Over 1000 Scientists, Academics Demand Withdrawal of Citizenship Bill // Bharat Bhushan: Citizenship Amendment Bill is a bid to fashion an ethnic democracy
NB: The Modi government's position is that Muslims cannot suffer religious persecution in Pakistan and Bangladesh because Islam is the proclaimed state religion in these countries (I would call this a version of civil religion). This is faulty reasoning and derives from the conflation of communal ideology with religion. Its is also factually incorrect. By this logic, the numerous secular activists in Bangladesh and Pakistan murdered by religious fanatics could not have been victims of religious persecution. But they were and they are.
Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistani Punjab, assassinated in 2011, was a prominent case, but there are hundreds of others. Numbers of democratic activsts and bloggers have been killed in Bangladesh over the past few years. Taslima Nasreen was hounded out her country (she was also hounded out of India) by Islamists - she is not a practising Muslim, but there are many victims of communal persecution who remain Muslims.Pakistani
As for the Home Ministers' claim that the Congress partitioned the country, this calumny has become a habit of the RSS/BJP. More about it may be read here. Didn't the Muslim League and the colonial power have something to do with it? Wasn't Sardar Patel, the BJP's favourite Congress-man and a senior member of the Congress Working Committee party to the decision? It is not proper for politicians to make deceitful utterances on historical matters, but they do it all the time. (Here's an ongoing example of persecution for Mr Shah's party to take note and to provide a remedy for but will they?)
As for the Two-Nation Theory, here is the Sangh's hero V. D. Savarkar's declaration on August 15, 1943: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations" (Indian Annual Register 1943 vol.2 p.10). The Hindu Mahasabha leader Bhai Parmanand advocated a communal partition as long ago as 1909: The territory beyond Sind should be united with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province into a great Musalman kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of India should go and settle in this territory.. Bhai Parmanand in 1908-9; in The Story on My Life, p 41.
I must mention here the tendency of some academicians to theorise in a direction similar to the Sangh Parivar: viz., to conflate Hinduism with Hindutva - but more on that later. Also relevant is the fact that the Communist Party of India supported the case for Pakistan between 1942 and 1947. It later admitted this to be a 'right-wing deviation'. It may interest readers to know that on the Partition issue, Jinnah and Ambedkar were on the same page'
It is my opinion that nation worship is right-wing atheism, but our nation-worshippers are not likely to agree with me. (A detailed argument on this may be read here). In which case the Home Minister's arguments fall to the ground. Muslims can be victimised by Islamist cadres and also by governmental policies - in the name of Islam; likewise, Hindus who oppose Hindutva can be, have been and continue to be persecuted by the Sangh parivar and its government - in the name of Hinduism. I will write more about this in due course, but it is important to remain mindful of the ideological deceit that is being perpetrated by the Modi government as it passes a vicious piece of legislation that violates the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution. DS
“The idea of India that emerged from the independence movement, and as enshrined in our constitution, is that of a country that aspires to treat people of all faiths equally. The use of religion as a criterion for citizenship in the proposed bill would mark a radical break with this history and would be inconsistent with the basic structure of the constitution. We fear, in particular, that the careful exclusion of Muslims from the ambit of the Bill will greatly strain the pluralistic fabric of the country,” the statement says. "We note that article 14 of the Indian constitution prohibits the State from denying ‘to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.’
While it is the job of legal experts to determine whether this draft bill violates the letter of the constitution, it seems certain to us that it violates its spirit,” it adds. This is the first time India is seeking to grant citizenship on the basis of religion. Citizenship for “Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs escaping persecution” was part of the BJP’s 2019 election manifesto.
Several states in the Northeast have seen protests against the bill. source: Huffpost
Tavleen Singh: Citizenship legally weaponised
Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistani Punjab, assassinated in 2011, was a prominent case, but there are hundreds of others. Numbers of democratic activsts and bloggers have been killed in Bangladesh over the past few years. Taslima Nasreen was hounded out her country (she was also hounded out of India) by Islamists - she is not a practising Muslim, but there are many victims of communal persecution who remain Muslims.
As for the Home Ministers' claim that the Congress partitioned the country, this calumny has become a habit of the RSS/BJP. More about it may be read here. Didn't the Muslim League and the colonial power have something to do with it? Wasn't Sardar Patel, the BJP's favourite Congress-man and a senior member of the Congress Working Committee party to the decision? It is not proper for politicians to make deceitful utterances on historical matters, but they do it all the time. (Here's an ongoing example of persecution for Mr Shah's party to take note and to provide a remedy for but will they?)
