Shah’s Sleight-of-Hand on the CAA has been exposed

Join us at our next HfHR Desh-Videsh Conversation, in which we partner with Karwan-e-Mohabbat. Click the photo above to join the live event.

After four years on the anvil, the Indian government is still unable to convince the world that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is a humanitarian “asylum” law and does not discriminate against Muslims. 

It’s been more than a year since HfHR held its inaugural hybrid webinar, “Speaking Across the Divide: Desh-Videsh Conversation Series,” which focused on the ramifications of India’s 2019 CAA Act, especially for minority communities. We had a chance then to hear directly from experts in Delhi and Assam, who laid bare some of the fallacious arguments being advanced by the Modi/Shah government in support of the Act. 

After four years in planning, the Modi government has finally published the Rules under the 2019 CAA Act, but it still does not make any attempt to address many of the troubling questions that had been raised earlier: for e.g. why are stateless Sri Lankan refugees in the south not covered by the CAA? Why aren’t refugees who came to India after 2014 not covered? Instead, the government continues to peddle the same false narratives about the purpose and impact of the CAA, both to domestic and international audiences.

In the meantime, it’s clear that the government hasn’t done anything to ease the fears and sufferings of the 1.9 million people in Assam, whose lives were shattered first by the NRC, and was then followed by the threat of being rendered permanently stateless by the CAA Act. On the contrary, people at the highest levels of the government have been indulging in open bigotry against Muslims from Bangladesh. On the other side, all the refugees from Bangladesh in the state of Assam, Muslims and Hindus, are being vilified by the state government.

Neither has the government explained their changing story on why the CAA was necessary, least of all how the CAA can help persecuted minorities currently in our neighboring countries, or those who have migrated in recent years (after 2014) and remain undocumented.

Why are presumably well settled undocumented Hindus who came to India before 2014 a priority of the government over people currently being persecuted? 

No official answer, but one can easily surmise: The CAA Act was enacted in the first place in reaction to the surprising outcome of the NRC in Assam, which showed more undocumented Hindus than Muslims. The Modi government had to quickly reassure the Hindus that they will not be rendered stateless, hence the hurriedly passed CAA, which introduced a religious litmus test for citizenship.

Since then, the official justification for the CAA has been religious persecution in neighboring countries, even though the CAA in its current form will not help them seek asylum. Nonetheless, the BJP continues this false narrative to justify the immediate implementation of the CAA in states like West Bengal, where BJP has been facing electoral difficulties.

By framing the CAA Rules so close to the elections and by saying that the accelerated path to citizenship is available only to non-Muslims, the government has effectively doubled down on the religious discrimination inherent to the CAA. However, for the international audience, they are advancing the preposterous theory that favoring some religious groups over others is really not religious discrimination! “The aim is to show a generous treatment to them as compensation for appeasing [sic] their persecution.” stated one report, since deleted, as if all non-Muslims came to India to escape religious persecution as opposed to economic reasons or family reunions!

They are further making the even more preposterous argument that since the CAA does not say anything about the future of Muslims, it will not change their status and hence the law is not illegal: “We are not taking away anyone’s citizenship” repeatedly proclaims Shah, attempting to provide a cover for the real impact of the CAA, viz. It takes away any possibility of citizenship to undocumented Muslims because of their faith and adds even more uncertainty to their futures.

In order to justify this differential treatment in the public mind, Shah’s narratives have sinisterly started to label Hindus as "refugees" while labeling Muslims as "infiltrators,'' even if they had both come to India around the same time for the same reasons (e.g. fleeing the Bangladesh war).

When the US government expressed concerns over the CAA, the response of the Indian government was to attack the US statements with unprecedented undiplomatic language, tripling down on the lies being told to the Indian people - that CAA does not discriminate on the basis of religion!

The Indian government continues to say that the CAA is an internal matter and the US should stop lecturing India. For one thing, the CAA potentially impacts the lives of family and friends of many in the diaspora, and hence it is NOT a purely internal matter for India. Just as the Indian government was quick to “lecture” the US on incidents of hate against Indians and the recent attacks on several temples in California, the US has every right to represent the concerns of its Indian-American citizens.

In his incisive article, “The Home ‘Positive Narrative’ on CAA is Full of Lies, Half-Truths and Really Bad Drafting,” published shortly after the publication of the CAA Rules, Siddharth Varadarajan of The Wire catalogs all the questions about the CAA/NPR/NRC raised since 2019 that remain unanswered by the government.

To seek answers to these questions and more, HfHR's Desh-Videsh Conversation is joining Karwan-e-Mohabbat on April 2nd in a two hour webinar with legal and on the ground experts, including Harsh Mander. If you are as concerned about the implications of the CAA as we are, please join the webinar to educate yourself about the latest status, and what concerned Indians worldwide can do to stop the illegal law.

As the Supreme Court appears poised to soon take up a clutch of petitions challenging the CAA, it’s time for us to expose the doublespeak of the Modi government and demand that it answer the many questions about the law, which has the potential to render millions of Muslims stateless.

If this discriminatory law is not stopped by the Supreme Court, we’re afraid that it will have fatal consequences on Indian democracy, notwithstanding the government’s latest attempts to make it sound like a benign humanitarian law -- “To wipe the tears” off our persecuted brothers and sisters, as one report said. What India needs to do first is to wipe the tears off all those who have facing an existential crisis after being left out of the NRC in Assam, which even the BJP admits was a flawed process.

We hope to see you at our next Desh-Videsh.

Note: This thinkpiece is by Hindus for Human Rights Co-Founder Raju Rajagopal.