Editorial: Citizen Bane

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently stoked a raw nerve in Mathabhanga, and Malbazar, twin pockets of north Bengal bordering Bangladesh when she issued a warning that those mulling over registering under the new Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) risk losing out on the rights that they enjoy now, including access to the Trinamool government’s flagship welfare schemes. The CM reminded the audience at a poll rally in Cooch Behar district that registering under the CAA was a sure shot recipe for being branded as a crossover from Bangladesh, with no rights to cast a vote, and forfeiting all rights as a citizen here.

Mamata’s lashing was timed to coincide with the PM’s visit to the district, which shares a 550 km border with Bangladesh. Didiji assured the crowd that her government would not allow anyone to implement CAA in West Bengal. It is a sentiment echoed in Tamil Nadu as well where Chief Minister MK Stalin vowed that the DMK would never allow the CAA to be implemented here, as it discriminates against Muslims (on religious basis) and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees (on linguistic basis).

The rules of the CAA inform us that Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis from Muslim-majority neighbouring nations can now become Indian citizens. However, the government has limited this measure to migrants from an arbitrary group of nations and narrowed down the definition for granting asylum to religious persecution. It further alienates atheists, agnostics and Muslims. The pitfall of this reasoning is that the legislation assumes that only those victimised by religious persecution are worthy of being granted asylum or citizenship.

By notifying the CAA ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, four years after it was passed in the Parliament, the BJP has ticked off yet another action item on its 2019 poll manifesto, in an attempt to shore up votes, specifically in the Bengal constituencies along the Bangladesh border. Back then, the promise of citizenship bore dividends for the BJP from Bengal’s Namasudra (which included the Matua community) in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly polls.

In other parts of India, sections of the Bengali-speaking Pasmanda Muslims, an underserved and marginalised community will bear the brunt of the notification. Anti-Muslim groups have often ganged up on such individuals accusing them of being Bangladeshi or Rohingya, no matter what the identity documents say. In 2023, ahead of the G20 summit, the Gurgaon-Nuh riots broke out in Haryana, where fringe elements terrorised the inhabitants of shanties with accusations of being Rohingya or Bangladeshi. Ironically, the Rohingya from Myanmar, have witnessed thousands of their community massacred by the military junta which has enforced genocidal policies, and millions have been rendered stateless, with a significant portion of them fleeing to nations like India seeking asylum.

Across India, the anti-CAA movement had gathered steam because it had denied Muslim refugees a chance at citizenship, while the protests in Assam were on account of the legislation metamorphosing a faultline of ethnicity into one of religiosity. The impact is far-reaching as the contentious screening of an Islamophobic film, The Kerala Story by the Syro-Malabar Church in Idukki this month, has snowballed into a debate on the dangers of using polarising propaganda as an electoral strategy at the hustings. The CAA is unconstitutional and its implementation must be revoked. Let it be placed on record, in the spirit of the Shaheen Bagh protests and as immortalised by comedian-activist Varun Grover’s poem ‘Hum Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge’ – “We will not show the papers”.