Impacts of the Citizenship Amendment Act
India has been deemed the greatest democracy in the world. According to the Statista journal, India is the second-most populous nation in the world, with a total of 1.33 billion people after china. The further research project that India will be the most populated country in the world, overtaking China in forty years. The country has been the best democracy due to its secularism provision acknowledged in the preambles of the constitution. The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Acts CAB was passed in both upper and lower houses of India to amend the existing Citizenship Acts of 1995 that highlighted that refugees who were in the country before 1961 be granted Indian citizenship. However, the CAB of 2019 stipulated that those illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who entered India before December 31, 2014, be granted citizenship (Kerala n.p). The Bill, however, leads to an escalation of outcry among the minorities. The purpose of the article is to discuss various instances that support these claims with a close focus on the nationalistic Hindu fervor and the secular character of India.
After independence in 1947, both parties come to a concession to separate the state from religious affairs through a document referred to as secularism. The idea was to allow the nation to accommodate the diverse nature of the Indian citizens (Sunuwar n.p). It was, however, to ensure the protection and promotion of culture, identity, language, history, and ethnicity of the minority groups of people in India. The Assam Accord of 1985 stipulated that the illegal immigrant who got in Assam before 1971 be expelled. This was to safeguard the right to the land of the majority who are the Assamese people. Allowing more people to meant that their continuity would be threatened. The truth in the claim may be verifiable. According to a lawyer from the Assam region, he stipulates that the Bill will adversely affect the Assam and Northeast people (Sunuwar n.p). The office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights OHCHR acknowledged that the law is indeed against international human rights that India is obliged to comply with.
The outcry among the minority is indeed correct. The Citizenship Amendment Act aim to marginalize the minorities groups in term of their religion. According to the minister of Home Affairs, terms that the law is to safeguard Christianity and the Hindus who have escaped persecution from various parts of the world during the debate discussing the Bill. The Bill clearly outlines that the category of illegal immigrants to be neutralized includes the Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Parsis, Jains, and Christians with the intentional omission of the Muslim immigrants (Cambridge., and RUN n.p). India had a reputation of being the largest democracy, as outlined herein. It has been a secular state since 1947 until the introduction of CAB 2019. The minister described that the splitting of Pakistan and India was done to give room for Islamic league to form their Islamic state (Cambridge., and RUN n.p). This undertaking, however, undermined the fundamentals that had been guiding the country of India for that long.
Further, the minorities have been under the continuous threat while in India due to political influence on ethnoreligious practices, especially the Hindu nationalist ideologues (Jaffrelot n.p). This has created a more significant challenge in the political arena of India. The minorities are, in turn, politically marginalized. The Congress party of India plays a crucial role in undermining the secularism of Indian politics. This has resulted in the mobilization of different voting blocs grouped under the basis of Hinduism. The Judiciary as well is religious inclined on some matters and cases that involve other minority groups such as Dalits, religious minorities, women, and indigenous minorities (Jaffrelot n.p). The trial of the justice system in India is attributed to the brute majority of Bharatiya Janata Party BJP with its inherited policy from the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), which Narendra Modi worked for. One of the publications by the former leader of the party said “…the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, acknowledge the Hindu religion, entertain and adopt glorification of Hindu race and religion or stay in their countries.” This explains the continued political exploitation of the minority. For instance, during the second term of India prime minister, he won with landslide even in the areas where polls and majority were against his rule. The electoral system was manipulated to alter the outcomes of the election (Jaffrelot n.p). The unanimous adoption of the Citizenship Amendment Acts of 2019 further explains the execution of the Hindu nationalistic fervor in India.
Persecution of minority religion has been further extended to the Christian faith. To give an insight, the primary bill objective was to incorporate the Hindus, who were outside the territories of India (Abbott n.p). Other religions were included in the Bill to justify the Bill. With the country’s majority being the Hindu religion, Christianity was much threatened. According to Zenit journal of Rome, it indicates that the Catholics in India encountered a 400% rise in the number of attacks since the ascending of Modi into power in 2014. The article still reveals massive irregularities in India’s general election where votes were literally bought. Their concerned resulted in open combat with the Hindu nationalist that exposed Christianity to social injustices done publicly. The PJB presented their citizens to semi-slavery. For instance, the laborers were each given 3,000 rupees prior to election day (Abbott n.p). This prompted the catholic to establish institutions transforming the public on their right. It is this that exposed catholic Christians to persecution. The Citizenship Amendment Bills was baseless to include Christian in the Bill, yet persecute them.
In conclusion, the Citizenship Amendment Bill of 2019 is oppressive and goes against the country’s principle of being a secular democratic nation. It poses a higher risk of compromising the sections and articles enshrined in the Constitution of India that acknowledged the secularism of the country. The negative implications have been identified to effects the minority groups in India- the minority religious groups, indigenous minority people of Assam, and women. Firstly, the Bill is projected to cause dilution of the culture, tradition, language of the Assam people. Further, the Muslim religion is excluded from the Bill. The article also indicates that the Hindu nationalistic fervor in the country resulted in the persecution of Christianity, majorly catholic, who try to educate the society on their fundamental rights. Indeed, the Citizenship Amendment Act has violated the secularism approach of India, and thus proper review should be done for continued democracy.