Smells like desperation

NEW DELHI: Just when one was beginning to think that the Narendra Modi Government has spent its quota of Machiavellian deeds for this term, it served up a surprise this week. After a hiatus of four years, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notified rules for the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) under which people of persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan can apply for Indian citizenship.

The law is patently discriminatory. Citizenship is open only to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. Further, persecuted minorities from other neighbouring countries are not provided for. The law thus shuts the door on Muslims including Ahmadis from those three countries, Tamils from Sri Lanka, Rohingyas from Myanmar and members of animist tribes living beyond our international borders in the northeast.

The blatant prejudice in the act triggered countrywide protests by minority groups as well as civil society in 2019-20. Scores of people were killed in these protests, which subsided only after the Covid-19 outbreak. Hundreds of petitions by Muslim groups and political parties challenged the law in the Supreme Court but final hearings, scheduled to begin in December 2022, have not taken place yet, and the Union Government has kept the law alive by seeking nine six-month extensions from the court.

The notification of the rules now, when elections are just weeks away and the administration is poised to go into pre-election limbo, smacks of a cavalier disdain for the norms of governance and a contempt for legal process. What purpose does it serve except allowing the BJP to claim that it delivered all that it promised in the 2019 election? However, given that this term of the Modi government has been packed with devious acts, this is not a surprise. In just the past week, this regime has surpassed itself, with the CAA rules coming right after the move to pack the Election Commission with PMO favourites, and the SBI’s attempt to hoodwink the Supreme Court on disclosing data pertaining to election bonds.

There is only one reason why a government would give effect to a divisive legislation in the last days of its tenure. Last-gasp actions invariably are gambles to swing the vote. The CAA rules are the regime’s wedge into the electorate in states where immigration is a polarising issue, particularly Assam, West Bengal and the broader Northeast. It is here that the BJP is desperately looking for gains. West Bengal with 40 seats in the Lok Sabha affords BJP some head room to grow into, which it does not have in the Hindi states.

In the 2019 election, polarising tactics worked well for the BJP in north Bengal in the context of ethnic frictions due to immigration from Bangladesh. While Muslims foot the bulk of the blame for illegal immigration, several migrants crossing over the porous borders are from Hindu-adjacent communities collectively called the Namasudras in Bengal. In Assam, the National Register of Citizens found a surprisingly high number of non-Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. It is to attract the votes of Hindu or Hindu-adjacent tribes while at the same keeping Muslims out that the CAA was especially crafted. Its last-minute implementation now is a device to gain that edge in the coming election.

For a party that forecasts a mandate of 400 plus, the BJP’s move to gain an inch at the risk of triggering protests again betrays anxiety. It sounds like confidence, but smells like desperation.