What is happening in India?
Large parts of the Indian public are out on the streets and protesting against the new Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). In a nutshell, this bill, which is now law, provides a shorter path to citizenship for non-Muslim undocumented migrants (from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) who crossed the border to India before December 31st, 2014. The reason given for excluding Muslims from the bill is that most of these undocumented migrants are from persecuted religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries. The logic is that since Muslims are not persecuted in these Muslim-majority countries, they have no need for inclusion in this bill.
This is not the complete picture. While non-Muslim minorities are certainly mistreated in these countries, a lot of Muslim migrants from these countries are also affected by war, conflict, extremism, sectarianism, and poverty– which is why they are now in India. Also, since they are in India (at least since December 2014), what does the government plan to do with them? Repatriate them to their home countries? Expel them? Detain them? Can India even do that with its economy in crisis? Is the Indian public willing to shoulder the political, social, economic, and ethical cost of such a massive (and potentially disastrous) operation? Are willing to take the chance of a civil war? Is that why India is burning?
A point of clarification here: The protests in Assam have little to do with the protests in Delhi and other parts of the country. The protests in Assam are because people there are worried about “illegal migrants gaining citizenship.” These so-called illegal migrants include not just Bangladeshi Muslims but also Bangladeshi Hindus and the Buddhist Chakma people. Assam has had an anti-foreigner problem for a long time. And in my book, this hatred for supposed outsiders is horribly xenophobic. In a nutshell, Assam is burning because they don’t want the CAB to make the NRC (National Register of Citizens; another controversial policy that has stripped millions of people– both Muslims and Hindus– of their Indian citizenship) redundant by providing a path to citizenship for a large percentage of “illegal migrants."
On the other hand, the rest of the country is in uproar because the CAB is a highly discriminatory law. If the goal was to protect persecuted minorities in our neighboring countries, then a blanket ban on Muslims makes little sense. Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan are persecuted. Baloch people are persecuted. Hazaras in Afghanistan are persecuted. Sufis in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan have also faced persecution. Then, why only these three countries? What about the Tamil Hindus, Muslims, and Christians in Sri Lanka? What about the Lhotshampas? What about the Uighurs in China? And why forget the Rohingyas of Burma who are considered the most persecuted minority in the world?
India can’t have its cake and eat it too. If we are a secular haven for persecuted peoples in the region, then we have to welcome them from all different religious and ethnic groups. Constitutionally, we can’t limit them to Dharmic religions because we are not a Hindu country by law. And if we really don’t want outsiders, we should have the guts to say so and be the selfish people we are without any need to hide our true selves.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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