There is a constant bustle in the Shaheen Bagh locality of Delhi; part of it is owed to the heavy police deployment. While the faithful are reveling in Ramzan festivities, the cops are on watch to prevent any build-up of public protest. The holy month began last week with the rollout of the dreaded Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) against which the locality had erupted in protests in 2019. The discontent had spread all over India until the Covid pandemic and anti-Muslim Delhi riots played spoilsport.
The central government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, announced on March 11 that the CAA would become effective and those seeking Indian citizenship could apply online. The CAA seeks to set norms for the grant of citizenship to persons belonging to six religions (Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis) except Muslims from three neighboring countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – who entered India till December 31, 2014, due to “religious persecution or fear of religious persecution.”
The opposition led by the Congress has called new CAA rules as “unconstitutional and discriminatory.”
When the CAA bill was passed in 2019, it was opposed vehemently. Shaheen Bagh had turned into the Tahrir Square of India. Instead of men, women had led those protests. Even those over 90-year of age had kept dug up in the middle of the road that connects Delhi to Noida (UP). Despite a brutal police crackdown on nearby Jamia Millia Islamia university and other protest sites in India, women stayed put bravely in the chilling cold.
Sadly, as anti-Muslim violence left scores dead in North-East Delhi and Covid made its ominous advent, the protests dissipated.
Soon after, the police launched a nationwide hunt for those who had steered anti-CAA protests and today all big names like Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, Khalid Ansari, Tahir Hussain and others are behind bars. They have been booked under multiple serious charges, including those under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) that was promulgated to prosecute hardcore terrorists.
Besides, the homes of several anti-CAA activists have been demolished. Hundreds of them are languishing in jail even without their families being aware of the litany of charges against them.
The crackdown has withered the spirit of those who could organize protest following the official notification of the Act.
A feeble protest was organized on the campus of Jamia this week, but it was not allowed to spread out of a circular place. Then, some of its leaders were detained and were released only after they promised to not resort to further protest. Still, some student bodies are touring campuses, sensitizing students about the long-term repercussions of ill-conceived law.
The terror of police cases and demolition of houses is such that even noted Muslims like Dr. Zafrul Islam Khan, son of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, said that the absence of protests means that no one wants to land in jail and invite discomfiture for the family.
Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association (BAPSA), All India Students Association (AISA), Students Islamic Organization of India and the Fraternity Movement are some of the student bodies that are active against CAA. “The CAA enacted in 2019 is a direct affront to the fundamental spirit of the Constitution. It has to be opposed otherwise it will pave the way for very dangerous developments in future,” a Fraternity Movement activist, who is facing multiple police cases, told The Friday Times.
But the cautious government has beefed up security in all Muslim-centric universities like Jamia, AMU, Jamia Hamdard, etc. In addition, the local police have been directed not to let any protest site emerge in any part of India, most specifically in the North-Central India where most of the sit-ins were organized in 2019.
The terror of police cases and demolition of houses is such that even noted Muslims like Dr. Zafrul Islam Khan, son of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, said that the absence of protests means that no one wants to land in jail and invite discomfiture for the family. “We haven’t seen any major protest on the issue of massacre in Gaza, and we won’t see any big protest over the rollout of the CAA. The reason is that the government will chase you like wolves once you hit the roads on any of such issues,” he said.
Protest and Politics
Meanwhile as North-Central India is silent, there have been some protests in South and North-East states. A joint protest of Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Indian Union Muslim League was organized in Kerala on Friday night. It saw participation of top leadership from all three parties, but it was not clear whether it would continue.
In the North-East, where the CAA is the hottest topic because of its immediate implementation to expel alleged “foreigners” in the form of Bengalis and Myanmarese, there are loud voices of dissent against the bill, but this time only in Assam and Tripura. This is because nearly all areas of the Northeast, barring large swathes of these two states, have cleverly been exempted from the provisions of the CAA.
The Act states that this provision shall not apply to “tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram or Tripura, as included in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, and the area covered under ‘The Inner Line’ notified under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873.”
Not only does the CAA conspicuously omit Muslim refugees and migrants from its ambit, it also promises to legitimize Hindu refugees and migrants.
