Ramachandra Guha: Why the CAA is illogical, immoral and ill-timed
Why the Narendra Modi
government has invested so much political capital in the Citizenship
(Amendment) Act (CAA) beggars the imagination. The Act is plainly illogical,
not least because it leaves out of its purview the largest group of Stateless
refugees currently living on Indian soil - Tamils from Sri Lanka - many of whom
are in fact Hindus. The Act is also manifestly immoral, in that it singles out
one particular religion, Islam, for particularly spiteful treatment.
If the logic and morality of the CAA are suspect, the timing of the Act is mystifying. Had not the abolition of Article 370, the conversion of India’s only Muslim-majority state into a mere Union Territory, already done a great deal to satisfy the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hardline Hindutva base? Had not the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Ayodhya dispute, mandating the building of a grand new Ram temple, satisfied them further? Is the greed of the base really so insatiable that this third bone had to be thrown their way so soon after the other two?
see also
Us versus us
If the logic and morality of the CAA are suspect, the timing of the Act is mystifying. Had not the abolition of Article 370, the conversion of India’s only Muslim-majority state into a mere Union Territory, already done a great deal to satisfy the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hardline Hindutva base? Had not the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Ayodhya dispute, mandating the building of a grand new Ram temple, satisfied them further? Is the greed of the base really so insatiable that this third bone had to be thrown their way so soon after the other two?
The downgrading of
Jammu and Kashmir and the building of a temple in Ayodhya were issues of
enormous symbolic importance to the BJP. One could understand why a second
successive majority in the Lok Sabha emboldened the Modi government to act
quickly in these matters. But the CAA was of relatively trifling importance. It
was estimated that just a few thousand refugees would get Indian citizenship as
a result of its passing. Why then was it given such a high priority?
Particularly at a time when the economy was in such a mess, and its revival
needed urgent attention?
There are perhaps two
reasons behind the Modi government’s unseemly haste in passing the CAA through
Parliament. The first is bigotry, the ideological compulsion to rub it in even
further to the Muslim citizens of the Republic that they live here on the grace
or mercy of the Hindu majority. The second is hubris; the sense (or delusion)
that since the Muslims of India did not offer any dissent at the abrogation of
Article 370 or at the court verdict concerning Ayodhya, this time, too, they
would meekly accept this wanton humiliation heaped on them by their own
government... read more:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/why-the-caa-is-illogical-immoral-and-ill-timed-opinion/story-AwBFkNxmdQD4vPViar6iJJ.htmlsee also
Us versus us
