CAA: A fading story

For BJP, CAA was strategic move that did not quite work out because those it would benefit could've been accommodated under existing laws, and new entrants would remain excluded

The Modi government's notification of the rules of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), it seemed, had failed in the immediate purpose of its timing: Overshadowing the Supreme Court order on anonymous electoral bonds. The bond story had fuel to last.

The CAA was dying out until two things happened. One, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal attacked the law as an invitation to millions of poor and unemployable "illegal immigrants and ghuspaithiyas (infiltrators)" from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This sparked protests outside his house by hundreds of Pakistani Hindus currently living in inhuman conditions in illegal bastis in Delhi.

An even more important role was played by the US State Department in bringing the story back into the headlines, at least below the fold as we would say in old newspapering parlance.

Spokesman Matthew Miller said at his usual briefing that the US was concerned by the law, stood by equity for all faiths, and was making a close study of it.

At that point I shall make a humble request to him and his principals at the State Department: If after the deepest study you do indeed figure out what you find wrong with this, please do also let us know in India.

Or, as Kishore Kumar sang in Majrooh Sultanpuri's words for Dev Anand in his 1965 classic Teen Deviyaan... agar ise samajh sako mujhe bhi samjhana.

Forgive my lapsing into the old Hindi film nostalgia. The fact, however, is that on closest study, I find it difficult to decide whether the CAA, as it reads now with its rules, is good, bad, a bit of both, or inconsequential. Let's try and examine this from the point of view of its likely or intended - beneficiaries, victims, and the ones with principled arguments.