Who is a citizen?

Paper: GS-II

Topic: Important aspects of governance, citizen’s charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.

For Prelims: Citizenship Amendment Bill, its features and implications.

For Mains: States affected by the Bill and reasons associated with it. Reasons behind the opposition of the Bill.

Why in news?
• The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) was passed in the Lok Sabha on December 9 and in the Rajya Sabha December 11.
Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB):
• The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) introduces special provisions for Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
• It, naturally, implies that migrants, who identify themselves with any group or community other than those mentioned above, from these countries won’t be eligible for citizenship.
• The bill also relaxes the provisions for “Citizenship by naturalisation”. The proposed law reduces duration of residency from existing 11 years to just five years for people belonging to the same six religions and three countries.
• Amending the Citizenship Act of 1955, the CAB makes partial gestures of inclusivity, but within an exclusionary framework.
Background of the Bill:
• The Bill in its earlier form was passed in January 2019, ahead of the general elections. It again sought to grant Indian citizenship to the six non-Muslim communities-Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi, Jain and Sikh.
• It reduced the mandatory requirement of 12 years stay in India to seven years to be eligible for citizenship if they do not possess any document.
• The earlier Bill was referred to Joint parliamentary Committee, however the Bill lapsed as it could not be taken up in Rajya Sabha.

Who all are including by the Bill?

• The Bill covers six communities namely Hindu, Sikh, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. As per the Citizenship Act of 1955, an illegal immigrants cannot get citizenship in India.
• An illegal migrant is defined as people who either entered the country without proper documents, or stayed on beyond the permitted time. In 2015, the government made changes to the passport and foreigner’s acts to allow non-Muslim refugees from these countries to stay back in India even if they entered the country without valid papers.
• The idea of citizenship has been broadened to include persecuted migrants seeking asylum. But the criterion includes minorities only from Muslim-majority countries, and persecuted Muslims have been kept out.
Who all are excluded by the Bill?
• The bill is discriminatory as it singles out Muslims who constitute nearly 15 percent of country’s population. The government clarifies that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are Islamic republics where Muslims are in majority hence they cannot be treated as persecuted minorities.
• It also assures that the government will examine the application from any other community on case to case basis.
• By excluding Muslim refugees from the CAB, and including everyone except Muslim immigrants in the proposed National Register for Citizenship (NRC), the government has closed the doors to India’s largest minority from both sides.

Reason behind the Government’s Action through the Bill:

• Citing partition between India and Pakistan on religious lines in 1947, the government has argued that millions of citizens of undivided India belonging to various faiths were staying in Pakistan and Bangladesh from 1947. “The constitutions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh provide for a specific state religion.
• As a result many persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities have faced persecution on grounds of religion in those countries.
• Some of them also have fears about such persecution in their day-to-day life where right to practice, profess and propagate their religion has been obstructed and restricted.
• Many such persons have fled to India to seek shelter and continued to stay in India even if their travel documents have expired or they have incomplete or no documents,” the Bill states.
The Opposition of the Bill:
• Among the main opposition against the Bill is that it is said to be violative of Article 14 of the Constitution i.e. the Right to Equality.
• The other political parties have been steadfastly opposing the bill, claiming that citizenship can’t be given on the basis of religion. There has also been a widespread protest across North East in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim.
• The Bill has triggered widespread protests in northeastern states where many feel that permanent settlement of illegal immigrants will disturb the region’s demography and further burden resources and decrease employment opportunities for indigenous people.
• A large section of people and organisations opposing the Bill also say it will nullify the provisions of the Assam Accord of 1985, which fixed March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date for deportation of all illegal immigrants irrespective of religion.

The States which will affect by the Bill:

• The Bill would have impacted all 7 North Eastern states. However after several rounds of discussion, the Centre has agreed to provide safeguards for NE States.
• It says, “Nothing in this section shall apply to tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram or Tripura as included in the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution and the area covered under the ‘Inner Line Permit’ notified under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873.”
• These areas require Indians from other states to get ‘Inner Line Permit’ to enter or pass through them. Presently, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland fall under the Inner Line Permit. There were concerns that Manipur could end up suffering the most if the CAB is implemented.
US Commission about the Bill:
• The US Commission for International Religious Freedom issued a statement that the CAB, “runs counter to India’s rich history of secular pluralism and the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law regardless of faith”.
• The statement is a good reminder of how India is losing the promise of inclusivity.
Previous leader’s opinions towards Citizenship:
• In the Constituent Assembly debates on January 8, 1949, in response to Algu Rai Shastri’s question who sought clarity on “who is a citizen of India and who is not”, Jawaharlal Nehru, responded, “So far as the refugees are concerned, we accept as citizens anybody who calls himself a citizen of India”. He based the idea of asylum on a combination of free will with affectivity.
• The decision to belong comes from the feeling to belong, and both deserve to be respected. This is perhaps the widest possible humanist consideration behind defining the citizen.
• During the Debates, on August 12, 1949, Mahboob Ali Baig from Madras pondered why should any Indian (he did not specify religion) wanting to migrate from Pakistan “on account of civil disturbances” be put under question. Baig reminded the House that during the transfer of power, there was an agreement by both parties to protect and safeguard minorities. But, after the transfer, Baig said, “there was a holocaust. There were tragedies which compelled persons to migrate”.
• Arguing against the logic of suspicion, Baig stated, “to say those people coming to India might become traitors and therefore, they should not be allowed to come back, that is no reason at all. With this temperament you will never become strong.” Any nation based on paranoia cannot be strong.
• Baig argued that people migrate out of “circumstances” where the mind is full of fear and doesn’t work freely, or with clarity. It does not warrant any discrimination against those people based on their identity. There is no reason to deny them asylum.
• Nehru voiced a similar opinion, regarding “Nationalist Muslims, who were driven out by circumstances and who having gone to the other side saw that they had no place there at all”. Considered “opponents and enemies”, when their lives were made miserable in Pakistan, these Muslims expressed a desire to return, and some did. Pakistan considered these Muslims its enemy not based on religion, but nationality (even ethnicity).
• Be it religion or nation, suspicion is a territorial sentiment. Trust must die, for the enemy to be born. In Nehru’s account, the sentiment of warmth cancels suspicion. He also draws a tacit distinction between the circumstantial and the filial: Those who return home can reclaim their belonging.
• Nehru also defended the secular state by objecting to the impression that it is something “amazingly generous, given something out of our pocket”. The argument in favour of the secular state was never to imply something extraordinary. It was meant to cure people’s historical prejudices, and keep a nation-state from relapsing into majoritarianism.

Conclusion:• The present government was interested in persecuted non-Muslims from the three Islamic states alone. The obverse logic is to consider the rights of Muslims is no longer necessary for secularism.
• The Government had sought refuge here on grounds of religious persecution. The bill will give a new dawn to lakhs and crores of people.