The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is a tiny window of legislation at the intersection of a subcontinent’s dark-crimson history, tumultuous geopolitics and upwardly spiralling aspirations.
For Islamists and their intrepid western ‘liberal’ allies, this window is where simplistic, anti-India propaganda converges. For the religious minorities who have faced unrelenting discrimination, murders, rapes, conversions, and land grab in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, it is a enough of a opening to climb into sunshine.
One cannot imagine what implementation of CAA will do in border states like West Bengal, Rajasthan, Punjab and Kashmir. Pockets of a mute, invisible, exploited and vulnerable population will come alive.
Horrors like the one in Bengal’s Sandeshkhali — in which many of the victims of rape, murder and land grab by TMC goons like Sheikh Shahjahan were Hindu refugees driven away from Bangladesh — will meet with swift and fierce resistance.
If India had the CAA rules in 1979, there would be no Marichjhapi massacre. The then Left Front government and CPM cadre in Bengal presided over the killing of nearly 1,700 persecuted Dalit Hindu refugees who had fled Bangladesh to settle in West Bengal. They were butchered across 100 islands in the Sunderbans delta. Even their drinking water wells were poisoned.
The stock, uninformed attack against the CAA is that it is anti-Muslim. Why should citizenship applications of only persecuted Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis from these three Islamist countries be expedited? Why shouldn’t persecuted Muslims like Shias and Ahmediyyas of Pakistan not be included in CAA?
There are six good reasons why India is justified and wise not to include Muslims from these three nations.
First, CAA is a narrow-window legislation to protect persecuted ‘religious’ minorities, not ‘sects’. Muslims from these countries can still apply under the old Citizenship Act. Former Pakistani singer Adnan Sami got Indian citizenship and is a much loved and respected figure in India today.
The US has a similar narrow-window legislation called the Lautenberg-Specter Amendments which give preferential shelter to persecuted minorities from Russia and Iran.
Second, the historical premise of CAA is the Liaquat-Nehru pact that was signed after Partition in 1950 to safeguard minorities in the divided subcontinent. India kept its part of the deal. Minority population has grown by over 5 per cent in seven decades. But Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh didn’t keep their word. Percentage of religious minorities have dwindled to single digits in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and close to zero in Afghanistan.
Third, now-hounded Islamic sects like Shias and Ahmediyyas were at the forefront of the movement to create Pakistan. India is not obligated to protect them from one another now.
Fourth, India has the right to defend itself against demographic and cultural takeover. It has already lost several body parts in the course of the 1,000-year demographic war unleashed against it by colonisation and Islamic invasions. It has seen large tracts of its territory, especially along the border. It must not accommodate further demographic usurpation.
Fifth, India should learn what not to do from the western model of ‘liberalism’ which the Left and far-Left have long hijacked. In the name of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural enrichment’, Left-leaning parties in the West have facilitated unbridled immigration to grow their vote bank. It has gaslighted white populations to drop all survival instincts against demographic takeover.
This model makes ‘liberal democracies’ ripe for takeover by parasites and the very enemies of democracy.
And sixth, India has nothing to prove by being magnanimous via-a-vis Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. All are right now failed or struggling states while India is the fastest rising global economic and military power. India neither needs their validation nor needs to belittle them for liberal brownie points.
The CAA is absolutely fine and effective as it stands. It is the first step to making Bharat the natural home for the persecuted people of all Indic religions.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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