With every new policy change, India takes a collective gasp, looks around for a voice of reason and settles with the one which affirms their prior beliefs. Rinse and repeat! Citizen Amendment Bill, CAA and NRC are the latest entrants to this ongoing issue. There are protests going on in Assam and people from all over India are outraged. Very few, however, understand why.
What is CAA?
Citizenship Amendment Bill will provide citizenship to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. It was passed on 10th Dec 2019 with 311 MPs voting for and 80 voting against. The reasoning behind it is that non-Muslims in the above-mentioned countries are persecuted. India needs to offer them a place to call home. Muslims are excluded from CAA because all those countries are Muslim majority countries and hence it’s assumed that they don’t have any problem there.
What is NRC?
NRC’s full form is the National Registry of Citizens. Its purpose is to document data of all legal citizens in the country and identify illegal ones so they can be deported to their home countries. It has already been implemented in Assam since 2013.
Why is it being protested?
The bill, however, isn’t meant for people actually migrating from those countries. It is for those who are already living in India. With this bill, illegal citizens of other religions other than Hinduism, Christianity, Jainism and Buddhism living in Assam would be evicted.
NRC is a tool to oust every illegal immigrant. CAA is a tool to give citizenship to those illegal immigrants except Muslims. A simple maths tells us that these two policies are brought to expel illegal Muslims from the country.
This isn’t something BJP planned recently. They’ve been putting CAA and NRC in their manifesto since 2014 so people who are protesting are a little late. BJP have been chosen on the basis of these promises, they’re doing what they already said they would.
Now that I see some BJP voters opposing this move I wonder if they read what a party manifesto is?
