A black law

India's ultra Hindu nationalist government has amended the citizenship law in a calculated attempt to marginalize Muslims. It allows fast track citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but singles out Muslims for exclusion. The government has ought to justify this discriminatory law arguing that these communities are persecuted in these three Muslim countries. In that case, it should have included the Rohingya Muslims fleeing ethnic cleansing from Buddhist Myanmar. It not only rejected the opposition parties' proposal to extend the same benefit to all those trying to escape persecution, but has gone to the Supreme Court with the request to deport Rohingya refugees from India. Clearly, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) is a blatant attempt to institutionalize faith-based discrimination against Muslims.

A similar sinister scheme is the National Register of Citizens (NRC) designed to target Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, whom the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, called "termites" and infiltrators, and a threat to national security. In an exercise started last August in the northeastern state of Assam, nearly two million out of that state's 33 million residents were struck off the citizens' list because they did not have 'proper' documents to prove their Indian roots. Embarrassingly, however, for the BJP government pushing its agenda of creating a 'Hindu Rashtra', many of those who thus became stateless turned out to be Hindus from Bangladesh. Together the citizenship law and NRC have created an explosive situation. Protest demonstrations have erupted in different parts of the country, most angry ones in the northeasterner state of Assam where the people apprehend influx of Hindus from neighbouring Bangladesh would inundate them. Six people have lost their lives in clashes with the police. Opposition parties, including the Congress and CPI (M), have rejected the citizenship law, while the chief minister of Kerala has described the CAA as a pervasion of the original law, pointing out that introduction of a communally polarizing amendment discriminates against Muslims, and undermines the secular foundation of the constitution. West Bengal CM Mamta Banerjee has stated "as long as I am alive, I will never implement the citizenship law or NRS in the state" vowing to continue to protest till the law is scrapped.

Defending the indefensible in a series of tweets, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed the CAA did not affect any Indian or any religion, but he exposed his real motive when he said "this Act is only for those who have faced years of persecution outside [Hindus whose real home according to his bigoted mind is only India] and have no other place to go except India." This is a trying time for those in India who want to protect and preserve the country's secular founding ideals. The CAA has already been challenged in the Supreme Court. The country's social harmony and constitutional principles demand the apex court throw out the law which is patently prejudiced.