India: An RSS group issues CAA eligibility certificates to Pak. Hindus in Rajasthan

 In Rajasthan, an RSS group issues CAA eligibility certificates to Pak. Hindus 

 

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/in-rajasthan-an-rss-group-issues-caa-eligibility-certificates-to-pak-hindus/article68016529.ece

India: Opposition MP Manish Tiwari's speech on Citizenship Amendment Act 2019

 https://twitter.com/ManishTewari/status/1767380418234355754

India: A Video Presentation on Why the Citizenship Amendment Act is unconstitutional

 https://twitter.com/BrutIndia/status/1767537275599265798

India: NRC not a solution; it is only an instrument to consolidate Assamese cultural essentialism | Suraj Gogoi (Dec 1, 2020, The Telegraph)

 The Telegraph

False pledge: NRC in Assam

It is not a solution; it is only an instrument to consolidate Assamese cultural essentialism

The elite among Assamese Muslims also supported the NRC process in this hope, as did a number of ‘miya’ poets.

Shutterstock

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Suraj Gogoi   |     |   Published 30.11.20, 12:05 AM

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Many liberals and self-proclaimed Marxists in Assam held the firm belief — they still do — that the National Register of Citizens will eradicate the gaze of suspicion on ‘illegal’ people. This belief is nothing but an instance of false consciousness, a story manufactured by the caste Assamese middle class and the Assamese nationalist to invoke a spirit of acceptability among people towards the NRC. A bureaucratic exercise cannot be a solution to social malice.

The elite among Assamese Muslims also supported the NRC process in this hope, as did a number of ‘miya’ poets. But by the time the NRC list was published last year, Assamese civil society bodies started expressing their dissatisfaction with the 1.9 million people who were left out of the register. The figure was too less for them. 

The NRC is far from over. The stories of hope that were sold are fading with every passing day. The anti-foreigner rhetoric has resurfaced, once again. It has been given a new lease of life and has indoctrinated a new group of youngsters into the fold of Assamese nationalism. This has resulted in a toxic mix of jingoism and hatred towards those perceived to be outsiders. 

Other lives

The recent debate that emanated from the public rejection of the idea of a char-chapori museum by Assam’s health minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, is a case in point. The proposal for a museum, which would reflect the culture and heritage of the people living in Assam’s char-chaporis, had come from the Departmentally Related Standing Committee on Education of the Assam government. The committee had proposed this idea along with another museum for the Gorkha community. The proposal was presented to the legislative house in March; 10 of the 15 committee members who gave those recommendations are from the ruling party in Assam.

Char-chaporis are heterogeneous, non-colonizing spaces that are not inhabited by Bengali Muslims only. The health minister’s resistance reflects not only the sensibilities of the Assamese but also the condition of minorities in Assam. It is evident that Assamese society suffers from ‘sociocentrism’, a condition in which the identity of a pluralist society is articulated through a dominant member of the group. For the caste Assamese, it is unimaginable that artefacts associated with the Bengali Muslim community can be a part of the Srimanta Sankardev Kalakshetra in Guwahati. Sarma’s remark also embodies a mindset that perceives the Bengali Muslim to be a polluting element degrading Assam’s culture. Hence the need for segregation and the rejection of the idea of a shared space. The rejection reveals the extent of alienation and dehumanization of minorities, especially miyas.

Sorry picture

The elements that are integral to the iconography of the miyas being circulated on the social media — a torn lungi, barbed wire, muri, ittar — portray what the French writer, Albert Memmi, calls ‘heterophobia’: the fear of difference, both real and imaginary. There is proof of such fear lingering in Assam. The health minister reportedly blamed the ‘invasion’ of Covid into Assam on Muslims. The chief minister is reported to have noted in a public rally in Bodoland that the ‘Mughal’ assault on Assam continues, and that if we don’t become conscious of it, Assam’s mother tongue will become Arabic. These comments come in the backdrop of the Assam government discontinuing the funding for madrasas in the name of modernizing education. This kind of vilification has coincided with the rise of right-wing politics in Assam. But this should not take away from the fact that antipathy towards minorities has been organic to Assam’s culture.

The NRC is not a solution. It is only an instrument to consolidate Assamese cultural essentialism.

