V. Ramani's web The world through my lens

(The full forms of the acronyms used in this blog are given at the end for easy reference)

Like a pesky earworm, the words of songs from Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker keep reverberating in my ears nowadays when I sit down to pen my blogs. If it was Jaane Kahaan Gaye Voh Din that resonated with me when I wrote my last blog, the present blog brought to mind that priceless masterpiece Jeenaa Yahaan Marnaa Yahaan. Lest my reader think that I am engulfed in maudlin sentimentality, let me emphasise that there is a logic to the use of these titles. My last blog reflected my dismay at the state of affairs in India’s district/police administration. The present blog focuses on the issue uppermost in the minds of most, if not all, of India’s 1.3 plus billion inhabitants. Yes, I refer to the CAA-NPR-NRIC triad, which has occasioned intense but non-violent protests on a scale not seen for many years.

Thanks to the wisdom and humanity of the politicians at the helm of India’s governance in the years after her independence, India went in for a liberal interpretation of citizenship, based on the jus soli principle, i.e, birth in India after 26 January 1950 was deemed to qualify one for Indian citizenship. The first blow to this principle came in 1987 in the wake of the Assam Accord. From 1 July 1987, birth in India was not a sufficient condition for citizenship: one parent also had to be a citizen of India by birth. This meant a move towards the concept of jus sanguinis in defining citizenship, with descent, rather than birth alone, being the defining criterion for citizenship. The second, and far more telling, move towards a more constricted definition of citizenship came with the 2003 Act. Not only was one parent required to be a citizen of India, there was the additional stipulation that, at the time of birth, the other parent should not have been an “illegal migrant” (defined as a foreigner who entered India without valid documents or who, with valid documents, overstayed in India beyond the permitted period). It is instructive to note that the 1987 and 2003 changes in the definition of “citizenship by birth” in the 1955 Act, as well as the 2003 Rules seemed to enjoy a broad consensus across the political spectrum. Not only did the previous UPA government go along with all these provisions, it even toyed with the idea of the NPR followed by the NRIC before carrying out the NPR exercise in 2010 and then dropping the idea of the NRIC in favour of the Aadhaar exercise.

It is the third move in 2019 to amend the 1955 Act that has finally set the cat among the pigeons. Efforts since 2016 to amend the 1955 Act to provide fast track access to Indian citizenship to “persecuted” persons belonging to specific countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan) had been stymied by the inability to get the legislation through the Rajya Sabha; support from non-BJP parties, which either did not understand the implications of the legislation or chose to support it out of their own political calculations saw it enacted within the space of three days in December 2019.

A reading of the CAA reveals nothing about granting fast track citizenship to “persecuted” minorities from the three countries in our neighbourhood. While this view may have been put forth in the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the CAB, its absence in the CAA is puzzling. Even if the word “persecuted” finds its way into the Rules to be enacted to give effect to the CAA, determining whether or not a claimant for Indian citizenship has indeed  been persecuted in his/her former country will be very difficult. There is also the issue of the claims of refugees from other countries in the neighbourhood – Shias/Ahmadiyyas from Pakistan, Tamils from Sri Lanka, Rohingyas from Myanmar – which will fall through the sieve. Not only, therefore, are there serious issues relating to the CAA violating the principles of equality and secularism (parts of the inviolable basic structure of the Constitution of India), there is also the moral indefensibility of a statute that seeks to pick and choose who among the residents of India’s neighbouring countries is eligible for Indian citizenship. In any case, the process had already commenced from 2015: in a set of four notifications issued quietly between September 2015 and September 2016 under the 1955 Act, illegal migrants from the religious communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan now covered under the CAA had already been exempted “from the adverse penal consequences of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 and the Foreigners Act, 1946 and rules or notifications made thereunder” (as stated in the same Statement of Objects and Reasons at the time of introduction of the CAB in Parliament). These notifications exempted such classes of “illegal immigrants” from prosecution and also provided for their obtaining long-term visas  to stay in India. A government that wanted to favour specific groups from certain countries could well have exercised its existing powers on a case by case basis without highlighting the exclusion of India’s largest minority religion.

