ON January 1, braving the bitter winter cold, people gathered at India Gate in New Delhi, sang songs, held placards and shouted slogans against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA). In another part of the city, several women were huddled under a tent in Shaheen Bagh, some with their children, with the same objective: oppose the CAA. The outrage over the CAA was not confined to Delhi; it spilled over to almost every city in the country, the only discernible difference being the size of the protesting crowds. The protests have resonated abroad as well—in the United Kingdom, in the United States and even in Cape Town in South Africa.
The CAA has been perceived as highly discriminatory as it offers the naturalisation of citizenship to refugees and “illegal migrants” from six specific communities (Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Parsi) from three neighbouring countries, namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. It ignores the citizenship claims of others who might be already residing in India either as refugees or as illegal migrants but do not belong to the Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist or Parsi communities. The implicit message is that all the six communities selected in the CAA for preferential citizenship are inherently “Indian” while other refugee groups or migrants are not.
The bias could not have been more apparent as the CAA singularly excludes Muslims (political refugees or economic migrants from any country whatsoever) or, for that matter, thousands of Tamil refugees residing in camps in India from such regularisation of citizenship. The law to arbitrarily decide who is a refugee and who is not in the absence of a refugee policy has also been an area of contestation, as has been the selection of only a few and not all neighbouring countries.
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