India: Refugee persecution must be assessed on a case by case basis, not on that of religion - Editorial, The Times of India | 24 Jan 2020

Be humane: Refugee persecution must be assessed on a case by case basis, not on that of religion

January 24, 2020, 3:00 am IST TOI Edit in TOI Editorials | Edit Page, India | TOI

 

The constitutionality of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act must be fast decided by Supreme Court in the wake of the widespread protests that it has provoked. Centre has shown no intention of altering CAA provisions and it falls upon SC to restore the primacy of constitutional values. CAA as passed by Parliament has an inherent bias against Muslims. The apex court has given the government four more weeks to respond to the petitions against CAA. The government will use this time to come up with a case that the changes in citizenship law are not violative of the Constitution. Critics have so far not found the arguments in favour of CAA convincing. The chief justification for the controversial law is that it provides relief to minorities of six religions living as illegal migrants in India after fleeing religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – where Islam is the state religion. But this has contradictions.
For instance, Buddhism is Sri Lanka’s state religion and thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils are languishing as illegal migrants in India for several years. Their exclusion in this mass citizenship drive is inexplicable.
Perhaps the Centre means to make a distinction between nations that have a state religion and those gripped by religious fundamentalism (such as Pakistan). The notion that it is only the non-Islamic minorities who face persecution in Pakistan is flawed. Arguably, religious fundamentalists target the “apostate” who is considered a deviant from the state religion – like Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan – with even greater fervour than the non-believing “infidel”. Even Baloch nationalists whose cause India espouses, Bangladeshi atheists, or Myanmar’s Rohingyas fleeing various shades of persecution may be living as illegal migrants in our midst but don’t make the cut under CAA. In Bangladesh, secular bloggers have been killed while in Afghanistan Hazra Shias have been targeted by Taliban.
Under the Citizenship Act’s naturalisation process for legally entering aliens 2,830 people from Pakistan, 912 from Afghanistan and 172 from Bangladesh, many of them Muslims, were granted citizenship in the past six years. Extending this naturalisation facility to illegal migrants fleeing persecution, irrespective of country and religion, would be both humane and in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution. This will help mend the CAA-engineered gaping hole in India’s secular fabric, and repair the damage that India’s soft power has suffered because of a law which is deviation from founding fathers’ conception and sense of who we should be as a people.

 

This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India. 

 

source URL: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/be-humane-refugee-persecution-must-be-assessed-on-a-case-by-case-basis-not-on-that-of-religion/

India: Himanta Biswa Sarma says CAA rules won't consider religious persecution | Jan 18, 2020 TOI

Himanta Biswa Sarma says CAA rules won't consider religious persecution

Prabin Kalita | TNN | Updated: Jan 18, 2020

GUWAHATI: Denying that "religious persecution" was a criterion for offering Indian nationality to Hindu and other select communities under the amended citizenship law,

[ . . . ]

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/himanta-biswa-sarma-says-caa-rules-wont-consider-religious-persecution/articleshow/73345143.cms

CAA-NRC debate: If religion is allowed to colour civil rights, India’s democracy will be imperiled | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

via scroll.in

CAA-NRC debate: If religion is allowed to colour civil rights, India’s democracy will be imperiled
Even considering that Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh discriminate against their minorities, why should a mature democracy like India do the same?

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

After the Citizenship Amendment Act became a reality in the middle of December, protests broke out across India. By now, about 25 people have been killed around the country, most of them falling to police bullets. Even in the Jayaprakash Narayan movement against Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s and the subsequent Emergency, such massive nationwide protests and police killings did not take place.

Despite the government’s claims that the Opposition is behind the protests, they mostly are spontaneous. Again, contrary to the government’s suggestion, it is not just the Muslim community that is demonstrating. People of all religions – especially students – have participated in a big way.
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The panicked Bharatiya Janata Party-controlled Central government has let the police loose on protesting students and general public in states ruled by the party. But the police baton-charges, teargas shelling and firing have failed to cow down Indians: to the contrary, they have resurrected the spirit of Indian democracy.
State and society

In Hindutva political theory, there is no discourse about citizenship of human beings in relation to state and society. The concept of citizenship first formulated by Aristotle in Greece. He defines citizen “as a person who has the right to participate in deliberative or judicial offices of the state”. According to him aliens and slaves have no citizenship rights.