As for the Two-Nation Theory, here is the Sangh's hero V. D. Savarkar's declaration on August 15, 1943: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations" (Indian Annual Register 1943 vol.2 p.10). The Hindu Mahasabha leader Bhai Parmanand advocated a communal partition as long ago as 1909: The territory beyond Sind should be united with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province into a great Musalman kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of India should go and settle in this territory.. Bhai Parmanand in 1908-9; in The Story on My Life, p 41.
I must mention here the tendency of some academicians to theorise in a direction similar to the Sangh Parivar: viz., to conflate Hinduism with Hindutva - but more on that later. Also relevant is the fact that the Communist Party of India supported the case for Pakistan between 1942 and 1947. It later admitted this to be a 'right-wing deviation'. It may interest readers to know that on the Partition issue, Jinnah and Ambedkar were on the same page'
It is my opinion that nation worship is right-wing atheism, but our nation-worshippers are not likely to agree with me. (A detailed argument on this may be read here). In which case the Home Minister's arguments fall to the ground. Muslims can be victimised by Islamist cadres and also by governmental policies - in the name of Islam; likewise, Hindus who oppose Hindutva can be, have been and continue to be persecuted by the Sangh parivar and its government - in the name of Hinduism. I will write more about this in due course, but it is important to remain mindful of the ideological deceit that is being perpetrated by the Modi government as it passes a vicious piece of legislation that violates the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution. DS
Delhi University
students hold protest, burn copies of citizenship bill
Delhi University
students burnt copies of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill on Thursday as part
of a protest against the proposed legislation which they dubbed as
"unconstitutional" and "communal". The protest at the
university's Art Faculty was called by various students' bodies, including the
Left-backed All India Students' Association (AISA) and Students' Federation of
India, and autonomous women students' collective Pinjra Tod, under the banner
of Collective-DU. Other organisations and students from Assam also took part in
the demonstration. The protesters described the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill
(CAB) as "illegal" and also took out a march in the university
campus. "The CAB has been brought by the RSS-BJP to further the Sangh
Parivar's agenda of a 'Hindu Rashtra'," Delhi University (DU) AISA
secretary Madhurima Kunda said. "(Union Home Minister) Amit Shah is no one
to tell us whether we are the citizens of this country. The country will not
accept citizenship on religious grounds. We also condemn the state's repression
of protests in Assam," she said. (PTI)
Scientists, Academics Demand Withdrawal of Citizenship Bill
Over 750 Indian scientists and academics have signed a letter opposing the Citizenship Amendment Bill due before the Parliament on Monday. Academics from across India’s leading institutes, including JNU, TISS, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and various IITs, have released a signed statement asking the government to immediately withdraw the bill. Under the proposed law, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis who fled from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and have been living in India without paper will be given citizenship. Muslims have been excluded from the bill, which PM Narendra Modi’s Cabinet approved last week.“The idea of India that emerged from the independence movement, and as enshrined in our constitution, is that of a country that aspires to treat people of all faiths equally. The use of religion as a criterion for citizenship in the proposed bill would mark a radical break with this history and would be inconsistent with the basic structure of the constitution. We fear, in particular, that the careful exclusion of Muslims from the ambit of the Bill will greatly strain the pluralistic fabric of the country,” the statement says. "We note that article 14 of the Indian constitution prohibits the State from denying ‘to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.’
While it is the job of legal experts to determine whether this draft bill violates the letter of the constitution, it seems certain to us that it violates its spirit,” it adds. This is the first time India is seeking to grant citizenship on the basis of religion. Citizenship for “Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs escaping persecution” was part of the BJP’s 2019 election manifesto.
Several states in the Northeast have seen protests against the bill. source: Huffpost
Tavleen Singh: Citizenship legally weaponised
Modi says Congress responsible for Partition: The Non-politics of the RSS
Bharat Bhushan: Citizenship Amendment Bill is a bid to fashion an ethnic democracy
Bharat Bhushan: Citizenship Amendment Bill is a bid to fashion an ethnic democracy
This week Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) president and Union Home Minister, Amit
Shah will effectively launch the campaign of his party for the 2024 general
election. He will do so by introducing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in
Parliament. The Opposition is unlikely to have an effective counter-strategy
and the six decade old Citizenship
Act will be amended to the ideological will of the ruling
dispensation. The Modi government is
fashioning something much more than an electoral strategy - a system that is
democratic but also majoritarian. It wants to dismantle multicultural democracy
in India - ironically, using democratic methods.
