The Union government has proposed certain changes to the Indian Union’s citizenship laws in the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. The present legal framework, as it stands, does not have any clause for citizenship that is based on the religion of a person. The proposed amendment plans to change that. At present, an illegal migrant who enters the territory of the Indian Union is prohibited from becoming an Indian Union citizen. The amendment proposes that illegal migrants belonging to six specific religious minority communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan will be not be prohibited from Indian Union citizenship - even if they migrated to the territory illegally. The move to mark out illegal migrants of specific religious minorities - originating from neighbouring sovereign territories - for special treatment started a little while back. In a series of orders from September 2015 and July 2016, the Indian Union government exempted from deportation the illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian religions. These previous moves laid the framework for the present proposed amendment.
Illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who enter the Indian Union’s territory belong to all religions. However, the reasons for illegal migration are not similar across all religions. Having said that, it must be emphasised also that the reasons for illegal migration are not similar for all adherents of any one particular religion. The elephant in the room, in that set of six religions, is the religion of Islam. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority sovereign territories. But that’s not all. These are also territories where in the last many decades the population proportion of non-Muslims has continually fallen, This is in contrast to the Hindu-majority Indian Union where the population proportion of Christians and Muslims has sharply risen over the last few decades. By these basic observations, it can be surmised that the minority situation in the Indian Union is far from ideal but it differs from its neighbours. Population proportion surely cannot be the only measure of welfare of a community, but insofar as growing and thriving in terms of numbers is concerned, the Indian Union has – in broad terms – a better situation compared to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Given the reality of the communal partition of British colonial territories of the Subcontinent in 1947, the post-colonial fragments maintain in their body politic that Partition ideology of ‘communal homelands’. This imagination shows up in practice in various ways, overt and covert, in a continuum of toxic destructiveness. However, the exact position in that continuum matters and that shows up as the differences that I just discussed. It is probably not accidental that the Subcontinent’s only post-colonial fragment that has seen a decrease in the population proportion of those belonging to the majority religious community is also the only one where the constitution does not mention any specific state religion. And that, of course, happens to be India.
A Diwali celebration from Afghanistan
The move to mark out illegal migrants of specific religious minorities for special treatment started a little while back
Having said this, a proposal for such communally exclusive legislation is quite unprecedented in the recent political history of the Indian Union. And multiple powerful political parties - all with Hindus constituting a majority of their voter base - have expressed their opposition to this proposed amendment precisely on that count: the way it names those who it includes and by implication, those who it excludes. The Trinamool Congress which rules West Bengal, a state that is probably host to the largest number of illegal immigrants, has opposed the proposal. Veteran Trinamool MP Saugata Roy said, “We have decided that we will oppose the amendment on the floor of the Parliament. This amendment is an attack on the secular fabric of our country. How can there be discrimination on the basis of religion? If you are Hindu, you will be eligible and if you are Muslim, you will be kept out? Our constitution does not allow this. The West Bengal government will also oppose it”. Saugata Roy is correct. The proposed amendment does indeed include and exclude on the basis of religion. It is not as if this is unprecedented. Various other legislations or proposed legislations have done just that in all but name – including the almost irrelevant Enemy Property Act (which discriminated against Muslims, without mentioning that explicitly) or the proposed and shelved Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill (which discriminated against Hindus, being the most common majority community in most territories of the Indian Union). In practical political terms, the Trinamool probably has calculated that it cannot appear to support a legislation that clearly excludes members of a religious community who form nearly 30% of the population in West Bengal and is represented even more disproportionately in its support base. Such a stance is a game of extreme brinksmanship given that West Bengal is also host to the largest number of Hindu refugees who keep on coming from the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in incessant trickles and spurts to this day - a phenomenon that will continue into the forseeable future. The recent large-scale anti-Hindu attacks by Muslim radicals in Brahmanbaria in collusion with a section of the local branch of the ruling party inspires little hope that migration into West Bengal triggered by persecution of religious minorities in Bangladesh will stop anytime soon. The reverse, that is migration to East Bengal from West Bengal due to religious persecution, has not happened in any significant numbers since the mid-sixties. Thus, in a post-Partition state which is tacitly conceived as a permanent Hindu Bengali majority homeland since 1947, the non-acknowledgment of the special status of non-Muslim - primarily Hindu - Bengalis vis-à-vis West Bengal and worse still, the narrative of parity that Trinamool seems to advocate, might be used to consolidate already existing communal divisions in West Bengal. In any case, these tensions have, in general, gotten much worse after the rise of the BJP in the state, especially in pockets with significant non-Bengali populations. The recent communal disturbances in Chandannagar are a case in point.
New proposals, if implemented, would give official backing to the separation of refugees arriving in India along religious communal lines
In this high-stakes game amongst the powerful, the unresolved issues of the powerless fester on. Fleeing persecution, insecurity and death, the post-1971 lower caste refugees from East Bengal remain ‘illegal’. For all practical purposes, the Indian Union denies citizenship to those who crossed over from East Bengal after the 25th of March 1971 - the day when a brutal crackdown by Pakistani forces started in Dhaka. The 2003 Citizenship (Amendment) Act took away the possibility of birthright citizenship from the children of many of those who fled persecution in East Bengal. This has created millions of state-less young people who are children of refugees (‘infiltrators’ in government-speak) who have lived all their life in the Indian Union. Due to the amendment, many Dalit migrants have been identified as ‘infiltrators’ and deportation proceedings were started. The Matuas, one of the largest low caste groups of primarily East Bengali origin currently settled in West Bengal, have long been protesting this 2003 amendment passed by a BJP-led government.