This idea was developed by later European thinkers, who broadly defined a citizen as a person who could vote and receive the benefits for continuing life and making the life better in the process of living in a given state. Immigrants were given the right to ask for citizenship based on their contribution to that society and state through their labour power, not based on religion or creed, caste or race.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharitya Janata Party want to rely on ancient Indian literary sources for their understanding of the concept of the citizen. But there is no proper definition of citizenship in moar ancient Indian texts: they all support caste-based karma theory but not a rational theory of citizenship. Even Kautilya’s Arthashastra, a treatise about statecraft, fails to define who a citizen is.
A protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Chennai. Credit; PTI

The only book that talks about the citizen, known as the nagarika, is Vastyayana’s Kama Sutra. But it offers a rather perverted definition of the role: the nagarika is a householder and enlightened person. What should he do? According to Kama Sutra, “having put his clothes and ornaments, [he] should during the afternoon converse with his friends. In the evening there should be a singing and after that the house holder, along with his friends should await in his room, previously decorated and perfumed, the arrival of a woman who may be attached to him.”
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The woman with whom the nagarika is supposed to engage with is a ganika – a courtesan. But there is no discussion about the state and its membership in this text at all.
A theocratic law

No democratic state should give citizenship to either migrants or to refugees based on their religious background. But the Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to citizenship for undocumented migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh – if they are not Muslim.

This is a theocratic law, to say the least. According to Hindutva theoreticians like Subramanyan Swamy, no Muslim is persecuted in these Islamic nations so they have no need to seek residence in India. If so, why mention religion in the Act at all and arouse the ire of India’s Muslims? The mention of religion in the Act provides serious grounds for Indian citizens belonging to that religion to be anxious that all of them could be rendered stateless. That suspicion has deepened now.

Even considering that Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh discriminate against their minorities, why should a mature democracy like India, which has well-acclaimed Constitution, do the same? Our founding fathers would not have wanted this.
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A danger to democracy

Assuming that the US decides tomorrow that illegal migrants of all religions will get citizenship, except if they are Hindu. Hindus who are already US citizens will realise that they are being told they are unwanted.Once such a law is enacted, how do they think that non-Hindus will treat them as good citizens? This is the main problem that the Indian Muslims will face with the country’s new citizenship law.

Even though India has functioned as a constitutional democracy for seven decades, our idea of human rights and citizenship remains underdeveloped. We need to evolve in our understanding of several matters, particularly how to negotiate between civil rights and religious faith. If the line between religion and civil rights is erased, our democratic system will collapse.

Though India’s ancient and medieval texts do not provide us a sophisticated theory of citizenship or on how democratic institutions should function, modern Indian thinkers like BR Ambedkar have provided some guidance on these matters. Still, to sustain democracy, we needs to read and re-read the western theories of human and civil rights.

The foundational principle of democracy is that though majority elects government, the minority that voted to the opposition should always feel secure in every institution of the nation. A government should never equate itself with nation, as the BJP-RSS are doing. That is self destructive.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author and the Former director, of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad.

India: Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) leaflets and booklets on the contentious CAA-NPR-NRC

Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) has produced some leaflets and booklets on the contentious CAA-NPR-NRC issues.

CAB/CAA/NRC Material Links:

1. We The People of India (English) (Brief leaflet)
https://cjp.org.in/we-the-people-of-india-2/

2. भारत के हम लोग (हिंदी) (Brief leaflet)
https://cjp.org.in/scrap-cab-hindi-pamphlet-cjp/

3. आमही भारतीय लोग (मराठी) (Brief leaflet)
https://cjp.org.in/scrap-cab-marathi-pamphlet-cjp/

4. Hum Hindustani Awam (Urdu) (Brief leaflet)
https://cjp.org.in/hum-hindustani-awam/

5. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the CAB/CAA 2019
https://cjp.org.in/frequently-asked-questions-faqs-about-the-cab-2019/

6. कौन हैं भारत के नागरिक? (28 Page Booklet)
https://cjp.org.in/who-is-an-indian-citizen-hindi-booklet/

7. Who is an Indian? A complete guide to the NRC in India (28 Page Booklet)
https://cjp.org.in/who-is-an-indian-a-complete-guide-to-the-nrc-in-india/

India: Two questions about the citizenship act

Hindustan Times, Dec 22, 2019

Two questions about the citizenship act

First, does it breach the spirit of our Constitution as expressed in the preamble’s commitment to secularism? The second question is does CAA conflict with Article 14 which promises “any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws”?
columns Updated: Dec 22, 2019 06:32 IST

Karan Thapar


An anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) protest, New Delhi, 19, 2019(Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

I wonder if the government really understands why the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has provoked so much anger? It’s because how a country defines its citizens also defines the sort of country it is. Citizenship is the right to have rights. Everything flows from it.

