CAA: A fading story

For BJP, CAA was strategic move that did not quite work out because those it would benefit could've been accommodated under existing laws, and new entrants would remain excluded

The Modi government’s notification of the rules of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), it seemed, had failed in the immediate purpose of its timing: Overshadowing the Supreme Court order on anonymous electoral bonds. The bond story had fuel to last.

The CAA was dying out until two things happened. One, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal attacked the law as an invitation to millions of poor and unemployable 

“illegal immigrants and ghuspaithiyas (infiltrators)” from Pakistan and Bangladesh. This sparked protests outside his house by hundreds of Pakistani Hindus currently living in inhuman conditions in illegal bastis in Delhi.

An even more important role was played by the US State Department in bringing the story back into the headlines, at least below the fold as we would say in old newspapering parlance. Spokesman Matthew Miller said at his usual briefing that the US was concerned by the law, stood by equity for all faiths, and was making a close study of it.

At that point I shall make a humble request to him and his principals at the State Department: If after the deepest study you do indeed figure out what you find wrong with this, please do also let us know in India. Or, as Kishore Kumar sang in Majrooh Sultanpuri’s words for Dev Anand in his 1965 classic Teen Deviyaan... agar ise samajh sako mujhe bhi samjhana.

Forgive my lapsing into the old Hindi film nostalgia. The fact, however, is that on closest study, I find it difficult to decide whether the CAA, as it reads now with its rules, is good, bad, a bit of both, or inconsequential. Let’s try and examine this from the point of view of its likely — or intended — beneficiaries, victims, and the ones with principled arguments.

l The likely beneficiaries are mostly Hindus, and some Sikhs, Christians and probably a few Buddhists, in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Precise figures are hard to come by, though unlike India lately, Pakistan had a census in 2023. Let us say, for ease of understanding, that the number is about 20 million, more than 95 per cent of them Hindus. Presuming that most or any of them feels dreadfully persecuted and wants to come to India, won’t they be jumping in joy at the CAA?

The answer for them, unfortunately, is no. They are 10 years too late. The law would have benefited them only if they had come to India by the end of 2014 because December 31, 2014, is the cut-off for its application.

l This is a bummer, but surely those who came before 2014 will now benefit? They can surely benefit, but they can also ask a question: If India, especially under the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, really felt so strongly about them, why did it not give them citizenship in all these 10 years? The Government of India has the sovereign powers to accord citizenship to anybody. It doesn’t need any special law for any community. Surely, no new law was needed to give Indian citizenship to singer Adnan Sami, which was done with some fanfare on camera by then minister of state for home affairs Kiren Rijiju.

Why make us, the poorest and most miserable Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh, live in subhuman conditions as illegal immigrants all these years? Were we then made to wait 10 extra years for a more opportune moment in the BJP’s politics?

l With the likely beneficiaries out of the way, we come to those fearful of it. Why is there no Shaheen Bagh-style stirring now? It is because the cause for action in 2019 doesn’t exist now. Then, the CAA was following a widely proclaimed chronology that would have seen a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in its wake. The fear of the NRC was buried, even ridiculed, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself in his speech at Ramlila Maidan on December 22, 2019. There was obviously a realisation that the party had gone too far. This was an absolute no-no when the Prime Minister was taking such pride in receiving the highest national awards from key Islamic countries and understood the value of his new relationships in Arab West Asia, outflanking Pakistan. Since then, no Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has resurrected it. If there is no NRC, no Muslim in India has to fear anything.

l The only part of the country where the law makes a difference is Assam. Successive amendments to Indian citizenship law have maintained the Assam exception. That’s in deference to the anti-illegal immigration (later renamed anti-foreigner) mass movement in the state from 1979 onwards. The native Assamese speakers of the Brahmaputra Valley and tribal areas believe that tens of millions of Bangladeshis illegally settled in their state, upsetting the demographic balance. The Rashtriya Swaymsevak Sangh (RSS) has campaigned for more than four decades in the state to convince the Assamese Hindus that they should make a distinction between Bengali Muslims and Hindus. That was successful, but never fully.

The difference in Assam is that an NRC process had already been carried out there. Assam got caught in a twin trap. First, the NRC caught too many Hindus as aliens. Despite the rise of the BJP/RSS, a large enough number of Assamese, especially the students, still won’t make a Bengali Hindu exception. That is the reason Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is now trying to douse the fresh unrest by arguing that the idea that millions or lakhs of Bengali Hindus will now be naturalised is ridiculous. If at all, there will be “50,000-80,000 people (Hindus)” in the Barak Valley, he says. If these are all the people this politically disruptive law might benefit, you might ask why it was even needed.

It would be reasonable to conclude that for the BJP, it was a strategic move that did not quite work out because those it would benefit could easily have been accommodated under the existing laws, and new entrants would remain excluded. The hope of nationwide polarisation and street unrest vaporised with the Prime Minister himself taking the NRC out of the game.

The Muslim community has also displayed a shrewd, underdog’s maturity in not reacting to the latest development. Principled, constitutional argument on whether the state can define citizenship based on faith will continue to be fought in the Supreme Court. Whatever the verdict, it will be academic and make no substantive difference.

There will be some noise and ceremonial handing over of citizenship certificates. Beyond that, the CAA story lies defeated by the haste and political miscalculation behind it. It can revive only if one or both of the following happen: Fresh talk of a nationwide NRC and/or a shift in the cutoff date onwards from December 31, 2014. Can it/they happen? I’d suggest watching this space in the runup to 2029.

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