Mumbai: India's new law that grants citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who fled Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan prior to 2015 has led to violent demonstrations.
President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to the citizenship bill late on Thursday, signing it into law.
Clearance of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill triggered widespread protests in Assam, as protesters said it would convert thousands of illegal immigrants into legal residents. Tripura and West Bengal also saw large protests following the passage of the bill.
Muslims across the country also protested against the law as it does not give the same rights to citizenship as members of other faiths, a move critics say undermines the secular constitution.
Passage of the bill was a key election promise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
How did the bill secure parliament's support?
Modi had promised that his party would grant citizenship to the six communities who according to the government have historically faced persecution on grounds of religion in the three Muslim-dominated countries. Lawmakers belonging to his party voted in favour of the bill.
What do critics say?
They accuse Modi's government of drafting rules to favour its hardline Hindu agenda aimed at disturbing permanent settlements belonging to Muslims. The Congress-led opposition is against the act largely on the issue of exclusion of Muslim immigrants, calling the move discriminatory and a part of the BJP's Hindutva agenda. They also claim that the law is against the idea of equal and inclusive citizenship promised in the Constitution.
The case of Assam
In Assam, however, the protesters do not want the government to award citizenship to either Hindus or Muslims if they are illegal immigrants. They fear their cultural and linguistic identity could be undermined if illegal immigrants - both Hindus and Muslims - from Bangladesh are accorded citizenship under the law. The population of Assamese speakers has gone down over the years with the influx of Bengali speakers whose count has steadily increased in the state.
Their protest is mainly centred around two provisions of the Citizenship Amendment Bill. These are: the cut-off date for recognising the illegal immigrants as bonafide refugees and thus giving them an option of acquiring citizenship through relaxed rules.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 sets December 31, 2014 as the cut-off date for recognising the illegal immigrants as eligible refugees to acquire Indian citizenship. This, the protesters say, is a violation of the Assam Accord of 1985.
The Assam Accord had been signed between the Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre and the protesters led by the All Assam Students Union (AASU). Under the Assam Accord, the cut-off date was set at March 25, 1971.
The Assam Accord's cut-off date was also the basis of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was finalised earlier this year under the supervision of the Supreme Court. The NRC left out about 19 lakh people who could not prove their citizenship claim. Majority of them are said to be Hindus.
The Citizenship Act enables the Hindu illegal immigrants from former East Pakistan and later Bangladesh to seek Indian citizenship thereby thwarting the demand of the AASU/protesters to deport all illegal migrants who entered India after the cut-off date.
Who does the Citizenship Act leave out?
Opposition parties say the law is discriminatory as it singles out Muslims, who make up nearly 15 percent of population. The government says that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority countries, so Muslims cannot be treated as persecuted minorities.
Who could suffer?
Rights organisations say Modi-supporting lawmakers have cleared the bill to justify deportation of thousands of Muslims living in the northeastern state of Assam and unable to provide documents to prove Indian citizenship.
What are the discrepancies?
The law does not clarify why minority migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan are favoured over those fleeing Sri Lanka and Myanmar from where minority Muslims have sought refuge in India.
What's next?
The law has been challenged in Supreme Court by Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), lawyers and rights groups on the grounds that it violates the secular constitution. The Congress party has also made it clear that they will challenge the new law in the apex court. More than 500 eminent Indian jurists, lawyers, academics and actors, have signed a statement condemning the legislation.
(With inputs from Reuters and PTI)
