CAA is sizzling hot. An issue that convulses, that torments, that fissures the nation, that proselytises friends into frenemies, that evokes widespread protests, and ,bemusedly, protests against protests, needs no preamble. Save to remind ourselves of the one that constitutes India into “a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”.
The citizen is losing his zen ,his sleep over CAA, why ? Numbers involved isn’t one ,for sure. At worst, illegal migrants would not exceed 50 lakhs ( in Assam only 19 lakhs failed to make it to NRC ) in a country with a population of 13000 lakhs, a drop in a sea of humanity. The skies over our landmass would not have buckled if all were granted citizenship. That the government did not do so speaks of a subterranean agenda.
There must be an elephant in the room ! The government says minorities in the specified countries suffer religious persecution. Is it because they are Islamic ? Such states do not per se deny livelihood and worship opportunities to their religious minorities nor use religious persecution as an instrument of state policy. Minorities there , as elsewhere in the world, do face pin pricks and not so subtle discrimination and harassment ; do suffer sporadic eruptions of violence against their person, property and places of worship ; do become victims of human rights abuses and official apathy in social life.
Secular India too has blind spots vis-a-vis its minorities. Graham Staines murdered along with his sons for propagating his faith ; churches vandalised ; swine limbs thrown inside masjids ; Sikh riots ; Gujarat 2002 ; investigation into murder of Pehlu Khan botched up to let Hindu accused go scot-free while the state dawdles over prosecuting Sadhavi in the Malegaon blast case, the litany of real and perceived minorities woes is just as long. Yet we certainly are not a country that persecutes its religious minorities. The government arguments is therefore thin, a smokescreen to pass muster at judicial scrutiny under Art. 14.
But by vesting the status of legal migrants to illegal Hindu migrants from the date of their illegal entry while denying the same to Muslim migrants a leaf seems to have been taken out of Golwalkar’s praxis - Muslims ‘ may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights.”
The elephant in the room ! All it needs is a simple majority in the two houses of Parliament for an incumbent regime to redraw citizenship rules to suit its bent of mind. Whereas Rajiv Gandhi entitled all illegal migrants in Assam, Muslims non- Muslims alike, as on 24th March 1971 to citizenship by naturalisation, Narendra Modi does it only for illegal Hindu migrants. Muslims continue as illegal migrants living perpetually under the threat of arrest, detention and deportation. No residency rules or refugee policy exist to provide succour. Even birth in India does not ipso facto confer citizenship. Those of a citizen and an illegal migrant don’t. True, CAA does not take away anyone’s citizenship. But it reminds us of the sweeping powers of legislature to determine who among those born in independent India will enjoy citizenship rights. It may exclude a whole group of newborns in Republic India. A ‘Right’ government making drastically ‘Wrong’ changes in citizenship rules is an ever present possibility. Today alien Muslims ! tomorrow....... who knows ?
The elephant in the room ! BJP warmed the cockles of Hindu heart by promising to breeze off minority appeasement, whatever that means. Fine, both Minorities and Hindus can do without appeasement. Politics, properly , should revolve around issues of bread and butter. That, incidentally, is worsening but doesn’t ruffle or shake the poise of present power elite.On the other hand, ‘sab ka saath sab ka vikas’ increasingly reveals in concealing, a masquerade for majoritarianism. For the ‘sickular’ secularism of congress it substitutes an esoteric brand of ‘saffron secularism’. Muslims eat beef, Hindus don’t , hence a beef ban; Hindus are vegetarians so no eggs in midday meal in BJP ruled states ; why should Muslims offer namaz in a public place instead of mosques while Hindus commandeer with impunity whole streets to celebrate their festivals and so on so forth. CAA is another spoke in that wheel of saffron secularism. That disturbs the citizen’s zen.
The elephant in the room ! That those agitating against CAA come from the ‘Hindu race’, to use Golwalkar’s nomenclature, should worry a regime riding on the Hindu vote. As many as sixty percent of Hindus did not vote BJP and many of those do not manifestly subscribe to its majoritarian ways. Power does not ipso facto legitimise its exercise, that accrues only from its tacit acceptance by the governed. Clearly from the scale and intensity of protests majority of the majority have not endorsed CAA leaving legitimacy of the Act in doubt.
In a fast globalising world, I find many right leaning intellectuals dreaming of a Golwalkarian dystopia for minorities “ to live at its (national race ie Hindu race) mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and quit the country at the sweet will of the national race”. It is pertinent to ask where from have the Muslims come ? Most are converts from the outcastes of ‘Hindu race’ migrati to a more hospitable faith, to freedom from untouchability and iniquities of the Hindu social order. Ambedkar reflected their extreme existential despair when he willed “not to die a Hindu”. Less than seventy years ago he led a mass conversion of outcaste Mahars to Buddhism. For much the same reason hundreds of years earlier many such Hindus embraced Islam. They belong as much as we Hindus do. They did not go out of outcaste to be cast out again. Exclusion of Muslim migrants from CAA is thus socially illegitimate. It is also repugnant to Hindu sensibilities, for the Hindu mind is essentially inclusive , liberal and syncretic.
Certain social media groups, pages,web sites, TV panelists have a quaint justification for CAA. Muslims are terrorists, rapists, murderers hence the nation can do without them. Even ‘enlightened’ right wing intellectuals and opinion makers do not shy away from alluding to this stereotype with malicious glee. Support for a Hindu cause is no licence for warping of the intellect. Were it just so much gobble gabble one would ignore it, but if it is done to build a groundswell of opinion of muslims as undesirable citizens with attendant consequences under the citizenship law it is bad tidings for the nation. But, of course , only time will tell.
The elephant in the room ! CAA a testing of waters for rolling out more substantive measures that would irreversibly put a majoritarian complexion on our polity ? A nation of the majority, ( ‘Hindu Race’ in Golwalkar terms) , governed by the majority, for the majority is close to the Sangh’s heart. Not the concept of territorial nationhood informing the constitution, one that treats all domiciled within the territory of India as constituting a nation, a formulation Golwalkar vehemently contested. Is that what makes the regime run with the hare and hunts with the hounds. It swears to constitution as its Bible yet uses its provisions to gouge its spirit and substance. Glory the shell and trample the essence .
Nowadays, one standing with muslim causes leastways earns the epithet ‘Urban Naxal’. Nevertheless, my conscience will not rest easy if I do not show my unease with the current drift in national polity. Lingers within me this sour aftertaste of CAA, “ kya yeh sirf trailer hai, picture abhi baaki hai ? ”. If the answer is in the affirmative, we are in for a total abnegation of the labours and sacrifices of our founding fathers that melded a potpourri of disparate sub-nationalities into a composite harmonious whole , and into a vibrant, liberal,secular polity. CAA does not bode well for our social fabric woven with so many different yarns.
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