Tailored Citizenship: How Modi's 'Secularism' Stabs at India's Governance Stability

After a series of laws and decisions that persecute Muslims, India announced the implementation of rules regarding a citizenship law issued in 2019, which Muslims protested against as it paves the way for stripping them of citizenship.

This announcement came just weeks before the elections, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to win for the third time, ensuring the continuity of his Hindu nationalist extremist government.

The Indian Election Commission set April 19, 2024, as the date for the general elections and June 4 for the announcement of the results.

The amended citizenship law grants Indian citizenship to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians living in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who migrated to India, but excludes Muslims.

Islamic organizations and groups affirmed that this law, along with a proposed citizenship registration system, could discriminate against India's 200 million Muslim population.

They expressed concerns that the government, under this law, could revoke citizenship from Muslims lacking documents in some border states as part of its plan to transform the country into a purely Hindu nation and change the country's demographic nature.

Citizenship Law

On December 9, 2023, India took a significant step toward the official marginalization of Muslims when Parliament approved an amendment to the Citizenship Amendment Act allowing the naturalization of non-Muslim residents or immigrants while excluding Muslims.

The amendment did not stop there but stipulated a "religious test" for Hindu immigrants seeking citizenship to promote the Hindu nationalist agenda pursued by the extremist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Under this measure, immigrants of all religions in South Asia (Buddhists, pagans, Christians, and others) could be granted Indian citizenship.

Indian Muslims and analysts saw this as the most significant move in the extremist Hindu agenda to alter India's historical secular nature, established by its founding leaders when the country gained independence in 1947.

Immediately after the voting results were declared, with 311 votes in favor and 80 against in the House of Representatives, the law was transferred to the Senate for approval to initiate its implementation. Indian Muslims protested against it, leading to violent crackdowns by the Indian police, resulting in the deaths of 100 protesters and injuring dozens.

Protests erupted nationwide in 2019 against this law, which Indian Muslims viewed as the ruling party's first step in rendering them second-class citizens and rendering many stateless.

What exacerbated tensions was that the legislation ran parallel to a controversial program initiated in the northeastern state of Assam, where all 33 million residents were required to prove, with documented evidence, their or their ancestors' Indian citizenship.

Under this dubious program, nearly two million people, mostly Muslims residing in India for generations, were excluded from state citizenship lists, stripped of their nationality, and subsequently faced expulsion from their homeland.

The current law, in effect for 64 years, prohibits any illegal immigrant from obtaining Indian citizenship.

However, the new amendment allows for this under the condition that migrants (non-Muslims) prove they arrived in India from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh before the end of 2014.

The Large Expulsion

Because this law was one of Modi's promises to his Hindu supporters after the 2019 elections and had been delayed, he sought to forcibly pass it as the Indian elections approached (April 2024) to secure votes from extremists in his country for a third term in office.

Following temporary suspension of government endorsement of the law after the 2019 Muslim protests, which resulted in deaths and injuries, official procedures to amend it began on March 12, 2024.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party pledged to implement the law before the expected elections in mid-April 2024, widely anticipated to secure Modi a third term as Prime Minister, effectively resulting in the expulsion of large numbers of Muslims from India under the pretext that they are not Indian.

Minister of Home Affairs of India, Amit Shah, stated on his social media account on March 11, 2024, that citizenship would be granted to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian minorities living in neighboring Islamic countries.

Amid fears of unrest, many opposition party-led state chief ministers, such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, pledged not to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act.

However, under the new rules, state governments will play a limited role in the application process, which will largely be under the control of the central government, according to the British newspaper The Guardian on March 12, 2024.

The extremist Hindu government sought to portray itself as standing against the "persecution" faced by non-Muslim minorities in Asia, announcing its acceptance of naturalizing "non-Muslims" from Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Thus, the law provides a fast track to citizenship for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians fleeing to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before December 31, 2014, but excludes Muslims, who constitute the majority in these three countries.

The Indian government claimed to have done so because these individuals who fled to India were religiously persecuted in their homeland. However, it sought, in contrast, to strip citizenship from its Muslim citizens residing in their homeland since birth.

Critics of the amendment from Indian political parties argue that the law is "selective" and violates the principle of secularism in the constitution, which prohibits discrimination based on religion. They accused the government of attempting to exploit voters' sentiments ahead of the upcoming general elections.

Article 25 of the Indian Constitution stipulates that "all persons have the right to equality in embracing, practicing, and propagating religion freely."

How Does It Harm Muslims?

The new legislation is likely to increase the influx of Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others from neighboring countries to India while facilitating the detention and deportation of Muslim residents, even those whose families have been in India for generations if they fail to provide proof of citizenship.

Minister of Home Affairs of India, Amit Shah, revealed that Muslims were the target of the law, alongside "protecting Hindus and others."

Illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh were described as "white ants" by Shah, who promised to impose a "citizenship test" similar to the one implemented by Assam state against them "on the entire Indian state."

There are concerns that Modi's government could use the Citizenship Amendment Act, along with the "religious test," to declare Indian Muslims, many of whom are concentrated in eastern states like West Bengal and Assam, as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh if they fail to prove their citizenship, according to CBS NEWS on March 12, 2024.

The issue of the Uniform Civil Code was also a plank in Modi's electoral platform in the 2019 general elections, as well as in his party's manifesto for the recent elections held in the southern state of Karnataka, and they are reaffirming it in the 2024 elections.

Several Indian Muslim associations and unions have issued statements confirming that the Hindu government is "plotting to divide the people of India again under the guise of the Uniform Civil Code."

These organizations and Islamic unions have emphasized that imposing the Uniform Civil Code is a malicious attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party government to incite Hindus against Muslims and promote divisive policies and conflicts.

Haris Zargar, a writer from the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, described the Uniform Civil Code in an article on the Middle East Eye website on July 12, 2023, as an alleged weapon to target Indian Muslims who are already suffering under the harsh Hindu policies of the ruling party.