s main aim is to appease its Hindu vote bank.

The religious minorities in the country are fighting with their backs to the wall, and they cannot be bothered about the asylum assurances to minorities from the neighbourhood.

The government succeeded in its intent partly because Muslim groups launched protests, especially in Delhi. They felt that the law would in some way discriminate against Muslims who might want to migrate to India from these three countries. It was a fuzzy area. Home Minister Amit Shah gave the assurance on the floor of the Lok Sabha that Muslims who wanted to migrate from these countries would follow the regular migratory route and there would be no restrictions. The ulterior motive of the legislation was to show that Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, all Muslim-majority countries, were targeting non-Muslim minorities. It has indeed been the case that the religious minorities in these countries have been in an uncomfortable position. After Independence, many Hindus continued to live in Pakistan. A problem arose with Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan only when the Taliban came to power in 1996.

It is ironical that the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), with their assertion of Hindu identity and their barely concealed anti-Muslim and anti-Christian rhetoric, should claim to stand up for persecuted religious minorities in the neighbourhood. This is a contradiction, but only in the eyes of the liberals. The BJP-RSS combine has never been apologetic about its brazenly Hindu majoritarian bias. Its diktat to Muslims and Christians in India is clear — follow Hindu culture and admit your Hindu ancestry. It is cultural bullying and that is the basic tenet of Hindutva that motivates the politics of the BJP and the RSS.

Again, facts would show up the falsity of the new law. How many members of religious minorities from these countries have sought Indian citizenship under the new law? The numbers would be embarrassingly low. There would be few Jains and Parsis. The Buddhists would be Chakmas from Bangladesh, but the northeastern states are not willing to accept such refugees, and there is a shameful silence on the part of the Indian government about the issue.

As per the annual report (2021-22) of the Ministry of Home Affairs, 1,414 people from non-Muslim minority communities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan were granted Indian citizenship, through registration or naturalisation, under the Citizenship Act between April 1 and December 31, 2021.

The Hindus who had migrated from East Pakistan in the 1950s and early 1960s pose a challenge in the face of Assamese assertion of cultural identity. So, the CAA, even with its rules finally framed, will remain a dead letter for the most part.

Why did Shah choose to announce the framing of rules weeks before the Lok Sabha elections? The CAA had been in limbo, and the Modi government did not want to be seen as passing a legislation and then ignoring it. Despite the government’s claims that it has wrought an economic miracle in the country in the past 10 years, BJP leaders — especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah — feel the need to emphasise in as many ways as possible, direct or indirect, that they represent the Hindu interests in the country so as to bolster the party’s electoral prospects. The BJP and the Modi-Shah duo are not content to rest on the ostensible achievements of governance. They have to demonstrate that the party is working for the Hindus.

Does it really matter to Hindus in the country if Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are accommodated? The articulate Hindutva ideologues may talk as if it was an issue of life and death for the Hindu civilisation, but it remains rhetoric and nothing more. We have seen that in Tamil Nadu, people did not really like Sri Lankan Tamils staying in the state despite their sympathy for their ethnic brethren.

Muslims, too, are not as bothered now about the CAA as they seemed to be in late 2019 and early 2020 because they know that they are facing a greater challenge to their identity in their day-to-day lives. The BJP-RSS workers on the ground, especially in party-ruled states, are on the prowl, threatening Muslims in villages, towns and cities. And at the constituency level, the thrust of the BJP’s campaign in local, state and national elections is on speaking against Muslims and Christians. The religious minorities in the country are fighting with their backs to the wall, and they cannot be bothered about the asylum assurances to the minorities from the neighbourhood.

The message behind the implementation of the CAA rules is loud and clear: the BJP wants to reiterate that it is primarily a party of the Hindu majority in the country. This is a reassertion of its ‘Hindu first’ policy. The BJP cannot be blamed for using this bait. There is a need for Hindus to realise that it is naive of them to fear the minorities when the majority community is the domineering force.

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