In Defence of the CAA

Many have questioned the CAA over its alleged variance from the import of Article 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution of India. Legal experts, particularly Harish Salve, defended the CAA as “a narrow-tailored law specifically meant for religiously persecuted minorities in the 3 specified countries” giving them a special status in the naturalisation process and it does not mean in any way that other communities or people will not be naturalised at all, for other communities the rules of general asylum process will be followed; and hence there was no violation of Article 14. As far as Article 15 is concerned, it is obviously applicable only for Indian citizens and not people from other countries, because one becomes an Indian citizen after naturalisation, not before. Regarding the objections on the basis of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, it may be noted that Article 21 is concerned with the right to life provided for those who live in India, not those who want to enter India!

The power of populist rabble-rousers against the CAA was felt most strongly recently in India in places like a couple of Universities, some conventions and processions of militant Muslim outfits, the congregation of Muslim women in Shaheen Bagh, standing/sitting together against the system, aggressively and maniacally dancing around, and generally feeling like they belong to some great movement or momentous part of history! Even the Delhi election results are described as a result of anti-CAA “sentiments”! The ‘sentiments’ arose from the absurd belief that BJP wants to expel Muslims from India. It could not have become so widespread without tapping into the confirmation bias of those who already believe RSS&BJP are against Muslims. What are the facts around the CAA? Is there a bit of religious bias in it, at all?

A note on the “religious” side of the CAA will be necessary in the context of the “secular” environs in which a minuscule intelligentsia constantly attempts to portray that their views spread through the media is a referendum; over-riding even the verbatim words of the law passed by Indian Parliament! Let me therefore draw your attention to CAA’s corollary in the United States which has a similar provision in the form of the Lautenberg Amendment which enables citizenship to identified persecuted religious minorities in the erstwhile former Soviet Union. Iran was also added later through the Specter Amendment. Lautenberg Amendment that gave refugee status and eventually citizenship to a set of minorities from countries in 1990 which provided refugee status in the United States for nationals from the Soviet Union and later the former Soviet Union, namely Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania who are Jews, Evangelical Christians, Ukrainian Catholics or Ukrainian Orthodox. Indian diplomats have found this Act useful to strengthen India’s argument in the US. The 2004 Specter Amendment extended the scope of Lautenberg Amendment to include ‘persecuted religious minorities’ like Jews, Christians, and Bahai fleeing Iran enabling them to “jump the queue” to gain citizenship in the US. The Indian CAA for even stronger historical and moral reasons granting fast track Indian citizenship to fthe Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis religiously persecuted in the neighbourhood theocracies who have lived in Indian refugee camps without documentation for six years (instead of the standard eligibility requirement of 12 years for naturalisation)  is a crime against humanity?

The Statement of Objects and Reasons in the CAB had mentioned an important reason for the bill which later both the Houses of Parliament passed to make it an act, the CAA. It was the Partition-related transmigration and the “hostage theory” involved in the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Agreement, a bilateral treaty between India and Pakistan, where refugees were allowed to return to dispose of their property, abducted women and looted property were to be returned, forced conversions were unrecognized, and minority rights were confirmed. It is known to all that while India kept its side of the agreement whereas Pakistan gave it no importance! What happened to Hindus and Sikhs trapped in Pakistan because of Jinnah’s promise to have a “secular country with majority population being Muslims”?

According to a Hudson Institute paper at the time of partition in 1947, almost 23 percent of Pakistan’s population was comprised of non-Muslim citizens, mostly Hindus. The conservative estimate is 15% were Hindus. Today, the proportion of non-Muslims has declined to 1.6 percent. According to Census report in 1998, Christians constituted 1.59 percent and Hindus 1.60 percent of Pakistan’s population. Much of the “cleansing of the population” took place in three major events: partition, around the 1965 and 1971 wars. However, from 15% to 1.6% in 50 years is a 90% decline! Some analysts say the Hindu population had reached 16 per cent by 1947 – the Hindu population came down to just 1.3 per cent in 1951. The decimation took five years not 50.

(Going back in time, in undivided Punjab, 1881, there were 9252295 Hindus, or 43.8 per cent of the population. By 1911, the Hindu population had come down to 8773621, or 36.3 per cent. During the same period, the Muslim population had risen from 11662434 to 12275477 and the Christian population from 33699 to 199751.)

If we apportion the blame of reduction of Hindu population partly with East Pakistan which later became Bangladesh, the Hindu population there came down from 29.4% to 13.6% in1974 and 9.5% in 2011. Kidnappings of Hindu/Sikh girls have been very common, with no reinsert from the police, and a lot of sympathy for the perpetrators from the courts in both these Islamic countries! It has to be said rather brutally that any government that follows Sharia, could not be expected to guarantee basic human rights to the tiny and ever-dwindling number of non-Muslims unfortunate enough to live within its borders.

It may be remembered that Gandhiji, who perhaps had a premonition of the things to befall the minorities in Pakistan, had asked the Government of India to ensure that those who come back should be given citizenship any time in future. It was in this context that Jawaharlal Nehru also reiterated that position in parliament. It was only the massive influx prior to 1971 that vitiated the atmosphere because more than 10 million Bangladeshis arrived as refugees in the “ethnic conflict” or linguistic conflict like that in Sri Lanka. They were a mixed population of Muslims and Hindus and we had to provide refuge. Many returned; but many stayed back as economic refugees! During the Vajpayee regime Dr.Manmohan Singh was pleading in Rajya Sabha with the then Home Minister and Dy.PM, L K Advani for giving the “Hindu and Sikh refugees” in India citizenship. The video is available on YouTube!

Now, why persecuted Ahmadiyas from Pakistan are not covered by the CAA? Because the CAA is related to the transmigration during partition; and till 1974, Ahmadiyas were still legally Muslims in Pakistan. Secondly, look at their role in the Partition: it was Ahmadiyas who drafted the Lahore Resolution seeking a ‘Homeland’ for Muslims. The Ahmadiya Movement had even formed a militia to fight for Pakistan! In 1947, this militia was re-named as Furqan Force – to liberate Kashmir! The CAA has a clause which excludes people who have been hostile to India!

Let me now come to Rohingyas from Burma. I already mention that the CAA being a product of the transmigration following the Partition of India, they do not come in the picture. Moreover, the Rohingyas are not religiously persecuted in Myanmar. The Rohingyas were not recognized as citizens both by the Myanmar Constitution of 1974 and by Citizenship Act of 1982. There are 25 lakh Muslims in Myanmar; and Rohingyas constitute only 4 lakhs!

There is a view spread by vested interests that Rohingyas were Mulsims who migrated to Burma from India. That is part of the huge “iceberg of misinformation” about Rohingyas to use the expression of Aung San Suu Kyi. Muslim settlers came to Arakan State, an independent coastal kingdom in South-East Asia, now part of Myanmar starting in the 1430s, and a small Muslim population lived in Arakan State when it was conquered by the Burmese Empire in 1784. Burma in turn was conquered by Britain in 1824, and until 1948 Britain ruled Burma as part of British India. That happens to be their India-connection! So, the Rohingya have existed in Myanmar, a Buddhist majority country for centuries. But Arkanese chronicles claim that the Rakhine have inhabited Arakan since 3000 BCE! Rohingya were serving in parliament and other high offices in independent Burma and their ethnicity was included in the 1961 census. After the Military coup of 1962, thanks to their activities in Rakhine State, the military government refused to give Rohingyas national registration cards, but were only allowed to obtain foreign registration cards. The 1982 new citizenship law  prevented Rohingya from easily accessing full citizenship, rendering many of them stateless as well.  You may note, once again that Muslims from Bengal entered Burma as migrant workers, tripling the country’s Muslim population over a 40-year period; and they have no problems there! Why do only Rohingyas have a problem?

Myanmar’s problem with Rohingyas is 1) Rohingyas have been fighting for an Independent Rakhine State for themselves in the mineral rich Rakhine region they live in and 2) The Rohingyas have criminal tendencies and have formed a fighting force called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) which fought with Myanman Armed forces, and according to the Amnesty International’s record have killed hundreds of civilians including (mostly) Hindu women and dumping the dead bodies in 4 large pits like in Pol Pot’s Cambodia! No other country wants to have Rohingyas. The Myanmar Government has designated Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) as a terrorist organisation.  It is led by Rohingyas living in Saudi Arabia. The International Crisis Group (ICG) says ARSA’s leader is Ata Ullah who was born in Pakistan & raised in Saudi Arabia. Indian intelligence inputs disclose that global Jihadi groups such as Islamic State & Al-Qaeda & also Pakistan’s ISI & its proxies are sponsoring ARSA terrorism. These inputs also suggest that Lashkar-e-Taiba is seeking to recruit Rohingyas in India for their jihadist activities within India. In November 2019 addressing a three day “Global Dialogue 2019 Conclave in Dhaka, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Haseena stated that more than 1.1million Rohingyas of Myanmar who fled to Bangladesh in the face of persecution were a threat not only to security of Bangladesh but for the entire region. Even the former Human Rights Activist turned politician in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has justified at the UN the treatment meted out to Rohingyas!

Why should refugees from Afghanistan to be included in the CAA? During the Partition, the NFWP- the land of Frontier Gandhi Abdul Ghaffar Khan  was given the choice of joining either India or Pakistan; but ‘Badshah Khan’ wanted either an Independent Pashtunistan or to join Afghanistan. Pakistan forcefully took Balochistan and NWFP and the Hindus and Sikhs from the Pothohar Plateau bordering the western parts of PoK and the southern part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa went to Afghanistan which is also became a theocratic state and happens to be in constant turmoil. So these people also became our “civilizational responsibility”!

Lastly why not citizenship to Tamils from Sri Lanka? From 1983 to now there are one lakh plus Tamil refugees in the 103 camps in India. The Tamil problem was not “religious persecution” – it was a linguistic/ethnic issue worsened by the LTTE, classified as the “most dreaded terrorist group in the world” fighting a violent war against Sri Lanka for ‘Tamil Elam’. There is a side-story to it. I think it was in ‘J.R. Jayewardene of Sri Lanka: A Political Biography’ by K M De Silva that the former Sri Lankan President is quoted as saying “India exported its Tamil separatism to my country.” Interestingly, Tamil separatism, Elam and all, killed in Sri Lanka, lives in Tamil Nadu as part of the Dravidian politics!

India has not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or the 1964 Refugee Protocol giving the reason that thanks to our long and porous borders, we may have a continuous inflow of illegal immigrants who cannot be taken care of because of our economic constraints. But we have signed the 2016 New York Resolution for Refugees and Migrants which binds us to send all the refugees back their countries if they are willing to go and their mother societies (native countries) willing to accept them. Sri Lankan PM Ranil Wickramasinghe had in 2018 promised India that Sri Lanka is willing to take back all refugees in India. Modi-led India had built 50000 homesteads in Sri Lanka as part of this rehabilitation programme. Remember, between 1964 and 2008 India had given Indian Citizenship to around 461000 Sri Lankan Tamilians!

Many people mix the case of refugees with that of economic migrants. ‘Economic migrants” are often confused with the term refugee. Many Bangladeshi Muslims too have come to India as economic migrants leaving their regions primarily due to harsh economic conditions, not fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of any unwelcome social group. They are not “attractive political target” for Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government of India on account of their religious faith. As Tayyab Mahmud, a law professor at Seattle University School of Law who has testified in asylum proceedings for Indian migrants said in the US context, it not persecution which is driving global migration. It is the economy. The question is whether Indian economy can absorb huge population of illegal immigrants? Over-populated, and with a huge un-employment problem, India cannot take in more people than we have to for good reason such as the “civilisational responsibility” the CAA takes up.

I may add in the end that as per the citizenship act, in last six years, 2838 Pakistan nationals, 912 Afghan refugees and 172 Bangladeshi refugees were given Indian citizenship. Many of them were Muslims!