The Idea of India Vs. CAA
Tags: Caa, India, Muslim, RNC, Modi Government

On December 22, Prime Minister Modi delivered a speech at Ram Lila Maidan in Delhi, trying to subjugate the audience through his oratory skills and making them understand how the pair of CAA and NRC are not dangerous to the country and its citizens. “Lie being spread that I brought law to snatch people’s rights, it will not stand” was one of the statements that he put through in his speech. There is a hypothesis that CAA is enacted to threaten Indian Muslims and is the founding stone for turning India into a Hindu Rashtra. This fear stems from the fact that an entire community is pretermitted from the Act when literally every other community was given equal importance. The Journalists at Republic TV, AajTak, Times Now are doing their best to calm down the situation and make people understand that this has nothing to do with Muslims. Partly, they are right. This has nothing to do with only Muslims but the duvet covers the entire nation. I will come back to this point later in this article.

Our Prime Minister’s statement about snatching people’s rights is a lie indeed. According to some eminent lawyers, this Act goes against Article 14, Article 15 and Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Below are the article details.

Article 14 of the Constitution of India reads as under:

“The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.”

Article 15 talks about the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth,

“The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.”

Article 21 provides that,

“No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”

The Prime Minister even went to the extent of asking people to respect the Parliament and Lawmakers who passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. People standing for their rights, protesting against the Government is being projected as impertinence to the Parliament. Dissent is often confused with disrespect. These are times when dissent is being stomped down, termed as Anti National by people who are ostentatiously displaying their jingoism.

Indian Citizens have been granted the right to peaceful protest by the Supreme Court. That is the essence of Indian Democracy unless we are no longer a Democracy. In the case of Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary, Union Of India & Ors., the Supreme Court had stated, “Citizens have a fundamental right to assembly and peaceful protest which cannot be taken away by an arbitrary executive or legislative action.”

It was in Maneka Gandhi vs. Union of India that Justice Bhagwati had said, “If democracy means the government of the people by the people, it is obvious that every citizen must be entitled to participate in the democratic process and in order to enable him to intelligently exercise his rights of making a choice, free & general discussion of public matters is absolutely essential.”

I go back to the point where Prime Minister termed the protests as disrespect to the lawmakers. Such sentences are only heard in countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, North Korea where Dictatorship rules the country, and any form of dissent is considered as a disrespect to the Supreme Ruler.

One line in the speech to which I somewhat agree with the Prime Minister is, “I request the youth of the country to read the Act in detail and not to fall prey to the rumors of detention-centers being spread by Urban Naxals and Congress.” Just to be clear I only agree with the first part, the second part about the detention center is a blatant lie. A simple Google search will prove it. I have also mentioned the link to various articles about detention centers at the end of this write-up.

India is witnessing such high-intensity protests probably for the first time since independence. The students, women are leading the protests, the creativity is out on the streets. Yet the Government does not seem to care.

In the BJP-ruled states, the protests even turned violent. Some shocking videos have emerged from cities like Bijnor, Kanpur, Meerut, Mangalore where Police are brutally beating up the protestors, destroying their properties all in the name of revenge as mentioned by the Chief Minister of UP, Yogi Adityanath.

The Government had even shut down internet service in various parts of the country. Some cities experienced information blackout for almost a week. According to https://internetshutdowns.in/, there have been over 350 internet shutdowns in a country which claims itself to be the world’s largest democracy.

The modern times are increasingly becoming dangerous for dissenters. The country is witnessing the callous torture of dissent and in such times when you see such voices coming together for a cause gives a buoyant view of the future.

The law of nature however is very liberal. For every positive, you have a negative. Everything is found in pairs. For every voice against CAA + NRC, you are likely to find a voice for CAA + NRC. Though I cannot for sure tell you which one is winning. One observation that I have made is how these protests have been turned as Hindu Vs. Muslims. However, this is exactly the opposite. Almost in all of the protests against CAA/NRC, you would find fairly equal participation from all the communities. So why is it being communalised? Well, one theory is (which is not hard to come across) is to polarise it as much as possible until it kills the entire purpose.

