CAB is second Partition of India, people must resist

The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) 2019 marks secular India’s first firm step towards its transformation into a Hindu Rashtra. CAB is a logical first prerequisite in the BJP’s bigger game plan to render Muslims as second-class citizens. A pan-Indian National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise will selectively exclude those the Sangh Parivar don’t want to be regarded as Indian citizens.

In a country where proving one’s identity is an expensive affair, it is going to affect the poor people most. This was the fundamental argument for the Aadhaar project. Those who are migrant labourers and landless peasants with no land ownership records to show are the most vulnerable.

In Assam, most of the six lakh Bengali-speaking Muslims and 13 lakh Bengali-speaking Hindus left out of the NRC register are poor people who could not produce legacy documents. This had created apprehensions in the minds of even Bengali Hindus who came from Bangladesh. That is why CAB has been brought in to alleviate their fears and turn them into a loyal vote bank.

The results of the last three Assembly bypolls in West Bengal clearly show that the BJP has been fast losing its toehold in the state which it had only recently established. Most Hindus and Muslims who came from Bangladesh do not have legacy documents and if the Assam cut-off year of 1971 is retained for a country-wide NRC exercise, this number will go up manifold.

Apart from this, CAB and NRC are immoral and unethical exercises which undermine the fundamentals of a humane society. A refugee is a refugee who is seeking a better life in our country because of persecution or lack of opportunities in his own. No one leaves one’s land for leisure.

So, how does it matter what religion he or she belongs to? Article 14 and 15 of our Constitution clearly mandate that every person be treated equally irrespective of religion he belongs to. Article 14 clearly states, “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.”

Rights under Article 14 are absolute. These two fundamental rights are not exclusive to the citizens of India but to “any person” residing within the territory of India. Thus, CAB fundamentally violates the Constitution of India as well.

The CAB, bulldozed through both houses of Parliament by the government, validates the two—nation theory espoused by VD Savarkar and MA Jinnah and seeks to recreate the trauma of Partition that this country had to endure.

Making people stateless on the basis of their religion and interning them in detention centres will be going back to the horrific memories of Nazi concentration camps in Europe where millions of Jews and Europeans perished. India, known as a beacon of hope for its democracy, will then be known for unleashing the holocaust of the 21st century. Only people’s resistance can stop India’s descent into a dark age.