- The CAA fits in with the BJP’s Hindutva ideology
The Muslims in Kashmir weren’t yet over with the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) abrupt abrogation in August of Article 370-a provision in the Indian Constitution that had granted Indian-occupied Kashmir a special status. Since then all the Indian laws are applicable in the disputed region, and it has further validated purchasing property by the outsiders, which was prohibited earlier. This was done on the pretext of promoting the economic development in the state, but the truth is much more bitter.
Parliaments’ rancorous debates and bloody protests on road failed to prevent Indian Muslims from being struck with yet another blow by the BJP’s move of passing a controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. It is limited to granting Indian citizenship only to non-Muslim immigrants, including Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Sikhs, fleeing from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, which highlights the –exclusion of Muslims and its minorities such as Rohingya– who are on the verge of being kicked out from the Indian territory. Though the Act’s defenders have argued that their move will help shelter the minorities fleeing religious persecution from the said countries, they would have to have resided in India for six years and additionally entered before 31 December 2014 to become eligible for citizenship. This provision also explicitly calls on cancelling a right to live to the non-minority Muslims in now a non-secular India.
Defining the new perimeters of citizenship in India will not help redress the long-standing grievances of the religious minorities in the neighbouring countries. But the widespread anti-Muslim sentiment that the BJP has nurtured and promoted through the government’s latest legislative action will bolster its position amongst the Indian electorate. Sadly, its repercussion includes the death of India’s secularism
However, among the BJP’s series of notorious agendas, critics believes that this amendment has been brought to marginalize Muslims and violates the sanctity of their own most trumped principle of “Secularism” enshrined in their Constitution. More specifically, the new law has violated Article 14 of the Indian constitution, which promises equality before law as the fundamental right. It’s not new of the staunch Indian parliament to continue enact legislation to fan Muslim Hindu hatred, despite the Indian Supreme Court having established in earlier cases that parliamentary amendments shall not breach any fundamental rights.
As of now, it’s pretty straightforward to perceive the BJP’s efforts in promoting its ideological agenda of Hindutva since its election days when smearing campaigns against Muslim’s cattle for slaughter were a usual affair and proposals of rampant discrimination against Muslims were included in their party’s manifesto. The BJP, a right-wing Hindu nationalist party with a sweeping parliamentary majority, is evolving from a conservative, religiously and socially orthodox, party to into a radical political entity which is geared towards transforming the ideological fundamentals of the Indian state.
Hindu nationalism has given blanket cover to the BJP and other radical Indian entities to continue their malpractices, which have jeopardised Muslim minorities’ existence in Gandhi’s country. The ecent riots in Assam and other Indian states to prevent the passing of this legislation, revive the memory of Hindu fanatics who attacked and destroyed a mosque in December 1992 that they believed had been built on the place of a Hindu temple in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Back in February 2002, violent Hindu mobs had rampaged through the state of Gujarat on the pretext of an attack alleged to be by Muslims on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. These courses of action happened during the reign of the current Indian prime minister, Narender Modi, who then served as the chief minister of the state. Modi’s relentless support of his stalwarts had earned him wrath both at home and abroad on his failure to contain the Hindu mobs.
Besides this, there have been several questionable decisions in the past that help explain the Modi government’s current moment. To suppress liberal and secular voices from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, known for its humanities and social sciences, the government has hounded students and faculty members to force them to their knees. These hostilities towards the university aren’t new, but date back to the RSS, a Hindu nationalist organization involvement, and are a tool used by the BJP to clamp down free speeches made by the future leaders-to-be of India. It is an irony though, in India the press is usually swayed by the will of the establishment, which manages to take a variety of measures to tame progressive voices in the Indian media.
A country with nearly 81 percent Hindus, is in the hands of the wrong leadership, which has tapped into the deep-rooted anxieties of its nationalist, hatred and radical mindset against Muslims. Defining the new perimeters of citizenship in India will not help redress the long-standing grievances of the religious minorities in the neighbouring countries. But the widespread anti-Muslim sentiment that the BJP has nurtured and promoted through the government’s latest legislative action will bolster its position amongst the Indian electorate. Sadly, its repercussion includes the death of India’s secularism.