Pak Can Leverage India's Citizenship Move

Already on the warpath over Kashmir, Pakistan will go on the overdrive to run down India among neighbouring Islamic nations

- G Parthasarathy

Developments pertaining to the issue of Indian citizenship for Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan have been the focus of both domestic and international attention in recent days. India has been admired across the world because of its ability to strengthen national unity while cherishing and retaining its rich ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural diversity.

The issue of Indian citizenship for immigrants from our Islamic neighbors — Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh — is complex, given the history of Partition, in 1947. The impact of these recent developments on our extended neighborhood, from Turkey to Indonesia, needs attention, study, and analysis. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we failed to recognize the possible security and international dimensions of the challenges ahead.

Some hard facts need to be understood. The most important is that the highest concentration of Muslims in the world today is in our extended neighborhood from Turkey to Indonesia, where an estimated one billion Muslims live. The countries where the largest Muslim populations in the world reside as citizens are Indonesia (268 million), Pakistan (200 million), India (195 million) and Bangladesh (153.7 million). One-third of the world’s Muslims live in South Asia. Developments within India, especially those which have a bearing on its neighborhood, will inevitably have a fallout on political developments in Bangladesh, Pakistan and even Afghanistan.