Now the constitutionality of CAA will turn on two key questions. First, does it breach the spirit of our Constitution as expressed in the preamble’s commitment to secularism? The answer depends on the Supreme Court’s understanding of that spirit. Different judges could come to different conclusions.

The second question is does CAA conflict with Article 14 which promises “any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws”? That depends on whether the beneficiaries of the Act have been identified on the basis of a reasonable classification. This can be easily checked. The Statement of Objects and Reasons (SOR) contains what the government believes is a reasonable classification. “The constitutions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh provide for a specific state religion. As a result, many persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities have faced persecution on grounds of religion in those countries.” There are two clear parts to this classification and both have to stand-up to a fact test.

First, are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh the only neighbouring countries with a specific state religion? The answer is no. Bhutan is also a neighbour with a state religion. The only way Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh could constitute a classification by themselves is if the SOR had named Islam as the state religion. But it does not. It simply talks of “a specific state religion”. That applies to Bhutan as much as the other three.

Second, are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians the only ‘communities’ facing persecution on religious grounds in these three countries? Remember the operative word is ‘communities’. The six are not described as religions and the word community covers many different collections of people.

Once again, the answer is no. In Pakistan, the Ahmadiyas, Bahais and Shias are regularly persecuted. In Afghanistan, the Shia Hazaras are too. Now, you could question whether they constitute separate religions but they certainly comprise communities. And they’re undoubtedly persecuted on religious grounds.

At this point a few additional facts could be illuminating. In Pakistan the Ahmadiyas were declared non-Muslim in 1974. This means, in Pakistani eyes, they constitute a religion of their own. Estimated at four million they are, therefore, the largest religious minority in the country. And because they’re deemed apostates, the discrimination they face is far worse than that inflicted on Hindus and Christians. According to the BBC’s Reality Check team “the majority of blasphemy cases up to 2018” have been filed against Ahmadiyas or other Muslims, not Christians and Hindus. Yet they’re not covered by the CAA.

Regarding Hindus in Pakistan, the BBC “challenges” the government’s claim that from 23% in 1947 their total has fallen to 3.7%. “Census data for 1998 shows that the Hindu population of Pakistan (which was formerly west Pakistan) has not really changed significantly from its 1951 level of around 1.5 to 2%.” It’s the Hindu population of Bangladesh that’s altered very significantly from 23% in 1951 to 8% in 2011, though by 2017 it increased to 10.7%. Yet, in both countries, Hindus have been chief justices, ministers and members of parliament. That’s not true of Ahmadiyas after 1974.

However, there’s one further problem with the classification in the SOR. It talks of “many persons belonging to” the six named communities. That clearly means not everyone. However, Clause 2 of the Act covers “any person belonging to” the six communities. So is it the case that everyone from these communities suffers religious persecution? Including their former chief justices and ministers?

I would suggest — though I’m not a lawyer — that the careless language of the classification in the Statement of Objects and Reasons and the mismatch between that and the Act could be grounds for declaring CAA unconstitutional.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story

India - Assam NRC: Deprivation of citizenship should be through rigorous procedure, says People's Tribunal

via barandbench.com

Assam NRC: Deprivation of citizenship should be through rigorous procedure, says People's Tribunal
Shruti Mahajan September 9 2019

Citizenship gives an individual the right to have other rights and a process like drafting of the Nation Register of Citizens (Assam NRC) must follow a strict procedure, a Jury of a People's Tribunal observed on Sunday.

Following an intense two-day hearing of depositions by experts and testimonies of those affected in Assam, a Jury comprising retired judges, legal experts, activists, writers, and professors chalked out the issues plaguing the NRC exercise and the grim situation that it has led to. In its interim report, the Jury opined,

"In the context of Assam – as well as in the context of the entire country – citizenship, as the right to have rights, is one of the most basic, fundamental human rights in modern societies. Deprivation of citizenship must follow the most rigorous procedure available and the overriding concerns must be fairness and efficiency."

