Citizenship Bill: If it's about sheltering the persecuted, why not include Rohingyas?
"Mazhab nahin sikhata aapas mein bair rakhna (Religion doesn’t preach ill-will against each other)."
— Allama Iqbal
On its maiden visit to the Northeast in the first week of May, the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) examining the proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 witnessed extreme reactions to the Bill in Assam, as it was vehemently opposed in the Brahmaputra valley while the Bengali-dominated Barak valley voiced its approval.
In Meghalaya, stiff opposition to the bill by both the civil society and political class was seen by the JPC. The proposed Bill seeks to grant citizenship to religious minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The JPC is expected to submit its report in the last week of the monsoon session of Parliament.
The Bill proposes to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to allow Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan to apply for Indian citizenship.
The Act, as it stands presently, allows an immigrant to apply for citizenship if the person has lived in India for 12 months immediately before the application, and for 11 of the last 14 years. The government has introduced the amendment bill with the objective to shorten the 11-year cut-off to six years out of 14, for immigrants of the six religions from the three countries.
Earlier in 2015 and 2016, the central government issued two notifications exempting Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014 from deportation or imprisonment for entering India without valid documents.
The protests in the Northeast arise out of concerns of indigenous people who fear loss of their distinct identity and culture. They also harbour an apprehension that if the proposed Bill is passed, as it stands today, then the region would see an influx of Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, which would affect the voter demographics in the region.
The proposed Bill does not cover illegal migrants who are Muslim, or who belong to other minority communities such as Jews and Bahais from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. This Bill, in its present form, appears to be in contravention to Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality to all citizens and residents. Article 14 only allows law to treat groups of people differently if there is a reasonable rationale for doing so as held in case of State of West Bengal versus Anwar Ali Sarkar (in 1952) by the Supreme Court.
The Bill in its present form does not provide any clear rationale for making illegal migrants belonging to only some specific minority communities eligible for citizenship, and is therefore, in violation of Article 14. The central government reasoning that the religious community mentioned in the Bill correspond to minorities in neighbouring countries who have faced religious persecution in their countries does not appear to be reasonable. If that was the case, then persons belonging to Ahmadiyya, Shia and Sufi minority groups — who have also been facing prosecution for their religious beliefs in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan along with Rohingyas refugees — should have been included in the ambit of the Bill.
The Bill also doesn’t define or lay down any guidelines, parameters to establish religious persecution and distinguish between persons who faced genuine religious persecution and economic refugees belonging to the minority communities.
The Bill is in contrast to the secular nature of state as enshrined in the preamble to the Constitution.
Some reliance and direction can be taken from the Asylum Bill, 2015, a private member Bill moved by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, in which he proposed laying down principles of refugee protection, codify the process of citizenship for refugees and suggested establishment of a commission as a specialised agency to administer refugee affairs.
With India’s growing stature in the region and the world, it's high time the government formulates a refugee citizenship policy, which operates and grants citizenship on case-to-case basis after taking into account all facts and circumstances.
The proposed citizenship amendments are therefore both unreasonable and disregard the fact that India is a secular state, which doesn’t discriminate between religious denominations.