- India and Muslims are like Bangladesh and Biharis
By Abid Hussain
The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 passed by the Indian Parliament offers amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from three neighbouring countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The world’s largest secular state faced a catastrophic conflict and erupted in protest. People in different provinces, especially in northeastern states, voiced their opposition to the controversial new citizenship law. It is said that the Act is purely based on the Hindu nationalist agenda. Critics say it is part of a BJP agenda to marginalise Muslims. Protesters rampaged at the Northern cities of Rampur, Sambhal, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor and Kanpur and set fire to several vehicles, and approximately 40 people have been killed so far. Minority protesters are in a rage at being weeded out from the citizenship list. It is declared that two million people have suffered and are regarded as foreigners in a so-called secular state.
The Act as a whole provides citizenship to religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) denies that the bill discriminates against Muslims but BJP President and Home Minister Amit Shah has clearly articulated that the bill is against Muslim migrants from three neighbouring countries aforementioned.
The petition against this Act has already been filed in the apex court of India but, a question has been raised whether the court will give a verdict in favour of minorities or not. It is also worth seeing that whether the protesters will risk their lives and livelihoods to demonstrate against the law or not. The Modi Government and the BJP will decide the future of Hindustan.
India and Bangladesh have set relations in the war against Pakistan in 1971. They are good friends and their friendship is mostly based on common reliance on an anti-Pakistan agenda. Many Bangladeshi are pro-Indian rather than pro-Pakistani. Both countries exchange high-level visits from time to time. Both have bilateral and institutional mechanisms, and both countries share the longest border of 4,096.7 kilometres and share 54 common rivers. India provides economic assistance to Bangladesh, and almost $8 billion have been spent by the Indian government for this in the last seven years. They also share visa, cultural exchange, training and capacity building. It is said that more than a tens of thousands strong Indian community lives in Bangladesh. Indians in Bangladesh are regarded as respectable citizens for their hard and managerial skills and in this way, they are contributing well in a socioeconomic relationship.
The minorities’ rights in India and Bangladesh are becoming highly debatable these days. The international organisations should take necessary action against these loopholes
The Indian-Afghanistan relations is mainly based on a strategic partnership agreement known as SPA. Indian analysts argue that Indian involvement in Afghanistan is to rebuild the infrastructure of various institutions in Afghanistan but their main agenda is to sabotage the influence of Pakistan in the region. Both countries have a strong trade relationship. The Indian Foreign office website reflects that the Bilateral trade between both countries during 2016-17 was $800 million approximately and will be expanded in future. The Indian government has launched several projects in Afghanistan such as KEC (Electrical transmission line), Phoenix (Electrical transmission) AIPL (Hydropower projects) APTECH (Computer and management education), ANAAR Group (Air India GSA) and Spice Jet, among others. The main reason for these projects is to counter Pakistan narratives in a broader sense.
The other citizenship rights bill is of Biharis in Bangladesh (The Non-Bengali). The Bangladesh government and public servants have framed duplicitous policies against Biharis in granting them access to public education, health facilities, employments, passport facilities, driving licenses and so on. Article 32 of the Bangladesh Constitution defines fundamental rights to life and liberty, and worker migration to move abroad which will contribute in GDP to Bangladesh economy and many workers will send remittance to their beloved ones on availing these opportunities in Gulf countries.
As far as national and international courts are concerned, the Biharis are permanent citizens of Bangladesh and the apex court also declared them nationals of Bangladesh who should be treated as equal citizens in their fundamental rights. It has also been declared by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh that people who were born after the 1971 war were regarded as citizens and shall avail their documents as per government rules, but they remain deviously marginalised as victims of sophisticated discrimination and systematically, they lag in quality education, employment opportunities in public and private selector, working abroad and most of them live in objective poverty. Bangladesh government must provide them with equal citizenship rights. Biharis desired to go hand in hand with Bengalis in schools, colleges, mosques, madrassas and all social institutions. Mostly Biharis called upon Bengalis to change their mindset for the new generation. They should not punish the existing generations for the mistakes made by their older generation. They expect to be treated like brothers and argue that Bengalis have to protect their generation from perishing.
The legal definition for the term ‘minority’ was used by the Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and protection of minorities in article 27 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in December 16, 1966. The article declares minorities ‘are considered to be a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of the state, in a non-dominant position, whose members being citizens of a state, possess ethnic beliefs or linguistic characteristics differing from the rest of the population and show if only implicitly, a sense of solidarity directly towards preserving their culture, traditions, religions or language’. The minorities’ rights in India and Bangladesh are becoming highly debatable these days. The international organisations should take necessary action against these loopholes.
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