Modi Pushes India Into Revolt

A New Law Upends What It Means to Be Indian

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta December 20, 2019

A protest against the new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, December 2019
Javed Dar / Xinhua / Eyevine / Redux

F or the past week, Indians have ooded the streets in cities and towns across the
country to protest a controversial new citizenship law. ey have marched in droves
despite the imposition of colonial-era prohibitory orders to prevent public assembly.
e agitation started in dozens of universities across India, provoking a violent crackdown
by the government and the detention of thousands. But demonstrations still spread to give
rise to one of the largest pan-India protest movements the country has seen in several
decades. ough it has resorted to shutting down Internet and mobile service in several
areas (including in New Delhi), the government has not been able to contain the sheer scale
of the protest.

Since its reelection in May, the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi has pursued a more strident and divisive series of policy measures, including stripping
Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status. Modi’s government has also become more
authoritarian, leading even India’s normally reticent business community to complain of a
contentious and toxic atmosphere brewing in the country. But the seemingly benign
Citizenship Amendment Act, passed by the Indian Parliament on December 11, was one
step too far.

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According to the new law, members of minority groups—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains,
Christians, and Parsis—from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who came to India
illegally will be granted a fast track to Indian citizenship. But through this simple provision,
the government has also rede ned Indian national identity in terms of religion and spawned
a crisis for India’s secular constitution. In conjunction with the proposed nationwide
extension of the National Register for Citizens—a survey of the citizenship status of all
individuals in India that until now has only been implemented in the state of Assam—the
citizenship law has created a pervasive sense of fear. In turn, the ensuing protests have
sparked the most potent challenge to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to
date.

REDEFINING INDIA
 e Citizenship Amendment Act is a challenge to India’s secularism. Yes, the groups named
in the act should have the ability to become naturalized citizens. And yes, any country can
choose to prioritize which refugees or illegal migrants it will naturalize based on a variety of
factors: risk assessment, the demands of international law, historical ties, and the practical
realities of migration. But for the rst time since India’s constitution was adopted in 1949,
Parliament has explicitly linked religious identity to citizenship.

e government insists that these minorities are at risk in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and
Pakistan and are also unlikely to nd refuge elsewhere. But this is an argument in bad faith
twice over. First, it overlooks Muslim groups that are persecuted in those countries, such as
Ahmadis in Pakistan. Second, only Muslim-majority countries have been named in the Act,
excluding other potential sources of refugees and illegal migrants, such as neighboring
Myanmar and Sri Lanka. e law excludes Rohingyas, for example, from future citizenship.
e government claims that, in principle, groups not covered by the act can always apply
under existing naturalization mechanisms. But that argument cuts both ways. Why
shouldn’t members of all persecuted groups have access to the same legal mechanism? In
light of these considerations, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. e purpose of
the new law is not just to protect the named groups; it is to exclude Muslims from equal
consideration. is makes the act potentially unconstitutional.

India is only a Hindu nation in the trivial sense that a majority

of its inhabitants are classed as Hindu.

e act also rede nes Indian national identity, moving the country emphatically in the
direction of becoming an ethnocracy. In 1947, the British partitioned colonial India into two
independent countries: Pakistan, conceived as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims,
and India, a secular and pluralist state. India is only a Hindu nation in the trivial sense that a
majority of its inhabitants are classed as Hindu. It has the second-largest population of
Muslims in the world and a signi cant presence of almost every other religion. It has never
de ned its identity in terms of religion or ethnicity.
But Hindu nationalists have long wanted to remake India as a homeland for Hindus,
embracing an idea of nationhood similar to the Israeli model. e citizenship act, by
excluding Muslims, takes a step in that direction. e un nished business of partition that
Hindu nationalists want to complete involves not just granting refuge to minorities from
neighboring Muslim-majority countries but signalling to Muslims inside India that they
don’t have an equal claim to belonging there.

A REGISTER OF CITIZENS

e government claims that the new act won’t impact the rights of any existing Muslim
citizens of India. In a formal, legal sense, that is true. But to grasp the full insidiousness of
the citizenship act, one has to consider it alongside another proposed measure: a National
Register of Citizens, a sweeping nationwide catalog of the legal status of all individuals in
India. Again, it is di cult to contest the idea that a country should be allowed to draft a
register of its citizens. But how will authorities determine who is a citizen in a country
where many poor Indians lack identifying documentation?

If the experience of the state of Assam—where the government has carried out a limited
form of this exercise—is any guide, the veri cation process itself will be Kafkaseque.
Millions of poor people with no birth certi cates or other documentary history (birth
certi cates only became widespread in India in the last 30 years) struggled to prove that
they are citizens. e process is bureaucratic and arbitrary, leaving many to languish in
camps. At the moment, 1.9 million individuals face the prospect of statelessness in Assam.

1.9 million individuals face the prospect of statelessness in

Assam.

But here is the real catch. Suppose two individuals, one Hindu and one Muslim, were asked
to prove their claims to citizenship. Suppose for a moment that o cials determine both are
in India illegally. After the enactment of the citizenship law, the Hindu will have a fast track
to naturalization. It is likely that the Muslim will not.

Combined with the citizenship law, a National Register of Citizens is bound to create
millions of stateless people as a result of administrative errors as well. Even if one assumes
the Indian state has a high capacity for bureaucratic performance and won’t arbitrarily
discriminate between di erent religious groups (both of these are contestable assumptions),
an error rate of just ve percent would render tens of millions of people potentially stateless,
as the scholar Shruti Rajagopalan has pointed out. But the risks that Muslims face will be
considerably higher, even if the state does not explicitly target them.

e government is speaking with two voices about the link between the citizenship law and
the register of citizens. But the link is obvious. e law enables the government to reassure
any Hindus who are found to be illegal that they will not be rendered stateless. It gives no
corresponding assurance to Muslims. In other words, it creates a legally sanctioned system
of discrimination, one that is an a ront to India’s secular democracy.

Demonstrators marching against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Kolkata, India, December 2019 
Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

SEASON OF DISCONTENT
 e citizenship law has provoked unprecedented resistance across the country. e resistance
comes in two rather di erent forms. e rst is regionally speci c opposition in the state of
Assam, which has seen rolling protests since the law passed earlier this month. Opposition
to the law there is rooted in the state’s local ethnonationalist politics. For decades, many
Assamese activists and politicians have argued that the migration of Bengalis from
Bangladesh (and from its pre-1971 incarnation of East Pakistan) threatens Assam’s identity.
In 1985, the government of India signed the Assam Accord, which pledged to put in place a
process to identify illegal migrants in the state. Authorities nally published their ndings
for Assam this year, and not surprisingly, the majority of those identi ed as illegally settled
in Assam were Bengali Hindus. e new citizenship law now potentially grants them
citizenship in violation of the Assam Accord. So protests have erupted across the state, with
demonstrators decrying the new law as a betrayal by the central government and a threat to
the demography of Assam.

Elsewhere in India, protests against the citizenship law have been more in consonance with
the country’s constitution and its principles of equality. India has seen the largest eruption of
student protests since the period of dictatorial “emergency rule” in the 1970s under Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. Protests have shaken literally every major university. And across the
country, demonstrators from across the broad range of Indian religious and social groups
have marched in favor of repealing the law. Many state governments, including some allied
with the BJP, have pledged not to implement the National Register of Citizens.

e government's response to the protests is reminiscent of

heavy-handed tactics in Kashmir.

ese protests have the potential to plunge India into a deep crisis. Already, the Indian state
is using its arsenal of prohibitory orders to contain these legitimate protests. e scale of this
suppression of dissent is extraordinary: Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, two large states ruled
by the BJP with a combined population of over 260 million people, have issued statewide
colonial-era prohibitions that prevent the assembly of more than ve persons. Several
districts in India have been subject to Internet shutdowns. ese measures are reminiscent
of India’s heavy-handed tactics in Kashmir.

e burgeoning movement against the citizenship act is a refreshing sign of possible

constitutional regeneration. But it may struggle against the headwinds of Modi’s assertive
Hindu nationalism. e BJP’s policy priorities in recent months re ect a hard ideological
turn: the shredding of Kashmir’s nominal autonomy and the ensuing crackdown in the
restive territory; the triumphant exultation over the Supreme Court decision to allow the
building of the powerfully symbolic Ram Temple in Ayodhya; and talk of anti-conversion
and population control legislation. Even in public discourse, the baiting and demonization
of minorities is more palpable. In a recent speech in the central state of Jharkhand, Modi
made a sly reference to the fact that those protesting the citizenship law could be
“recognized by their clothes,” a clear dog whistle for Muslims.

Modi’s robust combination of Hindu majoritarianism and authoritarianism will not be

defeated easily. But the passage of the citizenship act has woken India to the dangers that
threaten its core constitutional values. e road to recover and protect those values will be
long, arduous, and full of con ict. Many Indians are nally saying, “Enough is enough.”

More: Afghanistan Bangladesh India Pakistan Demography Race & Ethnicity Religion

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