Most of Assam (which shares a 263-km border with Bangladesh) and Tripura (which has 856-km border with Bangladesh) does not come under either the Sixth Schedule or the ILP regime. And that is why there’s unrest in these areas against the CAA.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is strong in both states, which share long, porous borders with Bangladesh, and have had streams of refugees coming in from the neighboring country from before it became a sovereign state - when it was known as East Pakistan. There is no record of these migrations; neither of the large-scale ones around the times of great upheavals —Partition in 1947, the creation of Bangladesh in 1971; nor of the steady trickle that has continued since then. Although some of these refugees and migrants are Muslim, a majority are believed to be Bengali-speaking Hindus.
Not only does the CAA conspicuously omit Muslim refugees and migrants from its ambit, it also promises to legitimize Hindu refugees and migrants. Thus, it falls afoul of Assamese ethno-nationalists, and increasingly, Tripuri tribals, who feel threatened by the rising number of Bengali speakers.
Cultivation of Hindu sentiments either in states that border Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Hindus in the mainland India, who feel emotionally charged at every community cause, is the prime target of BJP through the promulgation of the CAA. BJP is already in a strong position in Tripura and Assam, the two states which are witnessing the most intense protests over CAA. BJP has already announced to relax CAA norms to give relief to around 1.5 million Hindus who don’t possess citizenship documents and expedite their total citizenship as per new rules.
Together, Assam and Tripura make up for 16 parliamentary seats.
BJP, however is not so charitable to other northeastern states like Manipur, where the situation has been close to boiling point for over a year because of ethnic conflict.
Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, other states in the Northeast, together send 6 members to the Parliament and thus don’t figure heavily in BJP’s calculation. However, the party has tried to attract tribal leaders in all these states in the name of their empowerment or expelling “Muslim outsiders” to adjust them.
As Muslim concerns on the implications of the CAA have been raised, with even the US State Department saying it is keeping a watchful eye on it, the BJP leadership has swung to assuage Muslim fears. “Not a single Muslim will be expelled, let alone his nationality coming under suspicion. This is the guarantee of PM Modi,” said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
Singh’s cabinet colleague Home Minister Amit Shah however articulated it in a tone that is tailored to impress BJP voters. He said during a poll rally: “PM Modi honoured Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Jain refugees through CAA… To save their faith and honour, lakhs and crores of people from Pakistan and Bangladesh came to India but were not granted citizenship… They felt insulted in their own country when they were not granted citizenship,” he said.
As the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif assumed office early this month, the official Indian response has been in the form of a single terse tweet from PM Modi extending his greeting to Shehbaz, who, in turn, thanked him.
There are many takers for such rhetoric in mainland India. A Muslim professor teaching at a private university in Noida says that even his educated colleagues are upbeat about the CAA being implemented. “People love any policy that targets or just appears to be targeting Muslims. Satiation of anti-Muslim hatred is a marketable election policy and the BJP knows how to employ it and reap dividends,” he said.
On Saturday, India announced the schedule of 2024 polls that will be held in 7 phases, starting from April 19 and concluding on June 1. The counting of votes will be held on June 4. The election in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir will be in 5 phases, starting from April 19 and ending on May 20. The Union Territory of Ladakh will go to the polls on May 20.
As the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif assumed office early this month, the official Indian response has been in the form of a single terse tweet from PM Modi extending his greeting to Shehbaz, who, in turn, thanked him.
Pakistan in its reaction voiced its objection to the enactment of CAA, calling the law “discriminatory in nature” and claiming that it differentiated between people based on their faith. Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said, “These regulations and laws are premised on a false assumption that minorities are being persecuted in Muslim countries of the region and the facade of India being a safe haven for minorities. We believe that Indian authorities will be well advised to stop pre-choreographed targeting and systematic marginalization of minorities inside India.”
Besides, the two sides this week collided on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly session.
Pakistan’s Ambassador Munir Akram raised the consecration of Ram Temple at Ayodhya and the implementation of CAA during the plenary meeting on Friday while introducing the resolution ‘Measures to combat Islamophobia’, in the 193-member assembly.
In response, India’s permanent representative to the UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj said the Pakistani delegation has a “limited and misguided perspective on matters relating to my country, the more so, when the General Assembly considers a matter that demands wisdom, depth, and a global outlook from the entire membership – perhaps not the forte of this delegation.”
The election in Jammu and Kashmir will surely raise the temperature a little higher, and the two sides are likely to enter more lively banter, as India moves towards its date with the ballot boxes.