The Jury comprised retired judges of the Supreme Court, Justice Madan Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph, Former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice AP Shah, Professor Faizan Mustafa, Human Rights Activist Syeda Hamid, Ambassador Deb Mukherjee, Writer Githa Hariharan, and Professor Monirul Hussain.

The Jury Report

The Jury found that the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Sarbananda Sonowal, as well as the exercise of overseeing and monitoring the process of NRC from 2013 till now, raise very pertinent constitutional questions.

While overseeing the process of NRC, the Supreme Court took on an administrative task and in situations like this, the system of remedies is virtually taken away, the Jury opined. Important questions as to the functioning and independence of the Foreigners Tribunals, which will decide on the appeals filed by those dropped from the NRC, have also been raised in the report.

The judiciary's role in the process has increased the hardships, rather than easing the process given that strict deadlines were set leading to elevated pressure on the authorities. The focus of the courts on deportation and detention rather than on release of detainees is also pointed out by the Jury in its report.

"Judicial orders have set difficult conditions for release from detention camps – conditions that cannot be met by marginalised and vulnerable people.

Despite the scale of the exercise, the judiciary’s insistence on setting deadlines has increased the pressure on both the process and the people involved."

Justice (retd.) AP Shah

In the context of Foreigners Tribunal and their functioning, Justice Madan Lokur said that these tribunals were "functioning in an arbitrary manner." There ought to have been uniformity and a standard procedure to be followed by these Tribunals, which has, however, been absent from the process. He further added that the trend of exercising the option of detaining a person as the first choice as opposed to the jurisprudence of liberty followed in India is very disturbing. He further stated,

"Not enough thought was given to the human cost implication of this process."

Justice (retd.) Madan Lokur

Justice (retd) Kurian Joseph touched upon the aspect of fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 21 being available to non-citizens also in the context of those persons who were left out of the NRC and had to prove their citizenship. Quoting the first line of the Indian pledge, Justice Joseph said,

"All Indians are my brother and sisters... but unfortunately lakhs of people in Assam are not in a position to feel this human dignity and this constitutional dignity."

Justice (retd.) Kurian Joseph

The NRC process in Assam, over the years, has caused a humanitarian crisis leading to suicides, anxiety, feeling of cultural and ethnic inferiority and this disenfranchisement process has placed the marginalized and minority groups in great jeopardy and placed a disproportionate burden on vulnerable groups such as women and children. This grim situation has been taken note of by the Jury after hearing devastating testimonies of the people from Assam who endured great suffering.

Issues

A host of issues emanating from the NRC and the question of citizenship were raised during the two-day hearing of the Tribunal. This included issues of land, culture, and migration to the evolution of citizenship in India.

Problems in the drafting of NRC and the functioning of Foreigners Tribunal and the constitutional processes, as well as legal remedies and role of Judiciary, also formed a large chunk of the discussion. Setting up of Detention Centres and the process of detaining persons arbitrarily was also discussed in detail.

The speakers included advocates Prashant Bhushan, Vrinda Grover, Mihir Desai, Gautam Bhatia, Aman Wadud, Mustafa Khaddam Hussain, Nizam Pasha along with activists Teesta Setalvad, Harsh Mader, Ravi Nair, Mohsin Alam Bhat, Mrinal Sharma, Sajjad Hassan, Zameer Ali, Abdul Kalam Azad. Professor Neera Chandhoke and Senior Journalist Sanjoy Hazarika also made depositions.

SEE FULL REPORT AT: https://barandbench.com/assam-nrc-peoples-tribunal-deprivation-of-citizenship-must-follow-rigorous-procedure-says-jury/

India: Sushanta Talukdar on the real aim of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill . . . .

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill incorporates the BJP’s articulated ideological position vis-à-vis undocumented immigrants in respect of three countries — Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The ideological position of the ruling party is that undocumented immigrants belonging to Hindu and other religious minority groups in these three countries cannot be treated as “illegal migrants” in India and need to be granted citizenship, while the Muslims among them are “infiltrators” must be identified and driven out.
The BJP introduced the Bill in Parliament in 2016 when the NRC was being updated in Assam. The objective of the Bill is very clear: to remove the “illegal migrant” tag on members of six religious groups — Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Parsis — from these three countries and reduce the requirement of residency in India to six years to make them eligible to apply for Indian citizenship.

source: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-smokescreen-of-an-infiltrator-free-india/article27004848.ece?homepage=true