Is India abandoning secularism?
SINCE THE LAW WAS PASS ED... THE RESPONSE HAS BEEN FEROCIOUS. — DE SOUZA
Riots over religious matters have a dark history in India and the spectre of their return worries many across the nation. The proximate cause for the violence in the past few days has been the Citizenship Amendment Act ( CAA) passed into law this month. But there are fears that the large majority won by the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) last spring may mean that this citizenship law is just the first step in a campaign to increasingly establish in law that India is a Hindu nation.
The citizenship bill has been around since 2014 in response to an influx of refugees. The large majority won by the BJP’S Narendra Modi in May meant that the government had no trouble getting its bill passed this month.
The CAA accelerates citizenship for refugees fleeing religious persecution. But an ostensible offer of refuge to the religiously persecuted has set off a fierce religious conflict in India, for the CAA makes a distinction based on religion. That’s combustible in India, where the post- independence constitution was strictly secular, meaning that the state is neutral between the many and varied religions found on the subcontinent.
That constitutional settlement came after the partition that accompanied independence, with the creation of Pakistan (west and east) as Muslim homelands. The implication then might have been that India was to be a Hindu state, but that implication was firmly rejected by the secularity of the constitution.
The new CAA violates that neutrality between religions. For that reason it may falter on a constitutional challenge, though the courts are proving more BJP friendly.
The heart of the CAA is that is offers eligibility for citizenship to illegal migrants from three Muslim-majority countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But it limits that eligibility to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. It excludes Muslims.
The law’s premise is that religious minorities are particularly unsafe in India’s three Muslim neighbours. But in limiting citizenship eligibility to those three countries of origin, the new law leaves some persecuted Muslim populations out, such as Uyghurs from China and Rohingyas from Myanmar.
More provocative, the exclusion of Muslims from eligibility is widely interpreted as holding that Muslims ought to remain in Muslim countries, where presumably they ought to be safe. They are not welcome in India.
The implication, not very subtle, is that India is not a homeland for Muslims, despite their comprising about 14 per cent of India’s population, some 180 million people. India is thus the third-largest Muslim country in the world by population.
Since the law was passed last week, the response has been ferocious, with both the Muslim community and civil rights activists taking to the streets. Protests have been massive on campus, and two Muslim campuses were subject to force by the police, now under investigation. Riots in the northeast claimed five lives as police responded to attacks on buses and railway stations.
At the heart of the conflict is the nature of Indian identity. Is religion a factor in who can become Indian? Now it will be, even if the CAA will affect only a small number of people. And if religion can be considered in becoming a citizen, can it then be used to create second-class citizens?
The prime minister said explicitly that the CAA will not effect a change for any Indian citizen’s status. That Modi even had to say it indicates the suspicions that the CAA has raised about his government’s motives.
In the complex communal politics of India, Christian leaders oppose the CAA even though Christians are included within its provisions. They are worried that considering religion in relation to citizenship will eventually work to the disadvantage of Christians, a tiny minority in India.
They also fear that if tensions between Muslims and Hindus flare up into communal conflict, even violent conflict, Christians and other minorities might become collateral damage. When riots rage, the mob is not always discriminating about targets.
The worrying drama in India is part of a wider trend of religious minorities suffering in the large powers. In Russia, Putin has justified his aggression in both domestic and foreign policy in the name of defending the Russian Orthodox Church. In China, the communist party has launched a fierce persecution of religious groups, interning perhaps two million Muslims in camps and insisting upon a literal cult of the leader; portraits of President Xi have been installed in place of holy images in churches.
Should Modi’s BJP be put in that company? Indians Muslims in India have feared just that. The citizenship law only exacerbates those fears.