Ultimately, the persecuted Hindus of East Bengal (refugees and resident) are mere pawns. When Delhi-based Subramaniam Swamy outrageously claims a third of the territory of the Bangladesh to settle illegal Bangladeshis, he does not care about the ramifications of such statements on the situation of Hindu Bengalis presently living in Dhaka and Chittagong - where they are often branded Indian fifth-columnists by dint of faith. The 1992 actions of ‘Ram’s lovers’ took its toll on many Hindus in Dhaka and elsewhere. The Hindustani Hindutva brigade couldn’t care less about this type of ‘collateral damage’.
As neighbouring Muslim-majority states are hit by fundamentalist violence, members of minority communities have trickled into India
Such communally exclusive legislation is quite unprecedented in the recent political history of the Indian Union
East Bengali Hindu migrants are unfortunate. The prime beneficiaries of Partition crafted the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950. Many did not move due to the false sense of assurance (including the assurance of the door being permanently open) that came with this largely ceremonial gesture. By this, the Indian Union effectively washed its hands of the ‘minority problem’ in Pakistan. ‘Shutting the door’ has been the Indian Union policy post-1971 (similar to what Pakistan did to stranded Pakistanis in Dhaka), and this is something it cannot implement – one of the natural consequences of claiming full monitoring abilities over an absurd frontier. For decades, the Indian Union has systematically discriminated against Eastern-frontier refugees (mostly Bengalis) on questions of compensation, entitlement, relief, citizenship, etc, as compared to those arriving on the Western frontier (Punjabi and Sindhi). The Indian Union owes reparation to these people, for its creation and its geographical contours are intimately tied to their migration and impoverishment.
In Assam, the other state that will be most affected by this decision, the fault-lines are different. All strands of Assamese nationalism, from the independence seeking United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent) to the BJP-collaborator Asom Gana Parishad, oppose the proposed amendment. Powerful Assamese nationalist student bodies like AASU and AJYCP also oppose it. However, here the fault-line is more along ethnic lines. As per the terms of the Assam accord of 1985, all illegal migrants who have entered Assam after the 25th of March 1971 are to be identified and deported. Even with its Muslim exclusion, this proposed amendment will pave the path to citizenship for many Hindu Bengalis who are illegal migrants in Assam. The BJP hopes that its anti-Muslim plank (couched not so subtly under the anti-Bangladeshi slogans) will help “unite” non-Muslims across ethnic lines. That is precisely the uniting factor in its much-touted North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA). Himanta Biswa Sarma - former AASU activist, with the Congress until recently and now top BJP man in Assam - has clearly learned the communally divisive political line of his new party when he says, “The whole thing is that we have to decide who our enemy is. Who is our enemy, the 1-1.5 lakh people or the 55 lakh people?” Those numbers ostensibly correspond to the numbers of Hindu Bengali and Muslim Bengali illegal migrants in Assam respectively. This tactical accommodation of Hindu Bengalis into the fold shows the existensial crisis of Assamese nationalism, whose homeland imaginary has always been so over-stretched that it now cannot stand up effectively to the BJP, which has taken on the mantle of Assamese demographic anxiety with an obligatory Hindu-unity twist to suit its Delhi headquarters. The proposed amendment, thus, is a direct contravention of the Assam accord – arguably the biggest achievement of the Assamese nationalist current. While it is true that Delhi-centric political forces never wanted the Assam accord to be implemented, no one has declared the accord to be null and void. As of now, the proposed amendment contains no Assam exception clause, which it ideally should - if the Government of India thinks that it should not renege on the pledge given to the people of Assam in the turbulent days of the Assam movement. The problem with “accords” is that they are done in good faith between entities who expect each other to keep their word. If there is no Assam exception in the final bill, it will mean that the Assam accord was a fraud executed by the Government of India on the people of Assam.
Sikh and Hindu refugees from Afghanistan: arriving in India
With regards to the illegal migrant issue, one has to distinguish between victims of human rights violations (including but not only religious persecution), i.e. refugees, and those who migrate due other reasons. Such cases can be assessed on a case-by-case basis. A blanket inclusion for non-Muslims and a blanket exclusion of Muslims is clearly discriminatory. The citizenship debate is primarily a debate of demographic dominance and anxiety. The Indian Union is primarily made up of Hindu-majority homelands or partial homelands of ethno-linguistic nationalities. Thus, the fear of being swamped in a demographic and economic sense in their own homeland is behind many of these debates. Given the hugely different fertility rates between Hindi and non-Hindi states in the Indian Union, another demographic invasion that is presently not illegal also threatens the socio-cultural-political fabric of many parts of the Indian Union. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has boldy opened this debate. The reality is this: it is not within the ability of the Indian Union administration to deport all existing illegal migrants who are simply economic migrants. Nor will it be possible to stop such illegal migration in the near future. A possible solution in such a scenario can be in the form of amnesty for all Bangladesh-, Pakistan- and Afghanistan-origin illegal migrants with the possibility of dual or tiered citizenship and expanded work permit schemes. At the same time, other demographic anxieties that exist between different parts of the Indian Union can also be addressed within such citizenship frameworks that keep Indian Union citizenship as a common framework and also give state governments expanded control of residency rights, property ownership, entry and settlement rules, so that diversity is robustly preserved in the united framework. A model for this already exists in various states of the Indian Union in the form of residency-based property ownership laws and entry control mechanisms through permits. Such initiatives need to be expanded as part of a thorough reform of the citizenship question.
Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is a member of faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com