There are shortcomings on both sides of the rail. Not thoroughly reading it is one. The bill no doubt was a bigoted one in the first place. But it is always advised to read something before having an opinion. So I decided to give a good read of the act to prove the bigotry. One thing which you all have must have heard from our Home Minister, Prime Minister and other spokesperson is that the Act would be providing the citizenship to the religiously persecuted minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The minorities would include people from the following faiths: Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian. The logic behind this act is since Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are Islamic Countries and people from other faiths are facing persecution ergo they would be given citizenship if they have come to India. This is a very noble thought. It is no denying that Minorities in the countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh do face persecution and since India is sharing borders with them it is India’s duty to provide asylum and a safe place to them.

Few questions I had while I was reading this act.

Why are Rohingya Muslims excluded from this act? What about Shia Muslims and Ahmediya Muslims who are facing persecution in Pakistan? Why are religiously persecuted Tamil Hindus not included from Sri Lanka? Why did the Government only select 3 countries? What about persecuted people who came from Aksai Chin?

These questions are left unanswered by the Government. And no one seems to be asking them. There is another aspect to the bill that has surprisingly been left untouched by most of the people. The act has been viewed through the lens of religion. However, once you read the act fully, you get to realise that not only Indian Muslims would end up suffering, but the entire nation would be a victim of this diabolical act.

If NRC takes place, in fact it is not even a question of if but when, every Indian will have to prove his citizenship irrespective of his faith. The amount of trouble that people will go through will be insurmountable. The daily wage worker, the poor people even the salaried professionals will have to let go of their days work to stand in lines, holding documents, bribing Babus to get this done with. Remember Demonetisation! That is a physical pain which every Indian is going to experience, the only impetus would be, “if our Soldiers can stand in Siachen, we can at least stand in lines to prove our citizenship.” Though, ironically, in this case, even those Soldiers will have to prove their citizenship.

The Home Minister and Prime Minister in all of their speeches have mentioned the word ‘persecuted minorities,’ and all the ratiocination passed on were based on this card of religious persecution of minorities in Islamic Countries. Interestingly, no where in the Act, the word ‘persecuted’ is even mentioned. An excerpt from the act is mentioned below.

“Provided that any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014 and who has been exempted by the Central Government by or under clause © of sub-section (2) of section 3 of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 or from the application of the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 or any rule or order made thereunder, shall not be treated as illegal migrant for the purposes of this Act;”

Few experts think that had BJP introduced the word persecuted in the Act, it would have been a political suicide. The NRC that happened in Assam even left out Hindus along with Muslims. Assuming the word persecuted was mentioned in the bill, all Non Muslims will have to produce evidence of persecution. Since the word is carefully omitted, it can be safely assumed that they were indeed persecuted and hence found a safe place in India.

I do, however, have a different theory altogether. People have been looking at this Act through the lens of religion, and they are outraged on the omission of Muslims, that constitutes almost 15% of the population. I believe that this Act is minacious for everyone irrespective of their faith. I have already mentioned about the physical pain that each of us will have to undergo to prove ourselves as citizens, which is probably nothing compared to other petrifying pinions of the act.

I am trying to analyse the CAA + NRC through the works of George Orwell, particularly 1984. George Orwell showed a true form of a Totalitarian State who curbs dissent by putting its citizens in Jails and torturing them, changes books and history to befit its propaganda, who is always watching, always listening. CAA + NRC can be a beginning point of a true totalitarian state. The Government will have a right to snatch the citizenship and throw them into detention centres that they are building in every state. Considering that this act is only against Muslims is naivety. Almost 80% of the entire population follow Hinduism, that is roughly 105 Crore people. Muslims are merely 15%, roughly 17 Crore. Believing that only Muslims will be unable to provide documents is a wrong assumption. Even Non Muslims might not have those documents and given the fact that Hindus constitute a larger proportion, it is highly likely they might be large in numbers who might not have the desired documents. That’s where CAA comes into the picture. Muslims who fail to prove themselves as a citizen of India will be straight away sent to the detention centres, no question asked. Non Muslims will then have to provide evidence that they have indeed come from one of the three countries viz. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

The Government might set up a new department, Citizenship Department, and Citizenship Officer to verify the documents and provide citizenship to migrants who have indeed come from the three Islamic countries. It is going to be a tough task for Non-Muslim Indians who failed to provide the documents to the Citizenship Officer or Babu. They will now have to provide evidence that they have indeed come from any of the three countries. I have no idea how they are going to do that.

CAA+NRC not only targets one specific community, it targets everyone. The Government can use it to strip citizenship of anyone and on the top of the pyramid will be those who have constantly raised their voices against them.

An excerpt from 1984, George Orwell.

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

References: