BY ADITI PARASHAR ’22
Demonstrators in India are currently holding ongoing protests against the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which offers amnesty to non-Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The protests began in December 2019 and, as of Feb. 16, 157 demonstrations were happening all over India, many lasting all day. Shaheen Bagh, one of the many daily protests happening in New Dehli, has been ongoing for more than 60 days.
The CAA states that any undocumented immigrants who are Hindu, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, Sikh Christians from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan and who entered India on or before Dec. 31, 2014, are now eligible for citizenship and can become naturalized in just five years. The Indian government argues that the CCA will protect religious minorities fleeing persecution, but does not include the religious minorities of its many other neighboring states which are also fleeing persecution. It ignores the fact that, although Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority countries, they have socio-political contexts within which certain sects of Muslims are still persecuted.
On Nov. 20, the Home Minister of India proposed in Parliament that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be implemented all over India. The NRC is an official record of all legal Indian citizens, and includes personal demographic information. It requires citizens to produce documents proving ancestry in order to be legally considered Indians.
The result of these actions has been protests across India, with many demonstrators facing police brutality, internet shutdowns, detention and even death.
“The bill itself and the way in which the government has reacted to protests against the bill shows their complete disregard for democratic principles and how far they’re willing to go to push their Hindu nationalist agenda,” Amrita Reddy ’21, an international student from India, said.
While the Indian mainland protests are mainly due to what demonstrators cite as Islamophobic connotations of the bill, residents in the North-East region of India are protesting due to the threat this bill presents to their indigenous identity.
Although certain parts of Northeast India are exempt from the CAA, the states of Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura share a border with Bangladesh, which has led to a large influx of migrants. These demographic shifts could work against the indigenous populations’ need of preserving their languages, culture and way of life. These concerns have been long-standing and inspired the government to sign the Assam Accord in 1985, which stated that any illegal migrants who traveled from Bangladesh after March. 25, 1971, would be deported. By allowing naturalization of migrants up to Dec. 31, 2014, the CAA violates this understanding with the people of the Northeast.