The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019- the beginning of the end to secular values in India?

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 represents a strong departure from India’s constitutional and core secular values. Put forward by the Home Minister and President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the time, Amit Shah¹, this controversial enactment begs the question — why and how did this amendment come into existence? However, before we critically analyse the new amendments, what exactly does it entail?

What is the CAA 2019?

In simple terms, the amendment enables members from the minority religious groups including Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian groups, who are facing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh, to obtain citizenship by naturalisation in order to become an Indian citizen².

What is the intention behind the CAA?

On the surface, this act eases the process of those seeking refuge and obtaining citizenship within India, through widening the scope of those eligible to do so. As previously, the rules of the Citizenship Act were exceptionally narrow, especially the 2003 revisions, which implemented this term of ‘illegal migrant’, where any person who fit this criterion would be entirely barred from gaining citizenship³. Thus, the recent amendments could be viewed to have alleviated such pressures for specific ‘illegal migrants’ from certain communities, consequently indicating a move to more practical and compassionate law-making from the government.

However, analysing in detail the careful wording and arbitrary nature of the revisions — it is clear that the intention is shockingly much bleaker. Rather, the purposeful selection of those minority groups can be seen to tactfully discriminate against the Muslim community.

Why is this significant?

The second largest religious minority group within India is the Muslim community. This is indicated in the graph¹ above, which shows from the 2011 Census, 172 million people in India considered themselves Muslim. Although following the upwards trend, we can presume that this statistic is now significantly higher in 2022.

This only further exposes the Indian government’s irrationality in its actions of excluding citizenship to migrants from the second largest religious minority group in India and strengthens the perception of its administration deliberately deconstructing the notion of secularism within India.

In addition, it suggests that the intended direction of the ruling party in India, the BJP, is to pursue this strong narrative of carving out a curated Indian identity. This is further supported by Chandrachud, who even suggests that such actions are ‘vaguely reminiscent of policies adopted by the Indian government at the time of the partition of the country’². Therefore, emphasises the danger in reverting to these divisionary strategies that caused great hardship and pain in the past.

The wave of protests that has emerged as a response to the passing of the CAA, with increased reports of police brutality and the implementation of emergency state measures in regions such as Delhi to thwart the gathering of demonstrators, is a strong testament of the division already occurring within India³.

Although, it should be noted that this notion of Hindutva, a form of Hindu nationalism wanting to rebuild India based on the religion and this anti-Muslim rhetoric within the BJP is nothing new. These views can be seen to be central to the party⁴. In fact, the passing of the CAA is the result of a build-up of policies since 2015, favouring non-Muslim illegal migrants through executive orders and directives⁵. Thus, it can be argued that the passing of the CAA shouldn’t be that surprising, rather it seems fitting with the BJP’s narrative of strengthening Hindu identity within India, even if this means incidentally weakening Muslim identity as a consequence.

Secularism and India’s constitution

The right to equality under Article 14 of the Indian Constitution is notably a foundational characteristic of the Constitution. However, the government’s blatant violation of this principle in placing Muslims at a strong disadvantage within the CAA, through constructing unnecessary divisions between those specified migrants from the selected three countries and everyone else is morally unjust.

The baseless distinctions can also generate a lack of certainty within the law. Bhat creates a scenario where a Muslim illegal migrant from Afghanistan decides to convert to Hinduism during her stay in India? What does this mean? The vagueness and absence of any real justification to the amendments only further fuels the argument that the intention was purely discriminatory, thus violating Article 14.

How do we reinstate secularist values into policymaking?

The law must remain secular. It’s critical that India’s government doesn’t re-expose such feelings of resentment and bitterness through its legislative agenda, rather the country’s historical religious differences and challenges must remain in the past.

Instead, repealing or adjusting the scope of the CAA in order to stifle the shaping a very specific, somewhat non-inclusive identity of India is essential to ensure the return to secularist values within the administration. More importantly, to safeguard the very spirit of the Indian Constitution. Either way the CAA needs to be re-examined — promptly.

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