India abandoning its founding principles with Citizenship Amendment Bill

The purpose is to create, through law, a permanent threat to hang over every single Muslim head in India, writes Mihir S Sharma.

For 70 years, India has struggled to remain a secular state. In spite of its people being overwhelmingly Hindu, it chose not to distinguish between its citizens--or putative citizens--on the basis of their religion. That principle was what its founding fathers fought for, and what for decades led it to proudly distinguish itself from Pakistan, born at the same time as India but explicitly as a homeland for Muslims.

The Hindu nationalist party of which India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party played no part in the popular struggle for independence. It has no reason to quarrel with the “two-nation theory” that holds