It, therefore, appears that the BJP wanted to ensure that the NRC process in Assam does not affect the large number of Hindus who had been declared “illegal immigrants” under that exercise. In the process, the government and the party ruling at the centre ended up with a double whammy. The indigenous people of Assam have made it clear for over forty years that they are opposed to migration from across the international border, irrespective of the religion of the migrant. Even the exclusion of tribal and Inner Permit line areas in the North East from the ambit of CAA has not assuaged feelings, especially in Upper Assam. At the same time, the exclusion of Muslims from the CAA has occasioned a different sort of apprehension in India’s largest minority. This is linked to the feeling among Indian Muslims that they have been at the receiving end of many events over the past five years – the beef ban and consequent lynching of Muslim dairy farmers, the love jihad crusade of Hindu vigilante groups, the opposition to the performance of namaaz in public places and, in general, a vitiated level of public discourse which questions the loyalty to India of the Muslim community.

Brutus may have seen the tide in the affairs of men, taken at the flood, leading on to fortune. Unfortunately, for the central government, the tide has come in at a rather inopportune time. The CAB was on the anvil from 2016. Had it been passed at that time, when the NPR and NRIC were nowhere on the horizon, the three issues may not have been linked together. There are also various events since the middle of 2019 which have heightened the sense of insecurity in Indian Muslims. The abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India and the virtual shutdown of Kashmir since August 2019 followed by the Supreme Court decision in the Ayodhya matter had already caused deep unease in the community. The reports of human suffering occasioned by the Assam NRC as lakhs of people ran from pillar to post to establish their rights to Indian citizenship were compounded by the belligerent statements from those at the highest levels of the central government that the NRC would be extended to the entire country, coupled with accounts of detention centres coming up in different parts of the country. These developments, linked with the CAA’s specific exclusion of Muslims, raised fears that the CAA-NPR-NRIC combination could see substantial segments of the Muslim community losing their Indian citizenship.

While the central government has been reiterating that the CAA is intended only to enable those from the three neighbouring countries get fast track citizenship, the NPR-NRIC provisions (enunciated in the 2003 Rules), which allow for a government functionary at a fairly junior level to raise doubts about the citizenship status of a person, give cause for apprehensions. As of date, there is still no clarity as to what documents, if any, will be required to establish one’s citizenship. In a country where birth registration systems have been notoriously lax in the past (though improving now), proving the fact of one’s birth in India could prove well-nigh impossible, more so if the standard documents, such as passports and voter identity cards, are not acceptable as proof of citizenship.

This is not the place to raise all the issues relating to the difficulties in proving one’s citizenship. Suffice to say that, post-1991, the Indian populace was getting used to not having to stand in queues for every facility, a feature of the forty years prior to 1991 for getting access to milk, kerosene, landline telephones and LPG connections. This habit was revived in the post-demonetisation phase from November 2016, when every resident of India stood for hours in queues to be able to draw cash from banks. One certainly hopes and prays that the NPR-NRIC exercise, wherever implemented, does not lead to interminable queues in front of tahsil and municipal offices as people seek to prove their Indian citizenship. Political parties and governments have their own reasons for carrying through this onerous exercise. The aam aurat/aadmi just wants to carry on with the business of daily life and securing her/his roti, kapda and makaan. For her/him, what is relevant is this line sung by Mukesh:

जीना यहाँ मरना यहाँ इसके सिवा जाना कहाँ

1955 Act: Citizenship Act, 1955

2003 Act: Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003

2003 Rules: Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003

BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party

CAA: Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019

CAB: Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019

NRC: National Register of Citizens

NRIC: National Register of Indian Citizens

NPR: National Population Register

UPA: United Progressive Alliance