Israeli sociologist
Sammy Smooha first coined the term “ethnic democracy” to describe a system that
combines majoritarian electoral procedures, respect for the rule of law and
individual citizenship rights with the institutionalised dominance of a
majority ethnic group. The Modi government is
doing in India precisely what the Jewish state does. Is this a part of
the Hindutva agenda? It would certainly seem so. Several
markers of such a state are already there. It was always central to the
political imagination of the BJP and its mother organisation, the Rashtriya
Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS). Many of its goals have been met at a pace that the RSS
itself may not have envisaged.
From abrogating the
provisions of Article 370 and removing Article 35A from the Constitution and
firmly ‘integrating’ Jammu and Kashmir with India, criminalising “triple talaq”
amongst Muslims and indicating a movement towards a Uniform Civil Code, to
securing a favourable Supreme Court ruling for the construction of a grand Ram
Temple at the disputed site at Ayodhya, the BJP has done what it had promised.
The Modi government has even militarily ‘punished’ Pakistan for its
trans-border terrorist activities. With this the ‘weakness’ of Hindu society,
with which Hindutva ideologues had been historically obsessed,
has been symbolically demolished.
The BJP’s quest for
the next big polarising issue has led it to the Citizenship Amendment Bill and
the National Register of Citizens (NRC), one following the other. The NRC will
be completed by 2024 just in time for the next general election. Union Home
Minister Amit Shah who once described illegal immigrants as termites, has now come to the
conclusion, as a wag put it, that there are “good termites” and then there are
“bad termites” eating away at India’s resources. Their classification depends
on their religion.
The justifications
being offered for the CAB/NRC exercise
may appeal to the majority – that Hindus or those whose religions originated in
India (Indian ethnic religions) must have a homeland of their own just as
various other religions have theirs; that immigrants are a drain on limited
national resources or even that some immigrants (read, Muslims) are a national
security threat. For all these reasons, it is argued, the issue of illegal immigrants must be sorted out once and for
all.
The CAB seeks to offer
fast-track citizenship by naturalisation to non-Muslims escaping persecution
from India’s neighbouring countries (Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan).
They would be granted citizenship within one to six years. Earlier the time limit
was 11 years and one’s religion was irrelevant. The CAB/NRC move
raises constitutional, social and political questions. The Constitutional
question relates to the CAB being ultra vires of the Indian Constitution.
Constitutionally the Indian state cannot deny any person “equality before law”
and “equal protection of the laws within the territory of India”. Any
discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth
is prohibited by Article 14. This applies equally to all residents and is not
limited to citizens. Equality before law has been recognised as one of the
basic features of the Indian Constitution. The Modi government
must know that its tinkering with citizenship law will be legally challenged.
Its persistence therefore suggests that it is more interested in the social and
political fallout of legislation process.
The immediate
consequence of the CAB/NRC exercises will be to heighten social tensions. The
Muslim community in India will be pushed to the wall with the government
demanding documents which even the best of them may not be able to provide.
Cleavages would emerge in society along religious lines akin to those during
the partition of India. Anyone with a grudge against his Muslim neighbour can
designate him an “infiltrator” or an illegal immigrant with the burden of proof
being on the victim.
Politically, the
resulting social instability and polarisation would be beneficial to only one
party – the BJP. All those opposing CAB and NRC would be dubbed minority
appeasers or those who indulge in vote bank politics. A trailer of these
arguments is already being played out in the Jharkhand elections. Home Minister Shah
thus said in one of his rallies referring to the next general elections: “Rahul
baba says, ‘Don’t expel them, where will they go, what will they eat?’ I want
to ask him, are these immigrants his cousins? Let Rahul baba say whatever he
wants to, I can assure you the BJP government led by Narendra Modi will
implement NRC across India, and all infiltrators will be thrown out before we
come to you to seek votes the next time.” The signal to the
public is that the state and the nation belong to the majority.
Smooha, however, has
pointed to the basic contradiction of an ethnic democracy saying, “The founding
rule of this regime is an inherent contradiction between two principles – civil
and political rights for all and structural subordination of the minority to
the majority.” This is precisely what the Modi government is doing, reducing
democratic functioning to seeking Parliament’s approval for the CAB in order to
establish an explicit constitutional inequality, preference and, therefore,
dominance based on religion.
The minority Muslim
community would be faced with proving its loyalty to a state in which it is
neither numerically equal nor has safeguards. Political forces that never
fought for India’s freedom would have hijacked it after its emergence as a
society that rejected religious or ethnic nationalism and chose to be a
multicultural, democratic, secular republic.
Modi says Congress responsible for Partition: The Non-politics of the RSS
