CAB: Adverse Domestic And Foreign Fallout

The split-screen images on television on the evening when the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) became the law of the land underlined its divisive and contradictory nature.

- Amulya Ganguli

While the left side of the screen telecast the parliamentary debate, the right side showed large fires burning on the streets of Guwahati in Assam as the scrolls at the bottom referred to the imposition of curfew and the shutting down of the Internet in the state.

After the passage of the bill, however, there was yet another image of sweets being distributed by the migrants from Pakistan in a Delhi camp as they celebrated their newly acquired right of becoming Indian citizens with a new-born girl being named “nagarikta” or citizenship.

The contrasting images were evidences of the CAB’s contentious provisions. While its critics claimed that the law was treading a thin line on its constitutionality, the violence in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and elsewhere in the north-east pointed to the fears that it raised in the region.

The CAB’s constitutional validity will be tested in the judiciary, which will pronounce its verdict on the justifiability of the exclusion of Muslims from the list of migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who are eligible for Indian citizenship.

The government’s argument is that it is providing relief to the persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees and Christians from the three Islamic countries, leaving out the Muslims on the grounds that they are not under the kind of threat in these countries which the non-Muslims face.