'These are the worst of times, these are the best of times', quotes DU Professor Poulomi Bose on CAA, NRC

Once the proposed NRC combined with the CAA comes into effect, it will arbitrarily naturalise the residence of many illegal immigrants including a lot of economic immigrants, says Poulomi.

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning from a deeply disturbing dream in which I could not reach out to my parents and no one knew where they were. In Lucknow and Agra, where my parents live, there is an internet shutdown for two days as I write this. My father tells me over an intermittently disconnecting call that it has been mostly peaceful in Lucknow yesterday, with only a couple of buses set on fire and nothing much. My normal check-in with friends includes a casual conversation about what all to pack with us when leaving the house, and if someone we know was hurt or arrested in the protest, or worse, is missing. We often talk about how none of us could have imagined having to see these times in the country, and yet, here we are.

The streets of the country have erupted with public outrage on the recently passed CAA or the Citizen Amendment Act, which enfranchises the government to grant Indian citizenship to people belonging to certain religions, namely, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Sikhs and Parsis who seek shelter in India having fled certain countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, due to religious persecution. Instead of seeking a long term Visa, now these religious entities can apply for naturalised citizenship of the country. 

While the government has been trying to constantly reiterate how the CAA does not endanger the Indian Muslim, in its blatant exclusion of Muslims, as well as atheists from the Amendment, (even though Ahmediyas in Pakistan and Rohingya Muslims in Sri Lanka have a history of facing religious persecution, and atheists in Bangladesh have suffered enough religious persecution in the past) the problems that the CAA poses are not limited to only discrimination based on religion but extends to the exclusion of the politically persecuted and a threat to the linguistic and cultural autonomy of the North-Eastern regions apart from the ones mentioned in the act. 

Once the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) comes into effect, combined with the CAA, it will arbitrarily naturalise the residence of many illegal immigrants including a lot of economic immigrants belonging to the aforementioned religions who might not have faced religious persecution (which the Act in itself does not mention) and will pose a grave threat to the citizenship of existing Indian Muslims, who stand vulnerable to be stripped off of their citizenship even if they were born in the country and are natural residents if they do not have identity documents from before the cut off period decided by the government.

Moreover, there is little clarity on the acceptable documentation for the NRC, and in the list of FAQs prepared by the government, there is no definitive information about the system in place for those who do not, for any reason, have the required documentation except that they would be required to procure witnesses and community verifications, etc, which sounds dubious and non-committal at best. NRC, implemented in Assam alone led to more than 19 lakh people, including both Hindus and Muslims, being excluded from the final updated document. Detention camps, where the excluded citizens were sent to, operating out of six local prisons across Assam, have their own horror stories of human rights violation. Given these facts, it is not difficult to trace the trajectory of religious discrimination culminating in a state-approved witch hunt, the possibility of which, aided by the vapid xenophobic attitude the leaders of the ruling party have consistently displayed in the past, is a cause of grave concern.

While a large section of the media is implicit in dissipating misleading representations of the ongoing protests in the country, the eruption of this massive discontent among the citizens comes out of a justified sense of constitutional violation that the CAA and subsequently proposed NRC threaten. State dictated police brutality, unethical arrests, and detainments, internet shutdowns in several parts of the country, closing down public transport and enforcing section 144 to suppress these voices of dissent has only resulted in more agitation and unrest, and as I write this, millions of people, especially students, all over the country, and many more in the Indian community worldwide are coming together on the streets, in their homes, on social media and are breaking silence against their families and friends to register their voice for a united, secular India. That is the country I want to live in.

About the author

Poulomi Bose has been teaching English Literature at the University of Delhi for the past 5 years.
Presently, she is associated with Zakhir Husain College (Evening).

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha.