The upper house of the Indian Parliament passed a disputatious citizenship bill on Wednesday, bringing a religiously polarising measure one step closer to law as new protests erupted across the country. The most populous democratic country waited so long that it needed to bring this type of bill after the freedom, but after 72 years wait this bill came in existence with many questions not addressed.
The measure, called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, uses religion as a criterion for determining whether illegal migrants in India can be fast-tracked for citizenship. The bill favours members of all South Asia’s major religions except Islam, and leaders of India’s 200-million-strong Muslim community have called it blatant discrimination. While Muslims are calling it as discrimination, but if considered that bill is giving path to citizenship to many foreigners, while America, Canada, Australia, England and other countries don’t even do that and deport people to the countries of origin even the individuals have worked for these countries and provided assistance of intelligence and more, but are not allowed to stay in those countries.
Leading opposition parties say the bill is discriminatory as it singles out Muslims, who constitute nearly 15 percent of country’s population. The government clarifies that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are Islamic republics; where Muslims are in majority hence, they cannot be treated as persecuted minorities. It also assures that the government will examine the application from any other community on case to case basis. To repeated questions from the Opposition of Muslims being left out, Home Minister Amit Shah said Muslims from other countries and have the rights to apply for Indian citizenship per the existing rules. As many as 566 Muslims have been given citizenship, he said in the Rajya Sabha.
It proposes to accord citizenship to illegal Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. It, naturally, implies that migrants, who identify themselves with any group or community other than those mentioned above, from these countries won’t be eligible for citizenship. The bill also relaxes the provisions for “Citizenship by naturalisation”. The proposed law reduces duration of residency from existing 11 years to just five years for people belonging to the same six religions and three countries. If studied the same laws on asylum, immigration and migration are in existence in other countries like USA, Canada, England, Europe, Australia and some other counties, but not in the Middle East or Arab Countries, where even marrying to a citizen of that country doesn’t give you the right of citizenship and it is hard to establish marital relationship in these Middle Eastern Countries even these countries are Muslim Countries and don’t offer the path to citizenship to Muslims.
The bill brings sweeping changes to India’s 64-year-old citizenship law by giving citizenship to “persecuted” minorities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians – from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The northeastern states are up in arms with the government rushing Army to the burning Assam and Tripura to diffuse tensions. A curfew has been imposed in many parts of the Northeastern parts of the country while Army was called in at four places and Assam Rifles personnel were deployed in Tripura.
U. S., Mexico, Australia and Canada has deported many Indians and the citizens of other countries. In addition to this India is the biggest country that has granted asylum to the most people of the world including the whole Tibet. India’s own population is less than the 1/2 and most of the people currently living in India, who were not from India are from Nepal, Bhutan, China, Bangladesh, Siri Lanka, Pakistan and also from Thai Land. If these people were or are deported the India’s population is less than the half of current population.
There are no official figures other than records furnished by the Intelligence Bureau, saying there are 31,313 persons belonging to these minority community living in India on Long Term Visas. They had sought refuge here on grounds of religious persecution. Home Minister Amit Shah said in the Parliament; the bill will give a new dawn to lakhs and crores (millions) of people. Meanwhile Home Minister Amit Shah thanked everyone for supporting the bill and credited PM Modi for its passage. “As the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 passes in the Parliament, the dreams of crores of deprived & victimised people has come true today. Grateful to PM Narendra Modi for his resolution to ensure the dignity and safety for these affected people. I thank everyone for their support,” Amit Shah tweeted after the passage of the bill.
Amid the joy of Hindu refugees, the country is also facing widespread protests from the northeast. The government of the United States of America also imposed sanctions on India’s Home Minister Mr. Amit Shah and will not grant any diplomatic or general category visa to Amit Shah. Some other countries are also joining the USA to impose sanctions on India and especially on Amit Shah’s visit and labeling him anti-Muslim. While doing so, these western countries forgotten that they have picked people from Muslim countries and kept them in custody without any due process or producing them in the courts and tortured them with waterboarding.
Let’s see where the new bill stands or it will create border walls as the Trump administration is doing on Mexico’s border and will India deport illegals living in India or will open a new era of documentation and start a new path to citizenship of India.
Despite all the issues, still, India gave huge refuse to more than 40,000 Rohingya Muslims according to the reports published by International Journals and considering this Western Countries and Muslim Countries still have a baby outcry about India and its Citizenship amendment in its immigration laws. India needed to amend its immigration laws long back ago.
